Cephrael's Hand by Melissa McPhail

Author:Melissa McPhail
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Epic, Fiction
ISBN: 9781432759698
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Published: 2010-09-14T18:30:00+00:00

They made love until the first glimmer of dawn lightened the sky. Fhionna left him then, but not without regret. Their fierce and passionate lovemaking was a harmonic of the bond they’d forged in their week together, and they both knew that it was a different kind of magic that bound them now.

“They say a love that can end has never been real,” she whispered into his ear as she stood at the bedside. “You will always own a part of my heart, Trell of the Tides.”

He pressed a parting kiss to her palm in reply.

She looked down at him as she slipped back into her robe. “Do not forget me.”

He laughed. “How could I?” Suddenly he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back into his embrace. Pressing a kiss into her hair as he hugged her close, he murmured again, “How could I possibly?”

Then she slipped from his grasp and was out the door before he could find more words to say.

Rising and readying for the day, Trell paused and looked down at the garments he planned to wear, both of them gifts from the Mage. The tunic and gambeson were fine enough to wear to Krystos’ table, but Trell had chosen them for a different reason that morning. When paired with black britches tailored trim in the northern fashion, the outfit was presentable anywhere in the North.

Not just presentable, he thought as he donned the garments. Noble. Indeed, the clothes were expensive both in fabric and construction—too expensive to be worn by a man of common blood. It made him wonder why the Mage had given him such fine attire…the Mage who surely knew his family name.

Trell belted on his sword and then stood looking at himself in the full-length mirror for a long time. The deep grey of the wool tunic and felted overvest brought out the color in his eyes and made his dark hair seem that much richer in hue.

I look entirely different.

Not that he’d ever looked much like the darker-skinned desert tribesmen, but now, in the sleek, tailored clothing…now he saw in himself what others often had: the height and sharp features of a Northman. And in his grey eyes…an image of the ocean flashed to memory, a different image than before, but the same sea, richly mercuric beneath an overcast sky, where dark waves crashed violently against chalk-white cliffs, their waters murky near the shore where the milky chalk mingled and remained…

Trell knew that he stood at another milestone, much like his crossing of the Ashafani bridge; his donning of northern clothes somehow marked a turning point in his life. He was about to take a vital step toward his past, one that placed him across that line he both anticipated and feared…the line across which there was no turning back. East of Sakkalaah was the life he’d known for the past five years. West, was the life he’d been born to live.

That morning, he traveled west.

Trell looked at his bearded face one last time.

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