Long afterward Phryne found flint and steel and a lamp. A tiny glow herded immense misshapen shadows into the corners. Eodan looked upon Hwicca.
She had not altered greatly to his eyes. Her skin was white now—the sun had touched it seldom, the rain and wind never; but the same dear small freckles dusted across her nose. She had taken on weight; she was fuller about breast and hip. Her hair streamed in a loose mane past a Roman gown and a Roman girdle, thin sheer stuff broidered with gold; she wore a necklace of opals and amber. He did not like the perfume smell, but—"Hwicca, Hwicca!"
Her eyes seemed black, wrenched upward to his. They were dry and fever-bright. Her shaking had eased, until he could only feel it as a quiver beneath the skin. "I thought you were killed," she told him, tonelessly.
"No. I was sent to a farm south of here. I escaped. Now we shall go home."
"Eodan—" The cold, softened hands reached down, pulling his arms away. She went from him to the chair in which she had been seated when he came in. She sat upon it, her weight against one arm, and stared at the floor. The curve of thigh and waist and drooping head was a sharp pain to him.
"Eodan," she said at last, wonderingly. She looked up. "I killed Othrik. I killed him myself."
"I saw it," he said. "I would have done so, too."
"Flavius brought me here," she mumbled.
"That was not your wish," he answered, through a wall in his throat he had raised against tears.
"There was only one thing that gave me the strength to live," she said. "I thought you had died."