Chapter 4 Rada
RADA
“Ma bohinya, open your eyes.”
I smiled, though I didn’t do what the voice asked.
I was caught in a dream I loved, where Goran begged me to keep my eyes locked on his while he licked me.
He’d sworn, with his head between my thighs, it was the best way to start the day.
I’d never told him that it was also my favorite way to wake up, though my cries of ecstasy as he worked my center with his tongue might have given the secret away.
For some reason, though, the dream this time hurt. No, it burned, and not in a pleasant way.
“Bohinya, please. Wake up. I need to know which herbs will help you.”
Hells… Goran?
He shook me gently while I fought to understand where I was.
After nearly ten years, it was him, in the flesh.
His hand rested on my shoulder, and his breath warmed my face—parts of it, anyway.
I couldn’t open my eyes; something wet was holding them shut.
A cloth? A blindfold? Leaves? I tried to move and croaked in agony.
“Don’t move. I’ll get you water.”
I fought a wave of panic as the memories came flooding back, as well as the pain. I’d been tied to the stake. My calves felt as if they’d been dragged over coals, though my feet and ankles were terrifyingly pain-free.
Had they been burned away, or damaged until the nerves were dead?
A flash of an old memory intruded, of using a bone saw on a young woman in Gael whose mate had locked her in too-tight manacles for weeks until her hands had turned black.
I’d never been happier to have the very strongest herbal remedies for pain in existence to give to her.
I’d given her waste-of-breath husband the painful death he deserved, too.
If I had to lose my feet…
A cool metal cup held to my lips had me swallowing reflexively, though the water may as well have been acid. It hurt. Goddess, it hurt. A tear seeped out of one eye, falling onto the cloth.
Stop being such a whining little brat, I scolded myself. You’re not dead. Not even close to dead, if you can cry like a smacked baby. Focus.
“What do you need?” Goran’s voice rolled over me like a velvet blanket, comforting me as it always had, though there was a strange coldness to it now. “What herbs, Ratter?”
Ratter? Goran never called me that. It was always Rada in private, or in public bohinya, his queen. I lifted a hand, intent on taking the blindfold off.
“Leave it. The smoke damaged your eyes.”
I inhaled slowly, feeling the damage in my lungs, my eyes, the odd seared sensation in my nostrils. My feet, I would think about later. For now, I fought to set aside the pain and fear, cataloguing the herbal remedies I’d need.
“My bags.”
“Gone. Left in the fire.”
Some people thought cursing was a sign of a crude mind or poor upbringing.
I had both of those, but I knew what else cursing was: a tool for releasing the rage that I would otherwise use to destroy the world.
I drew a painful breath and let out a string of profanities, not stopping until I coughed, knife edges raking up and down my esophagus.
I thought I heard a chuckle, and I made a fist, wondering if he was close enough to punch, and if I could take him by surprise.
Then I felt a familiar garment under my fingertips. My cloak. I would’ve cried again, with joy, but I’d used up all my tears for the decade.
“Sit up,” I croaked. I felt those massive hands moving beneath me, lifting me until I sat straight. Stars swam behind my eyelids as the pain in my legs tripled, and a few more choice words made their way past my tight lips as I breathed through the sensations.
Goran grunted. “Can I do it?”
“Nah.” I moved my hands down the inner lining along the edge, and the familiarity of the cloth and the small bulges there had me almost smiling.
I turned the fabric in my hands, not needing to see to know where the right herbs would be.
I slid my nail along the seam, the small knots loosening as I’d designed them to, and the folded package fell into my hands.
At least my fingers hadn’t been burned. I opened the package with one nail and sighed gratefully. “Water.” The cup was held to my lips again, and I took a sip, then spat onto my hand, rubbing the herbs into a paste in my cupped palm. “Blindfold.”
The cloth slid away gently as he removed it.
I dipped one finger into the paste, then rubbed it carefully along my eyelid, feeling the puffy skin and charred lashes.
I spent far too long transferring the paste to my eyelids, before applying some to the spots on my neck and face that screamed for healing.
I pressed my hand to a spot on my chest that felt like it had been clawed from the inside.
My pendant, the nautilus shell I’d worn for years, was gone.
My head pounded as I thought about it. I fished out another packet of herbs that would work for all sorts of pain, braced myself, and reached down toward my feet.
A large hand stopped me. “Don’t touch. They’re covered with fenrick leaves. They didn’t look as bad as I feared, but I assumed the pain would be intense.”
“Fenrick.” The word came out on a relieved sigh. That was why I couldn’t feel my feet. Fenrick leaves came from a rare succulent plant that was used as pain relief and for severe burns. “Where did you get those?”
“Does it matter?” he asked after a long moment. When I nodded, he said, “I’ve been living with an herbalist for a long while. I picked up a few things.”
“Wren?” The Omega I’d apprenticed to years before had been the one to introduce me to Goran, in a roundabout way.
She’d been the one to teach me just how much power our blood held…
and how an Omega’s good sense could be stripped away by the manipulations of the Goddess and an Alpha with wings and a knot.
She’d forgiven her mates for all sorts of shit.
The most important lesson I’d learned watching her was how easily a strong woman could be transformed into a puddle of forgiveness by the damned biological imperative the Goddess had baked into every Omega’s bones.
Watching her forgive the wyvern husband who’d left her to suffer for four decades was one of the reasons I never wanted to take a mate. Well, that and witnessing firsthand what unredeemable trash most Alphas were.
Goran handed me the blindfold, and I put it back on over the herbal paste.
“Wren is why I came to Mirren, looking for you. Levi called in my debt. She needs some herbs to stop early cramping and wants you to stay for the baby’s birth.
I agreed to ask you for the medicine and pass along the invitation to Drakonspear. ”
That explained his presence in Mirrenar, though for some reason, my heart thudded angrily.
He hadn’t come for me. He’d come for my skills.
Wren was good with herbs, but I’d written to her often about the new combinations I’d developed to help Omegas in labor.
I wasn’t certain they would work the same on an Omega pregnant with a kraken, though, and I was sure I couldn’t go to Drakonspear. Not now.
My heart ached as I thought of missing the baby’s birth. “You’ve been living with Wren?”
“Wren? Ah, no. With another Omega, one you haven’t met, unless you’ve been sneaking around Northern Starlak in the past five years.”
My fingers twitched for a knife that I didn’t have. “Another Omega? Where?”
“In far northeast Starlak, near the coast. I’ve been living there on and off for five years now.” His voice changed, softening. “I never thought I’d have an Omega as a best friend.”
It was a good thing my eyes were covered, or I would have burned holes in his face with my rage.
“You’ve been living with another Omega? Your…
best friend?” I reached up and closed my fingers around his right hand, moving it toward my face.
My nostrils were too seared to pick up anything, not even any of his own crisp pine scent.
Fuck.
But I felt something else. There was a ring on the middle finger of that hand, the one that males of Starlak would sometimes wear when they’d found their mate and claimed her.
Suddenly, the pain in my calves was nothing compared to the ripping feeling in my heart. “You moved on,” I whispered.
“You left. Did you think I’d stay in that cave waiting for you?”
He went silent while I struggled with the emotions that rocked me and the memories that I thought I’d banished. Goran had found someone else. Of course he had. It wasn’t as if I’d been waiting for him, I reminded myself.
But you were, you stupid bitch. You were waiting and running away. I wanted to think that was the voice of the Goddess in my head, but I knew it was me. You’ve left every male who ever loved you, or wanted to. Every worthy male, except…
“Alexios,” I rasped, panic striking again. “Where is he? A Beta. He had my cloak. Where is he, Goran?”
The silence stretched between us, almost as painful as the sensation that was returning to my ankles. “The last I saw, a Beta was running back into the fire to retrieve your bags,” Goran finally said.
My lungs went as numb as my feet. When I could speak again, I repeated his words like an idiot. “The last you saw.”
“Yes.”
“How long…?”
“You’ve been unconscious for three days. We’re just over the border of Starlak, in the Mirlake Forest.” I heard a horse nicker close by, and then Goran standing and moving around. “Now that you’re awake, we’ll make better time on Wrath.”
I tore the bandage from my eyes. “We need to go back. I have to find Alexios.”
Goran was a large, blurry shape a few feet away. “Why?”
I blinked away tears. “Because he’s mine,” I said, my raspy voice coming out as a snarl.
He cursed. “Yours. By the stars, are you crying for him?”
I’d only told Goran one lie in the year we were together: that I wouldn’t shed tears over any man. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t tell him another. And I’d never let him know how often I’d cried over him, both before and after our divorce.
“Yeah,” I said softly, thinking of the past five years with Alexios. How much he’d given up to help me with my apothecaries. How I’d come to depend on him. He was my best friend.
I tried to stand, but stumbled. I couldn’t feel my feet at all; the fenrick leaves had more than done their job. Goran cursed again and caught me before I could fall, wrapping me in my cloak.
This close, I could see him well. His hair was longer than it had ever been, falling around his stony face.
His skin was every bit as tanned as ever, though the laugh lines that had stretched from the corners of his cobalt blue eyes were gone, replaced by brackets around his mouth.
His eyes had changed the most. They’d been pools gleaming with humor and joy, with love for me that he’d never hesitated to let show.
Starlakian males were warriors, but also poets. He’d written dozens of poems for me and about me, back when I’d known him before. He’d loved me intensely. Now his gaze was flat, as hard and cold as the cliffs on the edge of the Northern Sea. And something else significant had changed.
I swallowed hard, staring at the long braids trailing down his neck.
Some were covered in small bronze beads in the shapes of wolf, bear, lion, and dragon heads that I knew were his warrior’s braids, indicating the loyalty of the men who followed him.
But a few of the others bore oddly-shaped shell and bone tubes with protective runes and flowers inscribed on them: tokens of love for Starlakian marriage braids.
I knew better than to look for the beads I’d woven into his hair a decade before, but I sought them anyway.
His lip curled in a sneer. “We can’t go back. He’s most likely dead. If the king of Mirren catches you again, he won’t make the mistake of allowing you to keep your head. I’ve already called five thousand of my own warriors to guard the border.”
“They recognized you?” He gave a sharp nod. “You’re at war?”
“Only if they’re foolish enough to cross into our lands.”
I knew I should be horrified, but deep down, some small, sick part of me held the thought close, like a sharp jewel. He’d risked going to war for me. I made myself look at the new decorations in his braids, reminding myself he wasn’t mine anymore. “You know they’re fools. And proud ones.”
He grunted in agreement, then lifted me up in his arms, carrying me toward the large shape that became a horse as we grew closer. “I’ll take you to Wren’s and then come back with more troops.” He placed me on the back of the warhorse, then sprang up behind me.
I swallowed hard and forced my voice to sound calm. He might already hate me, but he would hate me more if I played this card. For Alexios, though, I would burn all my bridges. “You swore once that you’d do whatever I asked. No matter how hard it was, or how dangerous.”
Starlakians loved battles, poetry, and making vows that haunted them until death, and possibly beyond. He’d made this one to me the day we’d married. I’d never forgotten it, and whispered it now.
“You hold my heart within your flesh, inside your heart you hold my soul.
My goddess, lover, ruler, queen: from now until the world grows cold,
You are the reason I draw breath. This vow of love I offer you:
My wealth, my lands, my life are yours, and if you ask, my death is, too.”
My heart pounded in my throat. Back then, I’d forced myself to scoff at the romantic sentiment, but I’d known he meant it. I could ask him for anything, and he would provide it.
It had frightened me then. No, his love had terrified me. I’d never wanted nor deserved that depth of feeling. But I would use it now.
“Have you forgotten, husband?” I held up my left arm, showing him the tattooed starflower vines he’d designed for me to wear after he made the vow. They stretched from my wrist to just below my elbow, the flowers small and butter-yellow, the vines a deep green.
He went completely still. “You absolved all our vows when you abandoned me. You gave me back my name.” Every word was harsher than the last.
I made my own reply soft, gentle. “Is a leibehald a vow that can be returned with a few words?” I knew better, and so did he.
As binding as a liefhald, or a life debt, a debt of love could only be cut out.
“If you do this, if you help me rescue Alexios, I’ll cut it away.
I swear by the Goddess.” I swallowed bile as I waited, unsure what his answer would be.
I shouldn’t have been.
“I’ll be free of you at last? Done.”