Chapter 43
I collect a round molliefruit from the bowl and set it on a chopping board, using a blade to hack it down the middle.
Sweet juice spritzes the air as silence bears on. A waiting silence, like the deep breath between Siharna’s screams. A silence that itches. My gaze nips past Kaan on the seater to the window too often, across the courtyard to that pacing silhouette beyond the fluttering curtain.
I clear my throat and hack the fruit again, making the pieces smaller. “Does Rygun not like the local prey?” I ask, attempting to fill the void.
Kaan frowns, his eyes shadowed with dark smudges that weren’t there earlier. Perhaps a tribute to his sleeplessness. “He’s far from picky. Why do you ask?”
“I noticed he flew north for a stint while Líri and I were scouting the village. Figured he’d gone to hunt. Seemed strange, since the mountains are so bountiful.”
“You won’t catch him hunting these mountains with the Mists so far north,” Kaan says, rolling the sleeves on his loose brown tunic. “He barely tolerated diving between the peaks to retrieve me earlier.”
My lips thin.
I hack the fruit again and pile the chunks in a small bowl, resheathe my blade, then move around the bench and settle on the seater beside Kaan. Passing him the offering, I curl my legs beneath me and press my shoulder into the upholstered backrest. “Did something happen?”
His jaw tightens as he plucks a piece of fruit from the bowl. “Long ago, yes.” Silence slips by while he peels the lumpy purple skin free, revealing more of the crisp golden flesh. “I was hunting my first gruuc pelt so I could claim Ruháth with the Johkull Clan.”
“Ruháth?”
“The right to begin constructing a tent within the clan’s hollow,” he confirms. “Until a young warrior claims Ruháth, they must slumber without shelter.”
“Ah.”
“At the time, Rygun spent the majority of his daes hunting near the border here. His mah was felled on the plains during a great battle and never made it to the sky. He was in deep mourning and liked to be close.”
The words are rough, like he hasn’t practiced them. Perhaps the first time he’s spoken them to anyone.
“The mists had drifted unnaturally north. Rygun got caught in them while hunting a faunycaw and lost his way, grounding in some sinking sand.” Kaan sets the chunk of fruit in the bowl and begins peeling another.
“I heard his panic and went to investigate. Found him almost entirely under, gasping sand.”
A chill moves through me as I grasp where this is going. What he’s about to share with me.
His bonding story. Something most fae keep close to their chests.
Sacred.
I’m not ignorant of the fact that being given such a gift is the greatest honor. Like placing your unguarded heart in the hands of another, trusting them to treasure it.
Shouldering the realization, I reach back, hooking a tendril of hair from just behind my nape.
“I called on Bulder to push him out, but he must’ve been struggling for a while.
Once free, he lacked the energy to lift his head, let alone—” Kaan’s voice cracks as he watches me loosen my leather bind from around my wrist and wrap it around the tendril, all the way up near my roots.
“Let alone fly,” he continues, setting another naked piece of fruit in the bowl.
He gets to work on the third while I tie off the bind.
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who’d heard his cries. ”
“Others came?”
“Many.”
Silently waiting for him to continue, I divide my tendril three ways, then begin weaving them together to form my uhloo—tightly.
All while Kaan’s gaze hungers over each precise shift of my hands, the air between us becoming so charged with something warm and hopeful that it feels like nothing else exists beyond this home.
This seater.
Us.
When he starts to speak again, his voice is gravel.
“For two daes, the site was swarmed with warriors from different clans wielding weapons, fists, and songs, believing Rygun was beyond hope. I fought them off.”
Feeling the cool rush of all the blood leaving my face, I somehow manage to keep my hands busy, striking the tendrils over and under, over and under. “They wanted to claim his carcass?”
“Correct.” He clears his throat and sets the bowl on the seater beside himself—appetite seemingly forgotten. “Such a claim would provide for any of the largest clans on the plains for many phases. Not a single scale would’ve gone to waste.”
I cast my mind back to the Johkull Clan, thinking of the hollowed Sabersythe corpse they live in, every bit of its body utilized to help the clan function. I imagine that beast as Rygun, dead in the ground for the world to pick at—to scavenge—feeling restless to the core.
Twitchy with the urge to fight.
“By the second dae,” Kaan continues as I weave the remaining length beneath his ardent stare, “I’d busted out so many words the stutter I had as a youngling was ground to dust, but I was so broken down I could hardly stand.
” He fists his hands and sets them on his thighs.
“Two neighboring clans built an alliance, amassing a small army that would’ve been my end had Rygun not brewed the strength to obliterate them with his flame.
The bodies were still burning as he looked at me on my knees in the dirt, and I knew.
I either climbed on his back or he was going to curl up and die beside me. ”
I still, his words sinking past my skin like slow-moving arrows.
Swallowing the ache in my throat, I take Kaan’s fist and ease his fingers loose, urging him to pinch the end of the braid while I work to free the bundle of hair from his leather bind—fumbling for the knot.
He bows his head to give me better access. Something that feels … intimate. Like a larger, fiercer dragon trusting another to help scratch away its molting scales, baring its vulnerable parts.
I manage to loosen his thick, unruly locks, doused in his molten scent as I use the bind to knot the plait, strong and secure. Without pause, I retrieve a dagger, angle the blade to my scalp, and slice off the braid, taking a moment to inspect my handiwork.
Making sure I didn’t fuck it up.
“Together, we made the choice to live,” Kaan rasps, turning to stone as I move my fingers through his hair, up near his scalp.
I gather a large tendril I set my uhloo against, using the loose ends of the bind to knot it in place. Finally done, I pull it forward, so it’s draped over his shoulder—long, strong, and boastful.
Though it’s not perfect, it’s so tight it’s almost stiff. Something that doesn’t seem to bother him as he takes the uhloo in his hands, looking down at it with such tender adoration my chest feels bruised from the sight.
“Upon returning to my clan, many dots were added to my réidi. Tribute to the lives I took. I wear their souls like stains; good warriors who were only fighting to provide for their loved ones. Though I’d do it all again, there was small honor in the blood I spilled on that battlefield.”
“You’re wrong.”
Kaan looks at me, frowning.
“Fighting for another who couldn’t fight for himself, with no expectation of gaining anything in return …” I brush the back of my hand across his cheek. “You claimed more honor than you lost, Kaan. There’s nobody else I’d willingly charge into battle behind. Nobody.”
He pulls breath. Opens his mouth—
Siharna releases a mighty scream that punches into me, grips something deep, and squeezes. A feeling that’s come and gone since we got back to the village and collected Korie.
Since I lied to Kaan and told him I was tired, when really, something within me was fissuring beneath the pressure of those agonized sounds.
I thought I needed to be alone, but now that I’m nuzzled next to Kaan on this seater—his sturdy presence making these waves of unease a little easier to breathe through—I think this is what we both needed.
Each other.
“Scrap that,” I announce, pulling a breath so big it shifts a little more of the discomfort. “Siharna could rally me.”
With a snap of her fingers, honestly.
Kaan smiles, though it fades as he slips a loose fall of hair behind my clipped ear. “One dae, that battle might just come for us, Moonbeam …”
“Another dae, another bloodbath.” I reach over him, pluck a piece of peeled fruit from the bowl, and bite into it, chewing through my crisp mouthful.
“Just say the word and I’ll armor up. Creators know the world would be a better place without your brothers ruling two-thirds of the globe,” I mutter, the tips of my fingers tingling with the urge to scratch the sides of my nails.
“On that, we can agree.”
I feel Kaan’s eyes on me as I push the rest of the fruit in my mouth, chewing while I stare at the wall.
Lovely as it is to imagine gouging Cadok’s eyes from his sockets and popping them with a pump of my fists, everything feels so uncertain that it’s almost impossible to see more than three steps ahead. What if there’s nothing left to salvage after the falls, let alone liberate?
It’s enough to make my stomach sour.
“While we’re on the topic of armor, I— Well. I have something for you.”
I arch a brow as Kaan retrieves a large parcel off a table, sits back down, and hands it over. Touching the twill bow, I hesitate before unraveling the bind to reveal a white stack of folded garments.
“Riding leathers, boots of your own, and a new cloak,” he murmurs, and I lift the form-fitting jacket that’s a shapely piece of art—all elegant panels and smooth lines that look perfectly tailored to praise my shape.
The most spectacular garment I’ve ever laid my eyes upon.
“It’s runed to protect you from getting frostbite from Liri’s hide. ”
How thoughtful. Thankfully, that hasn’t been a problem so far.