Shadows and Light

among this Clan. It reminded her too sharply that she was still an outsider, might always be an outsider.
    “It didn’t occur to me,” Ari said. Then she hesitated. “You’ve said very little about where you’ve been over this past year, but I think we’ve all sensed it was a hard journey, for the heart as well as the body.
    You’ve had enough things to adjust to in the few days since you’ve come to live here.” She lightly touched Morag’s arm. “They’re different from the rest of the Fae, aren’t they?”
    Morag looked at the men and women laughing and dancing, and almost— almost —understood something that had been eluding her since she’d arrived at this Clan house. “Yes, they’re different.”
    In her bedroom at the Clan house, Ashk lay on her back in bed, dreamily watching the candlelight play with the shadows on the ceiling. The night air dried the sweat, chilling her skin except where Padrick’s arm lay heavy and warm across her belly and his head rested on her shoulder.
    “If I were still a randy young man, my cock would already be willing to try again,” Padrick said.
    “Hmm,” Ashk replied, too sated to think of anything else to say.
    Padrick raised his head. “That’s the best you can do, woman? You’re supposed to say something flattering.”
    Ashk turned her head to look at him. “A seasoned lover is better than a randy young man.”
    He grunted. Dropped his head back down on her shoulder.
    Ashk smiled. “So what were the three of you talking about this evening? You looked so serious.”
    “Who?”
    Now Ashk grunted. “You know very well who. You and Evan and Neall.”
    “Oh. That. If you must know, we were comparing the size of our cocks.”
    Ashk snorted. “Oh. Well. Must have been embarrassing when Evan came out the winner of that little contest.”
    “You’ve never had any complaints when I stand at attention, wife,” Padrick grumbled.
    She just grinned.
    “Well,” he said, rolling onto his back. “You might as well know. Since you started it, you’ll have to finish it.”
    “Started what?” Ashk said, sitting up so that she was in a better position to give her husband a narrow-eyed stare. “Finish what?”
    “You should learn to be more careful about what you put in writing, darling wife.”
    The way Padrick was smiling at her made her nervous. “I didn’t put anything in writing.”
    His smiled widened. “Oh, now. Who was it who was feeling maudlin a few months ago because her firstborn was away at school on his birthday?”

    “I wasn’t feeling maudlin!” But she had been. She’d just hoped Padrick hadn’t noticed.
    “And who was it who fretted over only being able to send gifts that wouldn’t be remarked upon at a gentry school?”
    “That’s perfectly understandable,” Ashk said defensively, sensing a trap but not able to see the shape of it.
    “And who was it who wrote that firstborn son a letter and told him that because he wasn’t home to celebrate his birthday, he could choose his gift when he came home?”
    “So?” When he didn’t say anything, she wondered how he’d enjoy being shoved out of bed. “What’s that got—?” She began to see the shape of the trap. “What’s that got to do with Neall?”
    “And who is it, my darling wife, who has some of the finest horses in the county?”
    “A horse?” Ashk stared at her husband. “I never said Evan could have a horse!”
    “And you never said he couldn’t.”
    “He’s too young to have a horse. Besides, he has a pony.”
    “No, he doesn’t. He lent the pony, and the little pony cart along with it, to Ari.”
    “But—”
    “Our boy learned more in this past year than could be found in schoolbooks. He’s made friends with a couple of boys from a well-to-do merchant family from eastern Sylvalan, and the three of them went over every word of that letter as if it were a contract full of fine print.”
    “But—”
    Padrick burst out laughing. “Oh, you should have heard him, Ashk, telling Neall how he’d been thinking of Ari walking through the woods for hours at a time to gather her plants, and her with a babe heavy in her belly, and how, being another man, he could appreciate that Neall would be carrying a bit of worry about that, which is why he offered Ari the loan of the pony and the cart, even though it meant he wouldn
    ’t have a mount of his own. And then observing, just casual-like, that there’s that one gelding that Glenn brought with him when