Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(264)

There was shouting in the hallway outside, and the thud of running footsteps. She opened the door, and found Giraldi standing in the hall outside, facing the half-open door of the chamber across the hall from hers.

"That's as may be," the old soldier growled, "but you aren't the one who gets to decide whether you're well again or not." He paused as a trio of youths, probably pages, went sprinting by. "Lady Veradis says you're lucky to be alive. You stay in bed until she says otherwise."

"I don't see Lady Veradis anywhere," said a man in a legionares tunic and boots. He stood in the doorway, looking down the hallway so that Isana saw him in profile. He was handsome, if weathered, his brown hair flecked with grey, and shorn in a standard Legion cut. He was thin, but built of whipcord and sinew, and he carried himself with relaxed confidence, the heel of one hand resting in unconscious familiarity on the hilt of the gladius at his hip. He had a deep, soft voice. "So obviously, she can't say otherwise. Why don't we go and ask her?"

The man turned back to Giraldi, and Isana saw that the other side of his face was horribly maimed with burn scars, seared into the skin in the Legion mark of a coward.

Isana felt her mouth drop open.

"Araris," she said quietly.

Giraldi grunted in surprise and turned to her. "Steadholder. I didn't know you were awake..."

Isana met Araris's steady gaze. She tried to say something, but the only thing that came out of her mouth was, "Araris."

He smiled and gave her a small, formal bow. "I thank you for my life, my lady."

And she felt it. She felt it in him now, felt it as she met his eyes. She had never sensed it in the past, never in all the years he'd served her brother and then her. It was his eyes, she thought. In all those years, with his hair grown long and ill kempt, she had never, never once seen his entire face, seen both of his eyes at once. He'd never been willing to let her see him. Never been willing to let her know what he felt for her.

Love.

Selfless, quiet, strong.

It was love that had sustained him through years of labor and isolation, love that had prompted him to surrender his identity, brand himself, disguise himself, even though it cost him his position, his pride, his career as a soldier-and his family. He had willingly murdered everything he was in the name of that love, and not only that which he felt for Isana. She could feel that in him as well, the bittersweet, bone-deep sorrow and love for his friend and lord, Septimus, and by extension to his friend's wife and son.

For his love, he had fought to protect Septimus's family, endured a life of difficult labor in a steadholt smithy. For his love, he had destroyed his life, and if he was called upon to do so, he would spend his last breath, shed his last drop of blood to protect them without an instant's hesitation. Flis love would accept nothing less.

Isanas eyes blurred with sudden tears, as the warmth and power of that love washed over her, a silent ocean whose waves rippled in time with the beating of his heart. Isana was awed-and humbled-by it. And something stirred in her in answer. For twenty years, she had felt it only in dreams. Now, something broke inside her, shattering like a block of ice beneath a hammer, and her heart soared in exaltation, in the sheer, golden, bubbling laughter she thought was gone forever.

That was why she had never sensed it in him. She had never felt it growing in herself, over the long years of work and grief and regret. She'd never allowed herself to understand the seed had taken root and begun to grow. It had lain quietly, patiently, waiting for the end of the winter of mourning and grief and worry that had frozen her heart. Waiting for a new warmth. Waiting for spring.