Fallen

Chapter 6: A Woman Scorned

Ciatlllait appeared a few minutes later. The color in her cheeks drained.

Sylas’s brow knit. “Well, do not look so happy to see me.”

She pushed past the guard and crashed into Sylas, throwing her arms about his neck. She buried her face in his chest and wept. Sylas bit his lip and clutched her tightly. She leaned back in his arms and looked up at him, then dashed away the tears on her cheek with her wrist. “I was not sure I would ever see you again.”

Sylas held her head in his hands. “I made a vow to you that I would find a way back. I’m home now.”

“This isn’t your home.”

Sylas’s brow knit. “Laittie, home is where one’s heart is. My heart lies with you. Wherever you are, so shall home be also.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean.”

Sylas glanced at the guard then at Ciatlllait. He slipped his hand into hers and led her towards the garden. He sat her by the fountain in the garden and looked into the water. His hair was matted, faced dingy, his shirt tattered and dirty. He looked like a peasant. No wonder they would not let him in. He turned back to Ciatlllait and kissed her hands.

“I waited for you, Sylas. I waited a year.”

Sylas’s eyes widened. “A year? That’s not possible. I was only gone a few days.”

Ciatlllait shook her head. “It’s been a year, Sylas.”

“That makes no sense.”

Ciatlllait looked back at her home. A fine young nobleman stood in the doorway gazing after her. She turned her eyes back to Sylas. “The day of our wedding passed, Sylas. My father has been pressed to match me with another.” Sylas rose quickly. Ciatlllait gripped his fingers. “I have done everything in my power to wait for you. Even…” she looked away blushing.

“Even what?”

Ciatlllait chewed her lip. “I may have told them you made me your greenwood wife at Bealtaine.”

Sylas sank beside her. To take a lover at Bealtaine in the greenwood made one inaccessible to the advance of another for a year and a day. “You lied for me?”

Ciatlllait’s hands trembled in Sylas’s. She swallowed. “I love you.”

“And I, you. But you risked your honor, your virtue, your reputation on— ”

“I had to keep faith. I wanted to believe you would come back to me.”

Sylas caressed Ciatlllait’s face. She turned her head to kiss his dirty palm. Sylas leaned forward to kiss her lips, but Ciatlllait stopped him. She looked back at the nobleman staring at them and then at Sylas. “Not now.”

Sylas glanced behind him and glowered at the intruder.

Ciatlllait leaned forward. “We need to get you cleaned up, my prince.”

Ciatlllait’s court tailor pulled together suitable attire for Sylas, and her father’s steward groomed the prince until he looked and felt like himself again.

Sylas dug through his saddle bag in the stables as Flann munched oats. The chestnut looked at him in the darkness and snorted passively. Sylas pulled out the orb and it began to glow at his touch. It made the stable bright enough to see his own reflection in Flann’s dark eye. Sylas looked around for something to stifle the glow with and found a rag nearby used to rub the horses down with after hard work. He wrapped it around the sphere and tucked it under his overcoat.