Authors: Caragh M. O'Brien

Prized (35 page)

BOOK: Prized

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One of the guards arrived with a torch. “Hello, Mlass Matrarc,” he said, and reached in to touch the flame to the dry kindling at the heart of the wood pile. Then he lit two more places. Gaia loved the first scent of smoke.

“Thank you,” Gaia said. “How's everyone doing?”

“Good so far. You enjoy yourself now.”

Gaia turned her face from the growing heat to look once more toward the road, deepened now with the shadows of last dusk. Finally, she saw Leon. Finally, he was coming, and she inhaled deeply as everything inside her felt whole again. He looked different in a white shirt that caught some of the firelight. He'd brought Maya. He paused near the upper edge of the shore, scanning the crowd, with the trees behind him and the last of the daylight tainting the sky a rich indigo above him.

She waved, and when he didn't see her, she rose stiffly to her feet and waved again. When he still didn't see her, she turned her back on the fire and began crossing the dark sand toward him, moving slowly as she had ever since her day in the stocks. He was gazing farther down the beach, standing with his profile to her, his expression as focused as always. She liked the way he absently patted the baby in her yellow blanket and the curving, casual line of his back. When he finally turned to see her, he broke into an easy stride, and then he was smiling, too.

“Hey,” she said when they met. “What took you so long?”

“Maya was nursing, so I had to wait to bring her down,” Leon said. “I thought she'd like to see the bonfires.”

Gaia cupped her fingers loosely around the baby's little head, and saw that her eyes were closed in contented sleep. She thought Leon was incredibly sweet. “She doesn't see much when she's asleep, you know. New shirt?”

“One of Norris's cousins offered me an extra. They're nice people,” Leon said. “You know, Josephine told me she tried to get you to make me a shirt and you said no.”

“I'm going to kill her.”

Laughing, he shifted the baby into the nook of his arm.
“Dominic sent something down for you,” he said. He slid something into her palm, and she knew by the cool solid weight that it was the Matrarc's monocle.

Gaia's mirth seeped away. “I told him I didn't want it.”

“I know. He wants you to have it anyway, evidently. I think you should accept it.”

Gaia closed her fingers around it, feeling the metal and glass warming in her hand while her thoughts churned.

“She's complicated for you, isn't she?” Leon said.

She nodded. She didn't know if she'd ever understand it. Her relationship with the Matrarc had been a labyrinth of submission and rebellion, coercion and pleading, but her death had been the worst of all. It wasn't at all the same as what had happened with Gaia's mother.

“She made me a killer for real this time,” Gaia said. “I know she was only thinking of her baby, but if feels like she did it to me on purpose.” It sickened her, what she'd done.

Leon put an arm around her shoulder. She felt awkward, stiff, but she let him rock her nearer.

She lifted the monocle to see firelight catch in the lens, and then thought back to the morning in the atrium when the Matrarc had gently touched her face, learning who she was. It still made her uneasy to think of the strange, charismatic power the Matrarc had had over her, as if she'd been able to see deep inside her. The Matrarc's strength and influence hadn't vanished just because she was dead. If anything, she had proven how strong she was when she chose death to let her baby live. Logically, by daylight, Gaia knew that.

But the nightmares. She couldn't hide from self-loathing there. Her nightmares were awash with death and blood.

Leon gave her shoulder a squeeze, and she deliberately made herself let go of some stiffness.

“You're so hard on yourself,” he said. “You know what I think?”

“What?”

“You were the only one who could help her. The only one, Gaia.”

She nodded slowly. “I'll think about that.”

“And her baby's alive because of you. Think about that, too.”

As Gaia pulled the chain of her locket watch from around her neck, Leon let her go. She undid the clasp, looped the monocle on, and reattached it. When the necklace fell on her chest again, it was a little heavier and bulkier than before, but after all, it did belong to her.

“I'll have to thank Dominic,” she said.

“You okay?”

She nodded.

“Really?”

She smiled. “Yes. I really am.” She glanced ahead to the bonfire where her friends sat. “You know what Peony said? This is strange. She thinks I tamed you.”

Leon laughed. “You don't like that?”

“It's just not right,” she said.

“No, not exactly,” he said. He shifted to face her more directly. “I wonder if you'd clear something up for me.”

“What?”

The flickers of the bonfire cast gleams over his complexion and turned his hair a satiny black. He paused to tuck Maya's little hand into her blanket, and then he still didn't speak.

She started to smile. “You going to tell me, or am I supposed to guess?”

He peered down at her, oddly frowning and hopeful. “It's just, when you turned me down that time, up at the winner's cabin, I couldn't tell if you were just saying you couldn't decide
then, or if you were turning me down permanently. Like with a hatchet: done.”

A tingle started behind her heart and became a small, painful twist.

“I couldn't decide then,” she said. “That's all I was saying.”

“I see. So not the hatchet.”

“No,” she said. Is that what it had felt like to him?

He patted Maya's little back. “So, where does that leave us now?”

She dug the toe of her loafer into the heavy sand while she tried to figure out what to say.

“Gaia,” he said gently. “I kind of need to know.”

The heat of a blush rose in her cheeks. She'd been falling in love with him. She knew that, so why was she holding back? “A lot's happened lately,” she said.
With Peter and everything
. She touched a finger to one of the buttons on his shirt, peering at it hard while she smoothed the fabric around it.

He didn't say anything, which made it worse.

“I don't think I can give you an answer tonight,” she said.

“Such wild enthusiasm. I think you just did.”

She cringed. “Leon, no. Really. Please, I just need a little time.”

“I'm not going to do well with being kept hanging.” He covered her hand with his to keep it still. “Because, from my side of it, I don't have any doubts. Maybe I didn't make that clear.”

“I know,” she said.

“So what is it, then?”

“I don't know exactly. What if I say yes now and then change my mind or something?”

“You won't change your mind.”

“But I could hurt you again,” she said. “I don't ever want to do that.”

“You won't.”

“I can't make a commitment until I'm completely sure,” she said. “That's what you want, isn't it? For me to be completely sure?”

“And you're not.”

She'd been tricked by her own feelings before, and the hesitation that held her back now was real. How was she supposed to know if what she felt for him would last, that it wasn't some mistake that would take them both to disaster? She had to be honest with herself and fair to him, too. “It's such a big decision. All I need is a little more time,” she said. “Just to be sure. Is that too much to ask?”

“It's a lot to ask, actually,” he said. He ran his thumb over her fingers, slowly. “I guess I should be happy you're being honest with me. Would it be different if you weren't running Sylum?”

She hesitated. “But I am running Sylum now.”

“That's what I thought.” He was quiet for a moment. “If I give you more time to decide, I want you to give me something, too.”

“What?”

“Promise me you won't go sneaking off to be alone with Peter. Or anybody else. Take the time you need to think things over, but just about us, you and me, with nobody else dropping in to say âHey, Mlass Gaia, let's take a little ride through the woods.' You know what I mean? You're the Matrarc now.”

Peter wanted nothing to do with her. There was no danger of any little ride. At least, not another one. She glanced over to the bonfire and could just make out Will through the flames, sitting beside Dinah, splitting seeds for her son. She wondered if Leon ever knew about Will.

“What's that mean, âI'm the Matrarc now.' Don't you trust me?” she asked.

“I trust you. But plenty of these men would love to get close to you, and they'll be trying all the time, especially now that the rules are changing.” His gaze narrowed briefly. “It would kill me to have you peeling off with them. I have to know you won't do that to me.”

“I wouldn't.”

“I mean it,” Leon said quietly. “Tell me now. We don't have to go any further.”

Further
. That was where she wanted to go with Leon.

Maybe they could go further while they weren't getting chased around the Enclave or overthrowing the cuzines of Sylum. Maybe they could have some normal life together while they prepared to lead an exodus of two thousand people across a hundred kilometers of wasteland to a walled city that might very well be hostile when they arrived there. Then again, maybe normal would never be possible.

She slid her arm shyly around his waist and felt his arm go around her, too, drawing her close even as he cradled the sleeping baby in his other arm.

“I can be loyal, Leon. I know what that is.”

He laughed. “Finally, the girl gives me a crumb.”

She focused on the collar of his shirt and the warm gap next to his neck. The truth was, even if she wasn't brave enough to make a commitment forever, she did love him. She was who she was because of him. Certainly he must know that. She thought of how she'd felt the day he got her sister back for her, and the way he'd kissed her, up in the winner's cabin, and the way he'd helped her into the stocks and been there when she woke up afterward to turn her bruised hand in his. She knew what
it felt like to be with him, right then, with an aching happiness just teetering inside her, ready to spill.

“What is this?” he said. “I know you love me back, Gaia. I can see it in you.”

She nodded. “What I feel for you, it's like this, right here between us. It's everything we've gone through, and Maya, somehow.”

He tilted his forehead against hers and held her tight. “Don't be afraid of it, then,” he said. “It could be what's ahead for us, too.”

“Soon, okay?” she said.

He had to give her a little more time. Had to. She searched his eyes, anxious, until finally his smile eased, turning lazy and warm.

“All right,” he said. “Come here.”

She was already there, but she managed to get closer still. The loon called far out across the marsh, and all along the shore, humans tried to mimic the wild cry, hooting and whistling back from around the bonfires, and then laughing at each other, but Gaia hardly heard them. She was perfectly busy kissing Leon.

When at last she looked down the beach again, scatters of sparks were cascading upward into the deep sky. The moon, a glittering, full orb, was rising over the marsh to illuminate a shimmering path along the water. Dovetailing her fingers with Leon's, she drew him toward the sweet, shifting smoke of the bonfire.

And for once, she was happy. Very.

acknowledgments

Prized
evolved into this story only because my editor, Nancy Mercado, encouraged me to grapple with what matters, so I offer her my warmest gratitude. Thanks, also, to my agent, Kirby Kim, for having faith in my work. I'm grateful to Amy Sundberg O'Brien, Francine McNiel O'Brien, and Nancy O'Brien Wagner for trusty input on dodgy drafts. I'd like to thank my children, William, Emily, and Michael LoTurco, both for sending me off to Gaia's world and for asking if, on any given day, I made it off the couch. As always, I thank my husband, Joseph LoTurco, for everything.

Caragh M. O'Brien

November, 2011

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