Honor-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book III ]

36

Kaori liked to walk of a morning in the Imperial Gardens. It was seldom too hot or too cold for such exercise in the Holy City; even in the heat of summer or the frozen days of winter, he could be found following a familiar path, treading the walkways that wound through the gardens.

Almost always, his path took him past the snowblossom tree where he and Aun had exchanged tender words many a time when they had been together. It was also the place where she had bidden him farewell forever.

Kaori missed Aun. Her absence had been an aching hole in his heart for the first many months after she'd gone. Time had moved on now and so had he—five years was a long time, and Kaori's life had not ended the day Aun walked away—but he had not taken another partner, nor even another lover, since Aun's departure.

He had loved her. Even now, considering having a similar depth of feeling for someone else felt so impossible that the very idea of trying to find someone chafed. And Kaori, who had never been precious about his affections, physical or otherwise—he'd been a man who enjoyed life, including the pleasures of it, far more than his brothers—had become much more reserved about how he spent his time.

Five years had changed him, as it had changed almost everyone in the palace. Kaori had his first gray hairs now, just the finest dusting, winking pale among the golden strands of his hair. He had absorbed himself not simply in the reading of books but also in the writing of one—a memoir about his time during the War of the Arcborn Rebellion, as therapeutic for him as it was bound to be useful for history.

And yes, on quiet mornings like this, as he took his stroll through the gardens, he missed Aun.

This morning, she was uncommonly close to his mind. In fact, when he saw a woman standing underneath what he still thought of as their snowblossom tree, he thought it was Aun at first. The woman was dressed in blue, as Aun had been the day she had left, although there was now no apron to be seen. As he approached, a child stepped out from the other side of the woman's skirts.

A mirage?

A hallucination?

Kaori paused in the path, staring at the figure standing before him. She did not seem to have noticed him just yet. She was looking down at the child and saying something as she reached for his hand. The dappled light and shadow of the snowblossom boughs waved and danced across her face.

Who is that child? Kaori wondered. If this were indeed a dream, some kind of fantasy turned dream...He stopped, a creeping sense of recognition sweeping over him. He could feel the breeze teasing its way through the branches, feel the solid path beneath his feet, smell the flowers, hear the birdsong...

...if this were indeed an illusion, it was the most convincing he had ever experienced.

"Aun?" Kaori whispered.

She turned toward him, her auburn hair falling over her shoulder, and her smile was as shy as it was brilliant, lighting up his heart like a beacon. In that moment it was as if the years had not passed, as if they had only yesterday stood here in this very place, hand in hand, and wondered about the future.

She said his name.

Kaori had stopped; now, he moved toward her, slowly. Part of him feared that if he moved too quickly, he would shatter the illusion. Aun straightened, and the child at her side—a boy, Kaori saw now, a boy just a year or two older than his niece Uarria—pressed in closer, drawing up a fistful of her skirts and looking up at Kaori with blue eyes. The boy's limpid gaze fixed first on Kaori's face and then trailed down, snagging on his abbreviated arm. He shrank back another half a step.