She came a step closer. The tears were beginning to run down her cheeks now, but she ignored them. “That was a side of Tay Trefenwyd you never saw. You didn’t see it because you didn’t look. He was a complex man, just as you are. Neither of you understood the other as clearly as you thought. You were each the shadow of the other, but as different in some ways as the shadow is from the flesh. I know that difference. I have always known.”
She swallowed. “Now you have to face up to it as well. And to what it means to be alive when your shadow is dead. Tay is gone, Jerle. We remain. What is to become of us? We have to decide. Tay loved me, but he is dead. Do you love me as well? Do you love me as strongly? Or will Kira always be between us?”
“Kira is married,” he said softly, his voice breaking.
“Kira is alive. Life breeds hope. If you want her badly enough, perhaps you can find a way to have her. But you cannot have both of us. I have lost one of the two most important men in my life. I lost him without ever taking time to speak with him as I am speaking with you. I will not let that happen a second time.”
She paused, uncomfortable with what she was about to say, but refusing to look away. “I am going to tell you something. If Tay had asked me to choose between you, I might have chosen him.”
There was an endless silence between them. Their eyes locked and held. They stood in the center of the room, motionless. The fire in the hearth crackled softly and the rain beat down. The shadows in the room had begun to lengthen with the approach of nightfall.
“I do not want to lose you,” Jerle said quietly.
Preia did not respond. She was waiting to hear more.
“I did love Kira once,” he admitted. “I love her still, I suppose. But it’s not the same as it was. I know I have lost her, and I no longer mourn that loss. I haven’t for years. I care for her. I think of her when I think of Tay and our childhood. She was part of that, and I would be foolish if I tried to pretend that it was otherwise.”
He took a deep breath. “You asked me if I loved you. I do. I haven’t really thought about it in any deliberate way — I just always accepted it. I suppose I believed that you would always be there and so dismissed any further consideration as unnecessary. Why examine something that was so obvious? There seemed no need to do so. But I was wrong. I see that. I took you for granted without even realizing it. I thought that what we shared was sufficient as it was. I didn’t allow for change or doubts or complacency.
“But I have lost Tay and a large part of myself with him. I have lost direction and purpose. I am come to the end of a road I have traveled for a long time and find no way to turn. When you ask if I love you, I am faced with the fact that loving you is perhaps all I have left. It is no small thing, no consolation to measure against my pain. It is much more than that. I feel foolish saying this. It is the one real truth I can acknowledge. It means more than anything else in my life. Tay let me discover this by dying. It is a high cost to pay, but there it is.”
His big hands reached out and fastened gently on her shoulders.
“I do love you, Preia.”
“Do you?” she asked quietly.
He felt a vast distance open between them as she spoke the words. He felt an immense weight settle on his shoulders. He stood awkwardly in front of her, unable to think of what else he could do. His size and strength had always been a source of reassurance, but with Preia they seemed to work against him.
“Yes, Preia,” he said finally. “I do. I love you as much as I have ever loved anyone. I don’t know what else to say. This, I guess — that I hope you still love me.”
She said nothing even then, standing there motionless before him, looking into his eyes. The tears had stopped, but her face was streaked and damp. A tiny smile lifted the comers of her mouth. “I have never stopped loving you,” she whispered.
She stepped forward into his arms and let him hold her. After a while, she held him back.
They were sitting together before the fire when Vree Erreden appeared several hours later. It was dark by then, the last of the daylight faded, the rain lessened to a drizzle that fell without sound on the already drenched woodlands. A silence had fallen across the weary city, and lights had begun to appear in the windows of buildings barely glimpsed through gaps in the sagging, water-laden boughs of the trees. No one lived in the palace now, the building empty while repairs were made and a ruler determined, and only the summerhouse saw life within the grounds.
Even so, the Home Guard watched over Jerle Shannara, come to protect one of their own as much as to protect a member of the royal family and a rumored king-to-be.
The Guard stopped Vree Erreden three times before he reached the door to the summerhouse, letting him pass then only because Jerle had made certain that the locat was to be given free access to him at all times. It was strange how their relationship had changed.
The First King of Shannara
Terry Brooks's books
- Alanna The First Adventure
- Alone The Girl in the Box
- Asgoleth the Warrior
- Awakening the Fire
- Between the Lives
- Black Feathers
- Bless The Beauty
- By the Sword
- In the Arms of Stone Angels
- Knights The Eye of Divinity
- Knights The Hand of Tharnin
- Knights The Heart of Shadows
- Mind the Gap
- Omega The Girl in the Box
- On the Edge of Humanity
- The Alchemist in the Shadows
- Possessing the Grimstone
- The Steel Remains
- The 13th Horseman
- The Age Atomic
- The Alchemaster's Apprentice
- The Alchemy of Stone
- The Ambassador's Mission
- The Anvil of the World
- The Apothecary
- The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
- The Black Lung Captain
- The Black Prism
- The Blue Door
- The Bone House
- The Book of Doom
- The Breaking
- The Cadet of Tildor
- The Cavalier
- The Circle (Hammer)
- The Claws of Evil
- The Concrete Grove
- The Conduit The Gryphon Series
- The Cry of the Icemark
- The Dark
- The Dark Rider
- The Dark Thorn
- The Dead of Winter
- The Devil's Kiss
- The Devil's Looking-Glass
- The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War)
- The Door to Lost Pages
- The Dress
- The Emperor of All Things
- The Emperors Knife
- The End of the World
- The Eternal War
- The Executioness
- The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)
- The Fate of the Dwarves
- The Fate of the Muse
- The Frozen Moon
- The Garden of Stones
- The Gate Thief
- The Gates
- The Ghoul Next Door
- The Gilded Age
- The Godling Chronicles The Shadow of God
- The Guest & The Change
- The Guidance
- The High-Wizard's Hunt
- The Holders
- The Honey Witch
- The House of Yeel
- The Lies of Locke Lamora
- The Living Curse
- The Living End
- The Magic Shop
- The Magicians of Night
- The Magnolia League
- The Marenon Chronicles Collection
- The Marquis (The 13th Floor)
- The Mermaid's Mirror
- The Merman and the Moon Forgotten
- The Original Sin
- The Pearl of the Soul of the World
- The People's Will
- The Prophecy (The Guardians)
- The Reaping
- The Rebel Prince
- The Reunited
- The Rithmatist
- The_River_Kings_Road
- The Rush (The Siren Series)
- The Savage Blue
- The Scar-Crow Men
- The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da
- The Scourge (A.G. Henley)
- The Sentinel Mage
- The Serpent in the Stone
- The Serpent Sea
- The Shadow Cats
- The Slither Sisters
- The Song of Andiene