Solace Arisen by Anna Steffl Page A

the tent amongst his troops. He knew Degarius, wife or no, would have been in the field sharing his men’s hardship. At the remembrance of his friend, Fassal closed his eyes and exhaled heavily. What had happened to Degarius? The redcoats reported that he took the Solacian to Solace and then disappeared. Was he still alive? He’d kill himself before anyone put hands on him to collect the bounty. Had he heard of the terrible fire at Solace? Learning of her tutor’s death on the heels of her brother’s, and then her father’s fury over her secret marriage, had nearly sunk Jesquin. But the one good thing her misery did do was convince her father to acknowledge their marriage and allow Jesquin to go to Sarapost. All seemed well until Fassal had to leave for the front. From Jesquin’s increasingly despondent letters, he knew that without him she was slipping into despair and growing homesick for Acadia. His sisters endeavored to entertain her, but they couldn’t replace a husband. There was nothing to remedy the homesickness until she proposed joining him. Then her correspondence teemed with excitement. She diverted all the latent energies left from the unrealized grand wedding into arranging a life as the field marshal’s wife. And now she was here. Fassal pushed aside the gloominess, and though he told Caspar to stay, the dog followed him outside to meet the coach.
    With an escort of smartly outfitted guards and Jesquin waving her gloved hand from the coach window to the cheering soldiers, it was like a small parade. The coach was still rolling when Fassal opened the door. Batting her lashes, Jesquin snuggled into her coat’s plush fur collar and asked with tender teasing, “Have you missed me, Gregory? Aren’t you going to welcome me?”
    How could she be prettier than he remembered?
    The coach lurched to a stop. Fassal slipped his hand inside her coat and kissed her. She was everything warm, soft, and reassuring in this blasted camp. “I have a big bed to introduce you to, sweetheart. I’m tired of sharing it with Caspar. He snores.”
    Jesquin giggled, for the dog had stuck its snorting nose in the coach. “So do you.”

LILY GIRL
    Near Ferne Clyffe
    “M y land begins here,” Degarius had announced a full twenty minutes ago. They were still riding at a fast clip past vast tracts of wood, fallow fields, silos, and pastures dotted with sheep and black cattle. Arvana knew he wasn’t a poor man, but she’d never imagined his holdings so large. Several villages must have lived off the working of his land.
    They rounded a bend in the road and Degarius slowed and halted at a drive sided by square stone pillars. Perched atop his mount, he was making a survey of the prospect—and what a prospect it was. Though he’d spoken often of his home, she had always pictured it as like one of the nicer farms in Sylvania. It wasn’t. Ferne Clyffe was finer, in a way, than the mansions of Acadia. Situated in the wide curve of a river, with gardens to one side and orchards to the other, it seemed a part of the landscape. Even in fall, surrounded by bare trees and a brown expanse of lawn, it was a handsome two-story house with a grand front door, a dozen windows across the front, six dormers in the attic, and a circle drive in front of it all. How would it be in summer, to run barefoot across the swath of green lawn to the river, to have a choice of fruit straight from the trees, to cut an apron full of flowers and still have more for the next day and the next? Far to the right, half-hidden by trees, was a magnificent barn. What her father would have given for such a barn. “It is...” She was going to say beautiful , but stopped. At one time, he said it would please her to see Ferne Clyffe. At one time, maybe for just an hour or two, perhaps he’d thought what it would be like for them to live here. Now, hers was the last opinion on earth he’d seek.
    “Is that smoke?” Degarius suddenly asked.
    Smoke? Draeden? How could