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Saeryn looked down thoughtfully at the grass and listened while her brother made his plan to ask Farahil to come. That would be well. She felt another ally would be good.
“Without father or brother, Saery. . . I wish I was better placed to help you now. I wish I wasn’t so. . .” Saeryn looked sharply at him. Was he blaming himself for something? “I can’t fix it, Saer, I don’t know how.”
Hot tears suddenly pricked her eyes. She swallowed at a lump at her throat. Quietly she moved over to him. He was looking at the ground, his hands balled up into fists by his side as he stood lost in thought.
“It’s alright, Degas,” she said. He looked at her. She smiled a little. “I didn’t expect you to fix it for me. I have to figure out my own problems someday. You mustn’t blame yourself. You are here, and that is everything to me right now. I do not know what agonies I would be in if I were alone in all this, but your very presence comforts me.
“We will confront this more on the morrow, if that is what we must do. Now, let us gain control of our emotions and go back, and prepare ourselves for the banquet. Speaking with you has helped to harden my resolve and my feeling that I am right. I will fight. If not for myself, then for my child.”
They turned and went back to Gleowyn. After they had mounted and Degas had turned her back towards home, Saeryn said, “You really think that Athanar is trying to take both eorlship and our lands and household for good? That’s not what the king sent him here for. He’s just here until Eodwine comes back. I think that’s why your so mad and I’m only half so. You think it’s permanent and I think it’s not. I’m just worried about the short-term, but you raise fears that he will never leave.”
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