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He loves her. He’s never questioned it, never bothered to think about it too deeply; love isn’t fickle but fragile, he thinks, not in its strength because love is always strong, but in its flexibility. He may very well love this woman forever, and she him, but some storms cannot be weathered by strength alone.
He thinks of the tall trees in Bern nestled against the side of the mountain, and how they hold their position because the rocky outcroppings block the wind. Those same trees on the plains would topple.
This is love as pertaining to himself and Priscilla. It is strong and sure, but he knows it won’t hold—can’t hold, not when circumstances have to change as they must. She’s strong, but she won’t stay that way, not if he takes her away from everything she knows, not if he removes her from her money and robs her of her shining future.
He’s not worth that.
It’s not a self-deprecating thought, really; it’s merely the truth.
How long will it be before the Bernese military comes knocking at her door?
He thinks about it often, about how the scene may go. Horrendous pounding against the gate in the middle of the night; Priscilla creeping out of her room, hair tousled from her interrupted sleep, green eyes wide. A servant will answer the door and on the other side will be—
Heath doesn’t know. It could be anyone. It could even be Vaida. It would be just like Bern to do something like that—to make her hunt down one of her own to prove her loyalty. Would she do it, though? Perhaps she will be standing on the other side of the door someday—tonight or tomorrow or ten years from now, blonde hair greying, the jagged scar on her face making her look vicious though he’ll always know to look for the sorrow just to the side of it, visible in the lines at the corner of her eyes.
He hates clichéd phrases—he always has. Life cannot be measured by means such as that. Sir Sain’s flattery has never meant anything to anyone for the same reason. Repetition renders words meaningless, sometimes. If every woman is an angel how is one of them to believe that he means it when he’s talking to them? He doesn’t begrudge Sir Sain his fun; he, too, loves Priscilla, or had, once upon a time.
Perhaps because of this, one phrase sticks: if you love someone, let them go.
And he does love her—not everything about her, but enough. Sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes he sees her in the gardens behind her parents’ estate reading on the swing and loves her so thoroughly that he thinks he’d like to marry her. An impossibility, of course. A wedding between young Countess Caerleon of Etruria and a fugitive of Bern’s military…? Such an action will never be condoned.
So he doesn’t ask. He only loves.
Perhaps this is the coward’s way. She is not difficult to love.
She is only difficult to leave.
But he must. He can’t stall forever though he would like to spend warm summer afternoons in the shade of the gardens with Priscilla for the rest of his life. He loves the sound of her voice and the warm color of her hair and the way she reads to him from her favorite book of poetry; he even loves the soft creaking of her swing as she tucks her skirt beneath her and settles there.
In the end he hates that the knowledge of his necessary departure nibbles at his gut until he relents, until he packs his things and tightens the straps on Hyperion’s rigging. He will take all reminders of himself away from her.
He tells her the truth the day he leaves, voice hard around the edges but crumbling at the center: “I love you.”
Priscilla knows that it’s not a confession of his feelings so much as an apology. She doesn’t cry. She licks her lips, a nervous gesture he recognizes from his time with her, and presses something against his chest.
It’s her book of poems, the leather cover soft from use. There is a red silk ribbon marking her place.
“My favorite poem,” she whispers, the evening breeze catching her words, nearly snatching them away. “I’ve a selfish request for you, Heath. Please read it sometimes…and think of me.”
He does, when he lands in Caelin, and afterward, too, in spare moments.
Years later, a captain in Caelin’s military, he’s still doing it, still reading that poem though he memorized it long ago. There’s something cathartic about seeing the words in front of him. He still loves Priscilla, though it’s a quiet sort of love, now. Perhaps it’s because he left her that he’s able to feel that way. He’s sure that his leaving protected her better than he ever could have. All is as it should be. He’s only ever wanted her to be safe and she is.
So he allows himself a few minutes to read and think of her now and again—of her hair glowing like fire in the setting sun and of her curled in her window seat, fingers turning the pages of this very book; he remembers leaving her, too: the wind pushed her hair into her face, and her eyes were glassy but free of tears.
And as he blows out the candle by his bed, he wonders if he made the right choice.