Wolfsbane (42 page)

Her mouth dropped open, and she took two steps back and kinked her neck so she could look him in the eyes. “How did you know?”

He shook his head. “I’m not really certain, to tell you the truth. But I’ve always been able to tell who you are, no matter what shape you wear.”

“You didn’t tell him we were married,” Wolf said with neutrality he didn’t feel as he paced by Sheen’s side. Had she been ashamed of him?

She shook her head. “He’d have been hurt that he missed the ceremony,” she told him. “We can do it up properly later, when it won’t be tied up with Nevyn’s deal, don’t you think? You have his approval, though, if that helps.”

That bewildered him. How could he approve of Cain, the ae’Magi’s despised son, for his daughter? “He doesn’t know me.”

“He’s met you,” she told him. “He knows what you did here and why. That was apparently enough for him—oh, and he really wants to know how you made those little cakes you fixed for Myr’s coronation.”

Wolf stopped. Sheen halted beside him, and Aralorn waited with unusual (for her) patience for him to speak. He didn’t know what to say.

“You married me so I would not seek death for fear of causing yours,” he said.

She got that mysterious smile that usually meant she knew more than she should about something, but all she said was “Yes.”

He didn’t know why that bothered him so much. And if he couldn’t explain it to himself, how could he explain it to her?

She took pity on him eventually.

“Wolf,” she said. “Married is wonderful, married is lovely. But I loved you before that, and you were mine before that. Only you for me—only me for you. That’s how it was before our marriage.” The smile fell away and left her pale and determined. “That’s how it was when I found you in that pit trap all those years ago—I knew as soon as I first saw your eyes. But then, I’ve known all my life what love is. It took you, who had nothing to compare it to, rather longer to figure it out, to understand what is between us. But even when you did not understand or recognize it—it was always love.”

Sheen sighed and shifted his weight, but Aralorn didn’t turn her attention from Wolf as he took her words and warmed himself on them.

“Yes,” he said, and started out for the inn where they would spend the night. “Yes. That is how it is.”

She rode beside him, and he didn’t need to turn his head to know that she was there.