He looked at it, at her outstretched arms offering it to him, never moving. They stood like statues, like figures on a tapestry. Happily would she stand thus for hours, for days – even unto the rest of her life – if only he would accept this part of her, given freely. She let her gaze move to the little scar that cut across his eyebrow, and felt a tremor of tenderness go through her. Gently, insistently, she thrust the sword at him, pushing it forward until it touched his chest. When his hands came up, she pressed them to it, curling his fingers around it and letting her own hands fall away.

Behind her, her mother was speaking. Shouting, even, but Gwenllian did not hear. The sound broke around her like crashing waves as she waited.

Finally, his eyes came up, locked on hers for an endless moment. His eyes searched hers as they had so long ago on their first meeting in that dark hut. Such a look he had given her then, as though she held every answer to any question he could ask. But she had no answers then, and her only answer now was this. Her weapon was put in his hands, and she stood with him.

And then he looked away, his dark lashes sweeping down over the deep blue. He looked beyond her, over her shoulder, a faint smile on his lips. Eluned would not be ignored.

“You will choose this?” she was saying, a hard and unforgiving edge in her voice. “Think well on it, Gwenllian, for it cannot be undone.”

Gwenllian turned and watched her mother come toward her. Eluned’s color was high and though her words were reasoned, there was no mistaking the emotion that swelled in her voice.

“Men will fight for you and die for you, to save all that you have loved. You were born to this–”

“You made me this.”

“Nay!” Eluned’s face contorted with a sudden and fierce emotion, her mouth twisting to hold back a sob. “Nay, you have made yourself!”

There was truth in this, she knew – or half truth. There was no way to say that her mother had not made her who she was, yet Gwenllian could not deny her own hand in it. But there was also the thing that she was made by Ranulf. And there was the child growing in her now, and what it might make of her as well.

She shook her head faintly at her mother. If she must choose between the life of a lady and the life she had always lived, still she could not say which was right. She only knew that, lady or no, she would be with him.