UNGLOVED

Chapter Six Part Two

Liriel woke suddenly. It was the middle of the night. Blood thundered in her ears. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. She looked around for danger, but saw none. Lorenzo was still there, his sleeping form propped against a tree. His dark curls tumbled over his brow and across his foreign face. His sleeping presence reassured her. She trusted him. He would protect her.

She focused on her breathing, trying to calm her fluttering heart. As her pulse slowed, memory came rushing back. She dreamed...an extraordinary vision had come to her. From the quality of it-so bright and sharp and crisp- Liriel knew it was no ordinary dream, but a dream sent by the Guardians.

Unlike any natural dream, it consisted of a series of short, quick sequences that played out in her mind, each one slightly different than the next. All of her possible futures were revealed to her in a blinding second, illustrating her choices and the outcome of each. It was breath-taking to see her life and all of the turns it might take. And terrifying too.

The Guardians were immensely powerful. They lived outside the known world, engaging with neither Hilliri nor Trillas society. It was said that they were bound to a pact that limited them, in spite of their broad ranging abilities, to only sharing their knowledge of the future, never forcing their own will on others. They were permitted to intervene in this one small way: they sent dreams, but only when their precognitive senses showed them that a choice of consequence was about to be made; one which had wide ranging effects to the world at large.

Surely she had imagined it. She was dreaming because her mind was troubled. Liriel turned her back on the sleeping Lorenzo. He had tried to keep watch, but his body, still healing, required rest. She wished she could wake him and talk to him about it, but her dream had offered her troubling possibilities, and he was the locus of all of them.

What consequence were Liriel's choices to these supreme beings? It baffled her to think she might be that important. No one she knew had ever received such a dream.

She stared up at the canopy of pine trees. Their scraggly dark branches laced together in the gaps, making a pattern through which the starry sky beamed. Life was simple out here in the middle of nowhere. There was only her and Lorenzo, and a forest and a river. If only it could always be like this. Liriel thought of home, and again wondered if she would ever be able to return. She looked back at Lorenzo, wishing again he were awake, so she could see those wonderful deep blue eyes that called to her and drew her in.

Liriel had never wanted to follow the expected path. If people advised her to do something, it lost its appeal. But the dream laid bare her choice, without guidance, expectation, or suggestion. She could either satisfy social expectations and become the wife of some self-important nobleman, or she could make a choice from the heart, one that defied all logic, and might not offer any future at all. But how dull was life without taking any chances?

Lorenzo slumped further over. In spite of being alone with her in the middle of nowhere, he hadn't given her cause to feel any danger in his presence. She had felt it at once, back on the field by the barracks. He was a man who looked after others, not someone to fear. How had his reputation grown to such epic proportions?

Liriel wasn't so naive as to think he didn't deserve the notoriety. He'd been clever with limited resources he'd managed to take back some of the lands lost to the Hilliri earlier in the war. In the process, he instilled new respect for his people, who the Hilliri believed to be most primitive and backward.

It was the Hilliri who turned Lorenzo into the terrifying villain called the Slasher. He was only defending his people as best he could. Liriel was quite certain Lorenzo would have much preferred being at a gathering of friends in a local drinking establishment to dropping down from the tree tops to attack a unit of Hilliri soldiers. Even more, she thought, he might prefer being with a woman in her bed, enjoying the sensual pleasures of her touch.

Liriel blushed. She was unused to such thoughts. Lorenzo's dark gaze had called to her, she could admit this to herself. She wanted to answer that call. The temptation was surprising, for he was not of her people, and many Hilliri would think of him as more of a beast more than a man. He was different, but his difference only made him more attractive to her. Would she take his outstretched hand if he offered it to her, and allow him to draw her into his embrace? Would he even consider her, as strange as she must seam to him? In spite of what Liriel might lose, she was certain there was much more to gain in taking that hand.

He had called her his saviour, but in the end, Liriel believed that he might be hers.

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I hope you enjoyed this instalment of Ungloved. If you did, please consider voting so that it has a chance to receive some more attention by rising up the ranks in the (rather large) Fantasy category. I also enjoy comments, so please feel free to let me know what you thought.

Cheers!

Rebecca