Shadows and Light

the trees. The witches were gone, the shining road was gone—and another piece of Tir Alainn was gone with it.
    “I thought of you, Lyrra. If you’d left Brightwood to meet up with me as we’d originally planned, you might have stopped at that Clan’s house to rest. If you’d stopped there at the wrong time, you might have disappeared with the rest of the Fae who had lived there, and there would have been nothing I could have done.”
    “Someone else with the gift of story would have ascended to become the Muse,” Lyrra murmured.
    “She wouldn’t have been you,” Aiden said quietly. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “A few days before I reached Brightwood, I passed through a human village and saw a little girl with red hair.
    And I thought... if you had a child, that’s what she would look like—a darling little red-haired girl with a sweet smile that would grow sassy in a few years.” He swallowed, the muscles in his throat working with the effort of it. “And I thought if I was the man who had sired your child, I wouldn’t be content with knowing your male relatives would help you raise her. I’d want to be the one to rock her to sleep at night and teach her the songs and kiss the scraped elbow or skinned knee. I’d want to be her father instead of just her sire.”

    “That’s not the way the Fae live,” Lyrra said. She felt tears sting her eyes and wasn’t even sure why she wanted to cry.
    “That may be, but the ways of the Fae may not suit all of the Fae,” he replied a little sharply.
    “There are good reasons for our living the way we do,” she said, her own voice taking a sharper edge. “
    The main one being that Fae males aren’t capable of keeping themselves to one lover.”
    A long pause. “I haven’t been in as many beds as you seem to think,” Aiden said, turning his head to look at her. “And I always came back.”
    “To dance with the Muse.”
    “To be with you, Lyrra. And you haven’t been without lovers when I wasn’t there.” An unspoken question shimmered in his eyes.
    “I—” Something was happening here. Something between a man and a woman, not between the Bard and the Muse. “I haven’t invited as many men to my bed as you seem to think.”
    He sang quietly, “I gave her kindness, courtesy, respect, and loyalty. I strung them on the strands of love.
    ”
    “These are the jewels for me,” she finished just as quietly, unsettled enough to feel dizzy.
    “Would they be enough?” he asked, a strange, strained note in his voice. “If they were offered each day, would they be enough?”
    “They would be precious,” she murmured. “Priceless.” She bent her head so that her hair would fall forward, hiding her face from him. Her heart beat oddly. She couldn’t seem to draw in enough air to breathe properly. She felt as if Aiden were holding a treasure she craved just out of her reach.
    “Would they be enough for you to accept one man as a friend and lover? As an ... exclusive mate?”
    Pushing her hair aside, she studied his face, baffled by the uncertainty in his eyes. “Are you asking if I’d be willing to accept you as an exclusive mate? As a—” What did the humans call it? She knew the word as well as she knew her own name. But she couldn’t remember either at the moment.
    “As a husband,” Aiden said softly. “Yes. That’s what I’m asking.”
    Tears stung her eyes. She pressed a hand against her mouth, not sure if she was going to laugh or cry.
    There were too many feelings spinning through her.
    She drew her hand away from her mouth, let it rest on her throat, and felt her pulse beating wildly. “The rest of the Fae will say we’ve been contaminated by spending so much time in the human world.”
    “These are our lives and our choice,” he said, sitting up so they were eye to eye. “Do you really care what the rest of the Fae will say or think?”
    Lyrra shook her head, reached for him.
    He pulled her into his arms and held her tight.
    “Yes,” she whispered in his ear. “Yes, I’ll take the jewels of love that you offer, and, giving them back in turn, I’ll accept you as friend, lover, and husband.”

    When he tried to kiss her, she pressed her head against his shoulder and wept.
    “Lyrra,” he said, alarmed. He shifted her until she was sitting on his lap and rocked her. “Why are crying?
    If you want this as much as I do, why are you crying?”
    She made an effort to hold back the tears, since they