Bee Among the Clover (184 page)

His waterlogged clothes dragged at him, causing him to stumble as he made it through the gate into the yard, tears streaming down his face. His eyes searched the yard for Wulfgar, racing for him and calling his name in a broken sob.
“My lord! Aron… my lord, please….” He gasped for breath between words, tears making his voice nearly indecipherable. They were not feigned. Roman felt like he was dying inside now that he’d let loose the floodgate of pain.
Roman collapsed against Wulfgar when the thane hurried forward and caught him in his arms. Roman clung to him, sobbing. Guilt tore at him, but still he clung to the thane’s strength and wished Wulfgar were strong enough to make the pain stop.
“What is it, Roman?” Wulfgar’s voice, filled with concern, only made the guilt and the pain worse.
“Aron….” Roman’s voice broke on his name, and he felt weak as the enormity of his loss overwhelmed him. “We were coming… back from fishing… when the raft capsized… from an eddy.” Roman took heaving breaths in between sobs, not even sure if he was making any sense. “I… lost him.” His voice took a hysterical edge at the end. The strong emotions inside him threatened to rip him apart as he struggled to maintain some semblance of control.
He didn’t need to say any more than that. Wulfgar cursed and grabbed a blanket one of the women brought out, wrapping it around Roman’s shivering form. It did nothing to ease the bone-deep cold that gripped him. Roman felt his mind unraveling, teeth chattering and breath harsh, shallow. His gaze lifted to Wulfgar’s when the thane shook him.
“Show me where you were, Roman.”
Roman nodded, wiping at tears on his cheeks, but they kept coming as he took off at a run toward the river, Wulfgar and his men right behind him. He skidded to a halt on the bank and pointed a shaking finger out at the dark, murky water.
“There, we were… we were coming back in, I don’t know how it… the raft flipped over….” His voice broke, and he shivered as he clutched the blanket tighter around his shoulders. “I tried, oh gods, Wulfgar, please, I tried to get to him….” A broken sob escaped him.
Wulfgar didn’t respond, barking curt orders to his men to search the banks. One group he sent down river where it narrowed; they could ford to check the other side as well. Roman knew his master well enough to know that Wulfgar was cursing the falling shadows. It was quickly getting dark, and Wulfgar recognized it as another strike against Aron being found safely that night.
The thane turned to Roman, reaching for him. Roman buried his face in Wulfgar’s shoulder as the thane lifted him up, carrying him a bit away to set him down beneath a tree. Roman couldn’t meet Wulfgar’s eyes when he crouched beside him and brushed tangled, damp hair out of his face. The thane tucked the blanket around him.
“Stay here, Roman. We’ll find him, I promise.”
Roman clutched the blanket around himself, his eyes huge as he watched the searchers, gnawing on his upper lip. It hadn’t occurred to him, when he was planning this, but one of the searchers might get hurt in their hunt for Aron. Many of the thane’s men couldn’t swim, and it would soon be getting hard to see. Guilt ate away at him as he saw the expression on Wulfgar’s face, knowing that the thane was desperately worried and that he’d blame himself when Aron couldn’t be found.
Shaking, Roman laid his forehead down on his knees and cried until no more tears came and he felt numb inside. Aron was well and truly gone now. There was no chance of him turning up and saying he’d changed his mind. For his own safety, it was much better if he was never found again.
Aron… Aron… why did you leave me?
It all became a blur as despair dragged Roman under as surely as any raging river. Wulfgar stayed out in the dark waters, probing the riverbed amongst the tangled reeds. He ordered his men to search the riverbanks downstream in case Aron had managed to swim to one, though the men muttered that if they found anything at all, it’d be Aron’s body. Finally, darkness forced the searchers from the waters, and Wulfgar made his way over to Roman, exhaustion written on his weathered face.
“Come, Roman, let’s go home.”
Roman looked up at Wulfgar, his voice little more than a ragged whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He was apologizing for everything, for how he felt about Aron, for his part in this lie, for Aron being gone. For everything.
Wulfgar shook his head, bending to scoop Roman up into his arms, cradling him close against his chest. “It’s not your fault, Roman. We’ll search again at first light.” Wulfgar didn’t say it, but Roman knew. They’d be searching for a body. Roman was the only one who knew there would never be a body. There would never be anything of Aron left to them. The brash young man, with eyes as blue as the sky. The crushing weight of his loss suffocated Roman, and he sank into it almost gratefully. There was no pain in numbness. He reached for the void in his desperate attempt to manage to continue to draw breath.
Roman laid his head against Wulfgar’s chest, so drained that it was difficult to move. The only emotions left to him were an overwhelming guilt at his part in it and a hollow, empty ache in the center of his chest that was never going to go away.
He realized on some level that Wulfgar was watching him, his gray eyes filled with more worry than the thane had ever let himself show before. It wasn’t Wulfgar’s fault that Roman couldn’t feel for him what he felt for Aron. He’d never again be able to summon up that depth of emotion for anyone else. He just didn’t have it in him. His instincts had warned him that loving Aron would destroy him, and they’d been right, but he’d been helpless to stop it. He closed his eyes, letting exhaustion drag him down into oblivion, where visions of Aron’s flashing smile didn’t haunt him.