Chapter 5 - Goran #2
“Stop!” I fell to the cave floor, panic and pain and anger flooding me. I thought she’d loved me. I’d done everything for her, all she’d asked. Was she testing me? “I’ll do it. I’ll give you back your name, and let you leave in peace. You don’t need to bleed.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You won’t follow me?”
“I will not. I’ll let you go.” It wasn’t a lie, not completely. I would never be able to let her go. But I could give her time.
She was only nineteen, a few years younger than me. If she went out into the world, she would come back to me someday. She had to. She would never find another man who would love her as wholly as I did.
Time would make her see that. I only needed to know she was safe. I could send someone to watch over her, from a distance. I would find a way to protect her.
“Good.” She pulled the three narrow braids from behind her neck to the front and set her dagger to her hair, slicing them off and offering them to me.
I stared at them in her hand like it was my heart she’d cut out.
It may as well have been. “I’m no longer Rada, wife of Goran,” she said firmly.
“I’m lettin’ you go.” She hesitated. “That’s it, right? Once I cut the braids, it’s over?”
I gave a shaky nod, taking the braids when she thrust them at me again. She was right, more or less. Once she cut hers and mine, we would be parted in the ways of my people. But I would let her cut my throat before I surrendered my marriage braids.
“It’s not that I didn’t…” She hesitated, staring at the beads I’d woven into the braids on my palm.
I’d plundered my royal treasury for the rarest gems—star sapphires in two shades, one the color of my eyes and one closer to hers, and a dragon’s-blood ruby—then had them set into bands of gold.
When I’d told her I loved her, she’d let me weave them into her hair.
She’d never told me she loved me, not even at our wedding. I hadn’t thought I needed it. I’d imagined we had time.
A shadow passed over her face. “It’s not that we weren’t good together, Goran. If I was gonna love any Alpha in the world and have his babies, it would’ve been you. But that’s not for me, no matter how hard the Goddess pushes me.”
“Pushes you?” There was so much about her I didn’t understand.
Her voice trembled as she admitted, “She’s remaking Her lines, one squalling baby at a time, and I’m Her favorite tool. I may not be able to escape, but I won’t just lie down and let Her turn me into someone I’m not.”
I would go to war against anyone or anything in the world, but I couldn’t fight the one my love saw as her enemy, the Goddess of all. “I don’t want you to be anyone other than who you are. Please, Rada. Please don’t leave me.” I was begging her. I didn’t care.
“I’m not what you want. Find someone else, someone who’ll give you what you deserve. Goodbye, Goran,” she murmured, reaching down into her cloak. Then, “Why would a divorce and a haircut be the same thing? Such a weird custom.”
I took a deep breath to try and explain, but just as I inhaled, she brought her hand up in front of her face and opened it. The small mound of gray powder puffed toward my face.
I didn’t even feel my head hit the stone floor. When I woke up, days later, she was gone.
The memory broke into splinters as Wrath sidestepped. What had he sensed? The wind in the trees was louder than my wife’s snoring, but my horse was a perceptive beast.
So far, there hadn’t been any others on the narrow deer path we were following through the easternmost edge of the Mirlake Forest, but his quivering nostrils made it clear that someone was near. I moved one hand to the hilt of my sword, bringing Rada closer to my chest.
The Beta we were seeking stood in the center of the path, appearing without any sound, like a ghost. He bowed slightly at the waist. “Warlord. Blessings be to you for saving Her daughter.” He had an odd accent, but spoke Starlakian fluently.
I stared for a long moment. The Beta had dark, straight hair pulled back in a low knot, nearly black irises, and an interesting hue to his skin that reminded me of the pale yellow flowers that grew in the courtyard of Wargate Hall, my home.
He was slender, but not feminine, and no taller than the woman in my arms.
But what had me blinking were his long, cream-colored robes. I hadn’t paid attention to them before. “You killed a priest?”
“What?” He looked down, then around, almost comically. “No. My vows do not allow me to harm others.”
I examined him for weapons, but all I found was a small, curved knife—like cooks used for paring vegetables—hanging from his narrow rope belt. “Vows. By the mountains, you are a priest?”
I found myself almost smiling when he nodded, then shrugged. “I was when my mistress found me. The Goddess—”
Rada’s laugh was like a silver bell pealing. “Stuck Her nose into your shit and ruined your life almost as badly as mine. Hells, Alexios, I’m damned glad to see you alive. And with my bags!” Rada tried to jump down, but I tightened my grip.
“Your feet,” I reminded her, even though the burns on them were nowhere near as bad as they should’ve been. The scorch marks on her ankles, calves, and even her arms were worse, but I’d learned not to question how Rada escaped death. She’d had plenty of practice.
Rada patted my arm absently. “Aw yeah, thanks, Gorgeous.”
I stiffened at the last word, which was in Verdanian. It had been her pet name for me, in our private moments. The happy ones, anyway.
From the puzzled look on the Beta’s face, he didn’t understand the word. Rada cleared her throat and apologized instantly. “Sorry, I meant Goran. I was still half asleep.”
“Don’t call me that again,” was all I said before dismounting and pulling her down behind me. I carried her to the Beta, who was already pulling a soft pair of socks out of one of the bags he had with him.
“Let me help you,” he told Rada. To my shock, she nodded and reached for him.
I set her into his arms and watched as he carefully cared for her, placing her on a small cloth to keep her off the leaf mulch.
He removed the fenrick leaves, his eyebrows lowering when he saw the unmarred skin beneath them.
Then he slathered her feet, ankles, and calves with some potion before slowly rolling the socks on.
He spoke to her in a language I didn’t know as he laid out some fresh clothing for her.
She shucked off her cloak and the filthy gown without a shred of modesty or care for the sudden gust of icy wind from the north.
I swallowed hard. She’d changed since I’d seen her last. There were a handful of healed scars on her, in addition to the recent burns.
Her muscles were even more defined, though her breasts and hips were softer as well.
Her hair was longer, hitting at the base of her spine as the Beta helped her stand, then braided the dark length expertly.
It was only his priest’s robes that kept me from stabbing out his eyes for daring to look at her. Well, those and the calm, unbothered way he helped her into the black clothing.
He flicked a look at her legs and feet, then me, a question in his eyes.
I shrugged. He’d noticed what I had about the lack of burned tissue below her calves.
He lifted one hand to his forehead, then the sky, then turned to help with her fastenings.
They conversed in that unfamiliar language as he buckled her weapons belt around her narrow hips, the Beta clearly asking questions the whole time.
Once she was clothed, Rada shrugged and glanced over, her eyes not meeting mine. “Goran, this is Alexios dal Luyen, my valet from the Southern Lands, and former priest of the Temple of the Goddess. Alexios, this is Goran, the Warlord of All Starlak.”
“Your husband,” Alexios said softly, standing to face me and dropping into a low bow.
“Former husband,” Rada muttered. We both ignored her.
“It is an honor to meet you at last. I’ve heard many stories.”
“You have?” I narrowed my eyes. “I wonder which stories.”
“Not that there’s time to talk,” Rada said with a strained cheerfulness I’d never heard in her voice.
She grabbed her saddlebags and began rifling through one of them.
I glimpsed packaged herbs inside and a velvet bag she opened to count a few loose gemstones before tying it shut again.
She’d had those since we first met, most of them stolen from a dragon’s lair in the tunnels through the mountains near my home.
I didn’t recognize the last thing she put on, though I’d seen something similar before. It was a nautilus necklace, a shell the size of a small plum, on a fine golden chain. She slid the chain around her neck, tucking the nautilus between her breasts with a relieved sigh.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
What was that thing? While I wondered, she took out a pair of her special boots, made of thick leather with laces that her Beta kneeled to tie.
“Right. Time to go on our way and let the warlord get back to his new Omega.” Her tone was cool as she stood, the Beta helping her.
If I hadn’t seen her hand tighten on the hilt of the knife at her waist, I would have thought she was truly unaffected.
“A new Omega?” Alexios’s mouth fell open, his face filled with disappointment. Rada shrugged, turning her back to me, but the air swirled with the scent of burned mint.
For some reason—I had no idea why—I answered the question in the Beta’s eyes with a slight shake of my head. He took a breath as if to ask it aloud, but I shook my head harder.
“Where are you headed?”
“Does it matter?” she replied saucily. “Help me sit, Alexios. I promised the warlord something.”
He lifted her with as much ease as I would, his strength at odds with his size as he placed her on a fallen log.
His movements were every bit as smooth as a seasoned warrior, perhaps more so.
I had no idea who he was to her: a servant, or guard, or lover.
Even though he wore a priest’s robes, he’d called her his mistress.
“Mistress! What are you doing?” he hissed as she drew her knife and rolled her black sleeve up her arm, revealing the starflower tattoo.
“Fulfilling a promise.”
I wanted to stop her; my soul was roaring at me to lunge toward her and wrest the knife away. This was wrong.
This wasn’t how we were supposed to end.
Her silver eyes lifted to my face, tears brimming on her lashes. She’d told me once she’d never cried for a man. That she would never weep for me. Had that been a lie, too, like so much of our year together? “Sorry, Gorgeous.”