VaLkA

mare / six / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

When? The anger that the skjaldmær expected was not there, not yet. But there was something worse in Solomon’s voice; something that twisted through her chest and wrapped thorned coils around her heart. In that single syllable, there was enough unspoken that the chestnut knew what she would see if she looked. When, Valka? But she could not help the upward flick of her dark gaze; could not have stopped it for all her strength and stubborn will. Nor could she survive the punch to her chest that was seeing Tinuvel’s King recoil from her— expression hard and cold— without flinching back a step, jaws working at the frigid air unconsciously in the face of his anger. Was it before or after I came from you?

And she— what? Even with the sluggish churn of her thoughts, what Valka was hearing simply didn’t make sense. Solomon hadn’t come for her since last fall, not even when she’d birthed Kesja just across the boundary between their two homes. The tobiano stallion had been silent and withdrawn for a year, abandoned her when she’d needed him most. Feeling the coals of her anger flare to life anew, the Yakut tossed her head savagely, bared her teeth at the apparent lie. Only Solomon didn’t lie, and had no cause to even now. So— what, then? When could the tall stallion have come and gone without her knowledge? When could he have escaped the notice of the Bay’s sworn protector? The woman who’d waited for him for seasons, who’d ached for his absence?

Then— with a shock that made her step back again— Valka understood. No, she remembered. Understanding was still as distant as the jutting fangs of the Cove’s mountains; as unreachable as the skeins of cloud drifting overhead. But in depths buried by the trials she’d faced then and after, she found the memory of Bacardi’s voice fading in and out of her consciousness, as if he was dipping beneath the surface of a choppy sea. — came. Came for you. Battered and nearly broken, she’d slipped away after, drifted into a peaceful sleep at the dark bay’s side. Certain that her Hersir’s words had referred to his arrival on the shore of their home, his devotion to her. That they were an assurance that he would care for her in her convalescence. But could they have been something else entirely?

Had Solomon truly come for her after she’d finally given up, and sought to bury her heartache in purpose?

“Solomon, I— I didn’t know.” Her expression softening, the skjaldmær nearly stepped forward, nearly reached for the white-patched stallion before her. But something in Solomon’s eyes forbade it— something about him was so different, so distant, that Valka suspected nothing she could say would touch him. Just as nothing he could tell her now would forgive his disappearance. Whatever had been between them, it was broken now. Or perhaps it had never been whole at all; perhaps she could never give enough of herself to satisfy the Cove-King. Because it had never been in her to yield to anyone, and might never be in her to surrender the fragile prize of her heart so openly. Like Solomon, she was too wild and willful, too proud to confess the need that she’d felt for him.

For all the differences that they’d overcome, it was their similarities that inevitably tore them apart.