"Once in a valley, I heard a youth sing
of life and of love and enchantment;
Once in a valley, a youth stole my heart
And taught me to—"
"Do you have to sing?"
Lily's mouth snapped closed as she looked at Connor. "I was trying to—to make the trip seem shorter."
"You honestly think that singing of love and enchantment helps my mood, Princess?"
"Jack always said that—"
"Let me guess. That your voice was like a bell and your words perfumed the air. That when you sang, he felt like he could swim the deepest sea and climb the highest peak."
Lily glared at Connor's back. He was disturbingly close to being right, but she wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of telling him that. "As a matter of fact," she said emphatically, "he merely said that it helped him to focus on something other than putting one foot in front of another."
Connor sighed and raked his hair away from his eyes. "Fine, fine, my apologies. But please, don't sing."
"Do you not like my singing? Or do you object to the song itself? I could sing another."
He paused and leaned against a tree. "It has nothing to do with that. It's just that...that...well, look at us!"
She was confused. Looking down at herself, Lily felt that she looked quite well, considering the messiness of their journey. And Connor... He looked more than well. She was forced to admit to herself that he looked like someone in his prime.
And he was taller than Jack.
Shocked by her line of thinking, Lily coughed and said, "I think we look fine, Connor. But if you wish me not to sing..." She shrugged and kept walking, determined not to let him make her lose her temper.
"It's not that," his voice muttered from behind her.
Against her will, the sadness in his voice forced a note of sympathy from her. She slowed her pace, but kept her eyes fixed on the mountains. "I won't know if you don't tell me."
"Am I nothing like him?"
"Like who?" she said in a strangled voice.
He was silent for so long that she nearly decided that he wasn't going to answer, but he finally sighed and replied, "Jack. Your love."
"This is hardly the time or place to discuss my personal matters!" she replied heatedly.
"It seems as good a time as any," he sighed aloud. "You've run off from your castle, from your upcoming marriage, you're wandering in the woods with a delinquent guardsman who took your virginity, and your end destination is a demon who wants nothing more than to ravish you until the world itself ends. If this isn't the perfect time to discuss your personal life, I don't know what is."
"...I don't like you very much," she eventually snapped, wishing that she could have come up with something more appropriate and wittier to respond with.
"Believe me, Princess, I know. So it seems I have nothing to lose by asking you to tell me, do I?"
"Let's keep walking."
"Will you tell me if I do?"
"You are an utter nuisance," she growled, making up her mind that if he didn't stop pestering her right then, she would just leave him there and bedamned with the consequences.
Luckily for him, though, at that moment he popped up by her sleeve with a boyish smile on his face. "Now you sound just like my mother."
Though she didn't want to, his smile was so contagious that she couldn't help but grin back as her anger began to melt. "I'll take that as a compliment, since your mother must have been a saint to put up with you, you dolt."
Executing a courtly bow, he grabbed her hand and kissed it with a roguish tilt of his eyelids. "Sir Dolt, at your command, my lady. Shall we continue our journey?"
Feeling decidedly foolish, Lily offered her arm, and he took it as they kept walking.
"Will you tell me now?"
"I'll tell you once you've kept your mouth closed for a good ten minutes straight."
There, she thought with satisfaction. I should be safe for at least a few more hours.
*******************************************************
"What do you mean?" Jack whispered in horror. "How can this be?"
Oona fluttered her eyelashes sadly. "I am sorry to be the one who had to tell you, my dear Jack, but I could not let you walk into such a trap."
"My Lily... and some guardsman?" He bowed his head. "It cannot be... It cannot be, Oona! Lily would not...would not..."
"Would not what, Jack? She got herself engaged, didn't she? She met you in the woods and she didn't even tell you who she was! Why can you not believe that she would do what she very obviously did?" The fairy pouted prettily up at Jack. "Don't worry. If you don't want to go on this ridiculous mission, I won't think the less of you for it."
Jack's mouth quivered just a little. "But I have to go. She needs me, Oona."
Oona wrapped her arms around his neck. "She has the other one to protect her. Jack, my love, if she did not want you to come with her, it is for the best, yes?"
He blinked, as his voice slid down to a drowsy whisper. "What...about Gump?"
"Gump needn't know either, Jack," Oona whispered back seductively. "No one need know. I can show you a place to hide until this mess is over..."
Her face slowly began to draw nearer to his, her lips to part in anticipation.
"But..." he struggled to make the words come. "What... about...the demon?"
"He will not harm her."
Their lips brushed.
"No!" Jack jumped away, blinking wildly and breathing deeply, as though the breaths he took were his very first. "No," he repeated, looking at the disappointed fairy. "This is not the first time you have—You have tried to trick me into kissing you before, Oona."
She hissed angrily. "You still think she can love you better than I? Go, then, Jack. Go to her. Go to your little harlot."
"She is not a—" Jack yelled, but he was cut off by her angry words.
"Go, Jack. And see if you can find me to apologize when you find her with her skirts up around her ears!"
With one last angry whimper, she seemed to fold in on herself, to disappear until there was nothing left but a speck of light that danced frantically through the trees until he could see it no longer.
"It can't be," Jack whispered to himself. "Lily loves me. And I...I love her. She would not betray me. She would not give herself to another. Ever." He set his chin. "I'm coming, Lily. And I won't doubt you."
*********************************************************
Lily was nearly doubled over with laughter as Connor did his imitation of a haughty princess.
"—and blast it, James, these shoes are not nearly shiny enough! I demand that you make them shinier, and this time, use your tongue, you ignorant peasant!" he screeched in a high-pitched voice. As Lily struggled for breath, he stopped squawking and grinned down at her. "Are you all right there, Princess?"
She nodded breathlessly, but wasn't able to speak for another minute or two. When she did, the words that emerged were, "That...wasn't...funny!"
"Of course it wasn't. That explains why you were laughing so hard that had I not been holding your elbow, you would have fallen flat on your shapely posterior."
"Posterior? Posterior?" For a moment, the outraged look on her face was severely threatened by another fit of giggles, but she managed to control herself. "Now tell me, where does a simple guardsman learn a word like 'posterior'?" She cocked her eyebrow coquettishly.
She was expecting him to laugh and launch into another imitation, so when the smile abruptly disappeared from his face, it was almost like the sun had disappeared from the sky.
"My mother was highborn," he said quietly. "I received a good education."
Her mouth nearly dropped. This was the most personal information he'd voluntarily offered thus far. "Your mother—"
Her voice broke off with a sharp cry as her foot caught on a tree root. She went crashing to the ground with a thud that knocked the air out of her lungs.
"Lily!" he exclaimed as he bent down by her side. "Lily, are you all right?"
"I..." she wheezed. "I...feel sick..."
Connor's face relaxed slightly. He rubbed her back soothingly and said, "Don't worry, that'll go away in a minute."
"Are you...sure?"
The corners of his mouth quirked upwards. "Haven't you ever fallen off a horse before?"
Lily inhaled a shuddering breath. "Of course not. I'm a...superb horsewoman."
"Can you walk?"
"I think so?" As he helped her to her feet, she gingerly tested her weight. "Yes, there doesn't seem to be any injury."
"Well, there's no point in taking any risks, right?"
Lily was on the verge of asking what the ear-to-ear grin on his face was about when he swept her off the ground and into his arms. Suddenly finding herself sheltered in his arms, she tried desperately to not blush.
"Put me down!" she exclaimed. "I'm not broken, so put me down!"
"Nonsense," he scoffed, starting to walk in a rolling gait that was as soothing as it was comforting. "You weigh next to nothing, and I know that you're tired. It doesn't hurt me to carry you for a bit, and it doesn't hurt you to rest."
"And you're not tired?" she asked with an edge to her voice.
"Of course I am," he said, then glanced down at her with a look that was almost...tender. "But I'm not the one who needs to have all of my wits about me in the days ahead, am I?"
"I...suppose so..." she confessed, feeling oddly shaken. Feeling that she had lost this argument, she then fell silent and allowed him to carry her.
Connor kept walking for a while, seeming to cover ground at an astonishing distance as the sun began to wane in the sky. Lulled by the warmth of his body, the sound of his calm breathing, and the quiet of the forest around them, Lily found herself cuddling against his body, her eyes beginning to drift closed.
Loath to destroy the comfortable silence, but increasingly feeling the need to, she blinked hard and said, "You're certainly walking fast."
He shrugged lightly. Feeling the muscles rippling under his skin, she began to feel that breaking the silence had not been wise. In the hush of the afternoon, a kind of intimacy had begun to wind itself around them; she almost felt like she could say anything and hear anything from him.
"Your legs are shorter than mine."
"What?" she asked, confused.
"That's why we move slower when we're both walking," he responded. "I move faster when I'm the only one on the ground."
"Oh..." she replied, feeling foolish. "I forgot that I mentioned it."
"Ah," he said.
She allowed her head to lay against his chest again, let her eyes drift closed, let awareness recede...
When her eyes opened again, the sun was barely a crescent on the horizon, and Connor was still carrying her. Lily yawned.
"You're awake?" he asked quietly.
"Yes... Thank you for carrying me," she said sleepily. "I can walk now."
"You're still worn out, Lily," Connor said. "It's all right, I can carry you for a bit longer."
"I...But...Well—thank you..." She coughed. Suddenly feeling the need to fill the silence, to kill the familiarity that seemed to be growing between them, she said abruptly, "Tell me about your mother?"
"My mother?" He was silent.
There, she thought. He'll get mad, and he'll put me down, and we'll be back to normal. We'll hate each other again.
However, if there was one thing that Lily had forgotten, it was that this young man who was carrying her had a habit of surprising her and of doing the unexpected. When he began to speak, his calm voice filling the hushed twilight, she couldn't have said whether her feelings of disappointment or relief were stronger.
"My mother... Well, she was a lady in Ethril's court. Yes, the same Ethril where your betrothed comes from," he added with a hint of humor in his voice. "She was a very eligible heiress, and numerous men sought her hand... or so I've been told. One day, though, she was found to be with child. Though she was questioned many times, she would never reveal the identity of the man with whom she had transgressed. And so she had a son...me, of course. For the first years of my life, I was coddled and taken care of, much like you were, Princess." Connor chuckled, but then his voice became bleak again. "My mother was still quite an attractive women, and there were still men willing to take her as wife, despite the fact that she was no longer a virgin. But none of them were willing to take me. No man wants the evidence that another man has been with his woman running around his house."
"They sent you away?" Lily asked, horrified.
"Not they, Lily. She. My mother." Connor sighed. "I suppose I can't blame her... It was her last chance to have a real life. So she sent me away. Illegitimate as I am, being a guard in a foreign king's castle was as good a job as I could expect. I suppose she married and had some legitimate children. I don't blame her. Really, I don't."
Despite his flippant words, there was a bitterness in his voice that made Lily's heart ache. All she could think to say was, "Oh...Connor, I'm so sorry..."
"It's all right," he said, gruffly. "It gave me a chance to explore, to see more of the world than I would have otherwise. I wanted to...to try to find my father."
"Did your mother ever tell you anything about him?"
"Just that he was very charming and that he seduced her with wine and candles. It didn't give me much to go on, did it?"
"No...did you find him?"
"No."
Ashamed by her prying, Lily reached up a cool hand to touch his cheek comfortingly.
His cheek was wet.
"Connor..." Aghast at the knowledge he was crying, she was overwhelmed with the urge to comfort him. Feeling helpless to do much else, she caressed his cheek. She felt his taut arms tighten even more around her, shaking slightly.
Suddenly, it was all too dangerous. Her body, pressed against his chest, her hand on his cheek, his arms around her, and the hard-won closeness, it was all too much. It was all too much, and she was too vulnerable.
Frantically, Lily started squirming and pushed at his chest with her hands. "Put me down!"
At first, he didn't understand. His arms continued to hold her tightly as he looked at her uncomprehendingly.
"Put me down!" she said, and it was the fear in her voice more than anything that made his arms loosen. She slipped to the ground and reeled several feet away.
When she finally dared to turn around and look at him, he was standing stiffly, hands clenched into fists, facing away from her.
"I'm sorry..." she offered, but somehow, an apology seemed so inadequate.
"You still don't trust me," he said in a monotone. "Despite everything, despite what I've told you, you still don't trust me."
"Connor—"
"Do you realize that I've never told anyone that much about myself before?"
"Connor, I—"
"I followed you to protect you, I've turned my life upside down to protect you, I'd die to protect you, and you still think that I just want to ravish you."
"Shut up and listen!" When he complied, she sighed, feeling as though she was about to jump off a cliff. "It's not that I think that you're going to ravish me... It's really not."
He remained sullenly silent.
Licking her suddenly dry lips, she hesitantly moved until she was standing right in front of him, but he refused to meet her gaze.
What am I doing?
"I promise it's not that I think that you're going to ravish me."
This is insane...
"It's just that..."
What about Jack?
Her hands moved to rest on either side of his face, smoothing away the tearstains.
This isn't right...
"...just that..."
Why can't I stop myself?
Her face moved closer to his as his eyes began to widen.
Damn, damn, damn...
"...just that I'm afraid that you won't."
"What?" he breathed.
"You heard me," Lily whispered hoarsely.
At the wonder-filled look in his eyes, she was lost. She couldn't have stopped herself if she'd had a sword pressed to her throat.
Their lips met as she wound her arms around his neck and pulled him close. Still, though, he didn't hold her back.
He pulled back and whispered to her in an oddly strangled voice, "Are you teasing me, Princess?"
"No."
"Do you want something out of this? Another dagger, perhaps?"
"No."
"What about Jack?"
That was the one question that she didn't want to hear from him. "I can't pretend that I know what will happen in the morning, but right here...right now...I want you." Saying that was the strangest kind of relief she'd ever felt.
His hands were shaking. "No regrets?"
She looked him square in the face. "No regrets."
This time, when they kissed, his arms went around her every bit as tightly as hers went around him. They were not gentle with the each other; the past days of being alone together had stretched their nerves to the breaking point. Their kiss was fueled by desperation and need.
They kissed for what seemed like an eternity, and Lily felt herself beginning to sink into a whirling black maelstrom, feeling the two of them beginning to fall to their knees, unable to hold each other up any longer.
It didn't matter, none of it. Jack, Darkness, Blix, her father, Gump, none of them mattered. All that mattered was Connor. Right here, right now.
An instant before it would have been too late, before her senses were utterly lost to the passion that pulsed through her veins, she heard a gasp.
Feeling a sudden chill, she somehow managed to pull away from Connor, who stared at her with eyes that shone, even in the dark. Gasping through lips that felt puffy and bruised, she managed to make out a face in the darkness, looking at her with a horrible grief and betrayal.
No.
"What...what is it?" Connor wheezed.
It can't be.
"It's...it's..."
Jack.
"Jack, wait!" she shouted. But it was too late. His ravaged face had already melted back into the shadows. She stumbled after him, ignoring Connor's unhappy cry, ignoring the tree branches that tore at her face and pulled at her skirt.
After a moment, she stumbled against a tree, too numb to cry. Ahead of her somewhere was Jack. Behind her somewhere was Connor. And she'd lost them both.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author's Note: So. Anyone else ever noticed that after a while, all descriptions of forests tend to start sounding the same? Yeah? Me too.
Anyhow...soooo, I said that I would update sooner than three or four months, but apparently I lied. So I'd like to say that I'll update sooner than that again now, but I don't want to make a liar out of myself again. We'll see....
Thanks to everyone who read, and thanks to everyone who reviewed!
~signpost