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flat
against the wall and fought his way round to the back of the house.
Emyr wouldn’t hear him shouting over the noise of the storm, but
the back garden was a little more sheltered.
    Once he made it round
the end of the wall, the tearing of the wind wasn’t so bad, and he
sagged back against it with a sigh of relief. He could still feel
the air shaking, and the derwen copse at the bottom of the
garden was a blur of light as the wind twisted the branches, but he
wasn’t scared he would be blown right off the island anymore. Then
a late apple, almost as wide as his hand, slammed into the wall
beside his head, shaken from the fruit trees behind the wall. Time
to move on, and he could make a run for it now, because he knew
this bit of ground, even when he couldn’t see it clearly.
    He hit the back door at
a run, and groaned in relief when it opened under his hand.
Dragging himself in, he slumped against it, catching his breath
before he called, “Emyr!”
    After the storm, the
house felt unnaturally quiet. He could still hear the air raging
outside, but it seemed dim and muted now. The quiet was stifling.
“Emyr?”
    There was nothing but
silence, and Heilyn began to wonder if Dilys had been wrong and
he’d just made a fool of himself. Surely any sane man would wait
this out in the inn? They didn’t get storms like this back home on
Rhaedr, tucked away in the central isles as it was. He’d heard that
storms in the islands so close to the Veil were bad, but he’d never
expected this. Someone who had lived here all his life, though,
probably wouldn’t be daft enough to go out in it.
    Or maybe Emyr had tried
to get home and was lying hurt on the road somewhere, and Heilyn
had walked straight past him.
    No, that was panic
speaking. Emyr had almost certainly found a bed for the night with
a friend in the village. As Heilyn had no intention of struggling
his way back down the coast road, he’d have to find somewhere to
bed down here (no, not in Emyr’s bed, tempting as it might be, and
he wasn’t going to snoop through Emyr’s belonging either, no,
definitely not). He needed some light, though, and had been here
enough to know where the lantern and its flint lived.
    The first splash of
light revealed the state of the kitchen. The shutter was open, and
the wind had thrown the herbs off the windowsill to spill out of
their pots and across the floor. There was a great sweep of storm
debris, too, dry leaves dancing across the counter and clogging the
sink. Heilyn put the lamp down and headed across to drag the
shutters closed. He’d clean this mess up, and see if Emyr had some
bread left over, and then he’d go searching for some blankets.
Stretching over the sink, he grabbed the edge of the shutter.
    “Leave it.”
    Heilyn jumped. Swinging
round, he squinted across the room. Emyr was standing in the
doorway, his hands clenched on the frame. He looked like a ghost,
pale and tense.
    “Aneirin didn’t have
any shutters between him and the storm.”
    Heilyn swallowed,
transported for a moment. Riding on the ropes through the sky was
fun on a sunny day with a sweet breeze, when you could prop your
elbows onto the side of the ship and natter at the sailors on
board. In a storm like this…
    All the same, the wind
was coming in the window now, and as his mam liked to say, there
was a time for sentiment and a time for common sense, and he knew
which this was. “I’m shutting the wind out before it ruins
everything in here.”
    “Don’t,” Emyr said, but
it was so soft and hesitant that Heilyn chose to ignore it. He
pulled the shutters closed with a heave, slamming the bolt across
before the wind could wrench them out of his hand. When he turned
round, Emyr had gone, so he picked up the lantern and went looking.
He found him in the parlor, sitting on the end of the wooden settle
with his head in his hands. Heilyn put the lantern down on the
table and went to sit beside him.
    “Don’t.”
    Heilyn cupped the back
of