VaLkA

mare / eight / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

Tinuvel’s King did not soften in the same way that the skjaldmær had with her words. If anything, the tobiano stallion seemed to harden more, the planes of his face as rigid as the frozen ground beneath their hooves. Instead of bringing clarity and understanding to their terse discussion, Valka’s confession seemed to have muddied the waters even more. Whether Solomon doubted the truth of her words or there was some deeper cause to his anger, the wind of her words only fueled his flame. And the shaggy chestnut— who’d fought stallions even larger than him and won— backed away another step. She backed away even as the distance between them threatened to tear her asunder, backed away not from fear of Solomon but from fear of her own heart.

From fear or what might happen if she went to him as she desperately wished to do; from fear of the rejection she could read written in the cold depths of his gaze.

With a glance at the grullo filly who still lingered nearby, the Cove’s spoke in a soft voice that was a stark contrast to the anger still evident in his pinned ears and tense body. He appeared to lay a share of the blame at Bacardi’s feet, blissfully unaware of a grimmer truth— that Valka’s Huskarl had delivered the message, and she’d been too wounded and weak to understand. He continued on to offer some vague explanation about coming as soon as he’d been strong enough, without volunteering anything specific about the circumstances that had kept him away. Did Solomon sense that the truth of it had ceased to matter, or did he think that the Yakut didn’t deserve the courtesy of an explanation for her own crimes? She didn’t know, and ultimately that didn’t matter either. Even the claim that he’d wanted to see her and Kesja didn’t matter.

Because when the champagne male continued— asking whether it would have changed anything, whether he was too late— the red woman forgot the grief and resentment that had built within her over the past year.

“No, Solomon.” The skjaldmær somehow breathed through a throat that felt too tight for speech; as tight and tangled as the emotions curled within her chest. “It wouldn’t have changed anything, because you’re not too late. You could never be too late, because I would have— and always will— forgive you.” And it was true, but it also wasn’t enough. Because— dark brown eyes blurring with tears— Valka drove forward as relentlessly as she would have in any battle, baring the truth that mattered most. “But it’s not the same for you. I could see it in the way you looked at me after I told you. I didn’t know the truth behind your absence, and now I do. When it’s already too late.”

With an abrupt jerk of her head, the fluffy mare conveyed to Kesja that she should approach. But as their daughter approached hesitantly, Valka backed away again, tucking her head so that the tangles of her forelock fell down to hide her anguished face. “Her name is Kesja. She was born in the Cove. I— I tried to bring her to you, then.” Her voice faded to a whisper as the almost-yearling reached their sides, glancing from one to the other with wary confusion. “And I give her to you freely now. As I— as I would have given myself, if the past had happened differently.” And that single change— it would have healed them, but for how long? They were too similar in all the wrong ways, and different where it was doomed to hurt them most. Even if he chose to forgive her, she realized, there was no world in which they could ever belong to one another.

Twisting away from the stallion with a grief-stricken cry, the skjaldmær leapt forward to race across the tundra, and hoped that she might lose her heart along the way.