Oath of Rings

Chapter 3

"And just what is my lovely sister up to now, I wonder?" Finn's voice followed Bex into the forest, making her wonder how he had caught up with her so quickly. She thought she had got an early enough start that she would have been able to avoid the tenacious prince, but Finn was always full of surprises. She set down the log she was trying to move and turned to face him, making him laugh. "Oh, Becca, you wondrous idiot. You look like you're turning into a tree."

Bex tried to run a hand through her hair to push it back, but her fingers quickly encountered a tangle. When she shook her head vigorously, everything from leaves to twigs to a feather fell out, drifting slowly to the forest floor. "We all know how likely that is, princeling."

Finn leaned up against a tree and smiled at her, his gaze sparkling as always but also wistful. "Wishful thinking, I suppose, hoping you'd grow some damn roots and stay where you are."

"Big words," Bex countered, dusting her hands off on her pants and sitting on her log, "coming from a prince who spent more time on a ship last year than in his homeland."

"Not by choice and you know it." Finn sat beside her and shook her knee. "I'm going to miss you. I always miss you. You know that. That big rambling castle isn't home without you in it." He wrapped an arm around Bex's shoulders and knocked the log beneath them with his foot. "So what's this for?"

Bex sighed. Finn was going to find out eventually, of course, and as the prince, he had every right to ask—and to command her to stop. He would do the former quite happily, but she liked to think he wouldn't issue an order to her unless he had no other alternative. They had been friends for years and she had trained with him to be a warrior, but she considered him kin just as much as her blood family was. "I want to go to England again. Queen Paige always said I was welcome any time the waves would bring me to her and . . . I need to move, Fergal." She normally only used his formal name when she was trying to tease him, but just then she was trying to appeal to all aspects of him: the prince, the fellow warrior, the brother, the friend.

"Bex, please think about what you're doing, what you're saying." Finn cradled her head to his shoulder and kissed her forehead. "I know Paige and her mother trained you well, and I'm grateful for everything they taught you. I'm glad they saw the fire inside you and rather than try to douse it, they took it for the beacon that it is. But you also need to be careful. You fought so hard to recover from your injuries. For whatever reason—the nature of her injury, the whims of the gods—Paige wasn't so fortunate, and we both know that eats at her. Don't let her draw you into harm's path, Bex."

Giving Finn a light jab to the chin, Bex sat back. "I'm not a fool, Finn. Well, not a complete fool. I remember what it was like, and I have no desire to be back, wallowing in that darkness. But if I don't try again. . . ." Shaking her head, she stared off into the forest. As a fire-forger, it felt like constantly tempting fate, living so close to so many trees, but she knew she needed the self-discipline. There were days when it was so tempting to just let everything burn down to ashes, especially back when she thought she would never be able to enter battle again. Now that she had fought her way back, she had every intention of staying there. "I need to know, Finn. One way or the other, I need to know."

The prince's voice took on a hint of a whine. "And why can't you know here, Becca?"

Along with her family, he was one of the few people allowed to call her Becca. On the whole she preferred Bex—it sounded sharp and decisive, like an axe falling—but Becca sounded different coming from the people she held most dear. When she heard that name, it usually meant she was going to be scolded, but at least it was by someone she loved. "I'll never grow if I stay," Bex answered softly. She hated that it was true, but she couldn't deny it. Of all the foes she had fought over her still-young life, complacency was the most insidious, the most lethal. "I'll just . . . stay and I'll always wonder what I could have done, and not knowing will make me miserable, and I'll take it out on everyone around me."