A Change of Heart

"Know that you are loved, in this world and the next."

Reynhild downed the wooden flagon of cheap ale in a single pull. She partook of spirits very rarely-- she did not relish the feeling of dulled reflexes and numbed wits-- but at the moment she needed something, anything, to chase Sir Varyan's voice out of her head. His last words had haunted her since the night he left.

The inn's common room was near empty at this hour. The few stragglers and drunks paid her little heed. Brigid was upstairs, watching Mara as she slept; the wizard, somewhat more subdued since she had nearly perished at the villa, had agreed to stay near Reynhild in town, rather than at the ornate, gilded townhouse--a veritable beacon for thieves!-- where her parents lived. Reynhild's stomach clenched at the thought of how close they'd come to losing her. Little foolhardy idiot. Both my little foolhardy idiots. But I love them. I no longer know what I'd do, or who I'd be, without them both. 

But it wasn't her constant vigilance or arrows that had saved Mara. It was Varyan.

"Know that you are loved, in this world and the next."

Unable to bear it, she rose from the table, left a handful of bent coppers, and headed for the door.

Reynhild did not much like Stormpoint. The stench of human misery swirled amid the gardens and fountains and frescoes. People were packed so densely here it was a wonder anyone could breathe. There was human prey aplenty-- the cutpurse she'd been in another life would have salivated at the thought-- but there was nowhere to flee, nowhere to hide, nowhere to range, only more walls, cobbles, the crush of unwashed bodies.

The cutpurse I'd been in another life.

She knew, from the second she met Varyan's gaze, that he knew she wasn't who she pretended to be. He saw through her facade without effort. Those twilight-blue eyes saw the dirty, ugly, shameful, brutal truth at the core of her being. He knew every purse she'd cut, every throat she'd slashed, every time she'd eaten garbage rather than starve. But what she saw reflecting back was not disgust or judgment... but mercy, grace, acceptance, an endless well of compassion that sought to bear all the world's pain and ask nothing back for itself.

I don't deserve it.

She stopped in the midst of the Street of Tanners and furiously wiped her suddenly tear-filled eyes with the back of her gauntlet.

He knew who she was, and he deemed her worthy of love regardless. That was more than Corrac, and now Cathal, could do... the woman they claimed to love didn't exist, or at least, was a veneer on something profoundly vile.

Gods damn you, Varyan. You changed everything. You changed me. You are the only one who has ever made me feel like I could truly be something different. Like I could be redeemed.

So far, the trip to Stormpoint had been an utter failure. Her plan to infiltrate the House of Wind, to use it for her own purposes, was at a dead end, and all Dolan had managed to find her was some back-alley tough who he claimed was a cut above the rest.

But maybe there is a new path through this particular thicket. One I almost walked right past, but Varyan pointed out to me. 

Maybe I can be worthy of Corrac's love, of Cathal's, of whatever Varyan sees in me. 

Maybe there is another way.

"Alms, milady? Alms for a poor lame beggar?"

Reynhild glanced over; a pair of bright eyes peered up from a stinking bundle of rags crouched by the side of the cobblestone street. Immediately she recognized her. She was one of Leandra's. Possibly she'd been following her since she left the inn, and Reynhild had been too ale-addled and heartsick to notice.

"I have a message for your mistress." She proffered a half-silver piece.
"Aye, milady?"
"She told me she would return any part of my gift she did not require. Tell her to keep it. Tell her to use it to put a hot meal in the belly of you and anyone else in her care. Tell her that when I came to her, I wanted her help destroying... but now I want her help protecting and rebuilding both her people, and mine. Tell her... I've had a change of heart."

Know that you are loved, in this world and the next.