Nineteen
Zidra
Just as Kyrundar slammed the point of his sword downward, a vine of shadow whipped out of the churning maelstrom and collided with his chest. He flew backward and skidded across the ground. My entire body went cold. I should have been focused on the assassin, but instead I took a faltering step toward Kyrundar. His swords lay beside him.
He wasn’t moving.
It would take more than a single hit to take down Kyrundar Ilifir. Even as I told myself that, I couldn’t take my eyes off his still form sprawled over the grass.
If Kyrundar was dead, forget the curse. I would shift and the assassin would be dead before the curse took me down. It would be worth it .
The heartbond!
I seized the bond, and a gasp wrenched out of me as I realized it was still there— he was still there. Kyrundar yet lived.
The assassin would not be so fortunate.
Snarling, I spun back to our attacker.
Moonlight shone on trampled grass and provided dim illumination to the sloping sides of the glen. No unnatural shadows amassed nearby, nor did ice magic wrestle with the night elf’s any longer.
The assassin had fled.
Perhaps I should have been relieved, even pleased. Instead, I smothered my dragon fire once more and swung my sword uselessly at the grass. The assassin should not live to hurt anyone else.
Had I been able to shift, I could have hunted him down. Even now, I could smell him, so I could track him. But night elves could use the shadows to help themselves travel faster, and their natural elf agility and speed was increased by moonlight and starlight. Without at least a partial shift, I’d never catch up with him.
Feeling useless, I stomped over to Kyrundar and knelt beside him. Before I spoke, he groaned and sat up. Rubbing the back of his head, he looked around, then focused on me.
“Did you defeat him?”
I looked away. “He escaped.”
Kyrundar muttered an imprecation. “Not entirely surprised. He’s strong. ”
“Unusually strong?” I tilted my head.
“Perhaps not.” He shrugged. “None of the other elf-kind like to admit it, but our night elf brethren have the most powerful magic, at least at night. Rumor says they make formidable assassins, but the night elves keep to themselves and mostly stay within the borders of Nyksia. I haven’t heard of a night elf assassin in my lifetime.” He frowned. “Do you think he’s a member of the league the shifters mentioned? Or perhaps someone they hired?”
“I wish I could ask him.”
He winced. “I’m sorry—”
“Whatever for?” I tightened my hold on the grip of my sword to hide how my hands were shaking. “If you hadn’t emerged from your shelter when you did, I’d be dead.”
Yet that wasn’t the reason for my trembling hands.
I’d been prepared to shift, fully aware of the consequences, just so I could burn the assassin to avenge Kyrundar. Thoughts of enacting justice, protecting the empire, honoring my vows, saving myself—they had all fled, replaced by the frantic need to see to it that the person who had taken Kyrundar’s life would never take another.
Just like at Grivolen, caring about Kyrundar had affected my judgment in battle. First I’d lost the ability to shift. Then I’d let an assassin escape. All because I’d been more concerned about Kyrundar than my enemy. While in the past I’d have argued I was worried because I didn’t trust or believe in him, the lie no longer carried much weight.
It didn’t matter what I told myself, my reaction told the truth. I cared about Kyrundar, more than I did about anyone else, and I had for some time. More than I should. Perhaps I even…
Loved him?
I startled as Kyrundar placed a pale hand over mine on the hilt of my sword.
“It’s all right. You’re safe now.” His expression hardened. “From now on, if we must sleep outside, you’re staying in my shelter with me. No magic or person can enter without me sensing it. I’ll put an enchanted threshold on the door of any Haven we stay at as well. I don’t want to count on the heartbond awakening me in time again.”
“The heartbond?”
He nodded. “I was awoken by a sense that you were in danger. I’m sure it was because of the heartbond.” For a moment it seemed like he might say something more, but then he closed his mouth.
So the heartbond had some usefulness. Hating something that had saved my life was more difficult than hating something that caused only discomfort.
Well, not only. The last few nights, the heartbond had felt oddly comforting. Safe, in a way.
“In fact”—Kyrundar picked up his swords—“we should go inside my shelter in case the assassin returns.” He stood and started back in the direction of camp. “I’ll need to make it larger first, though…” He kept mumbling something half to himself as I trailed after him.
It didn’t take him long to enlarge the shelter. While he did that, I returned my sword to its scabbard and gathered up my cloak and pack. As soon as Kyrundar announced the shelter was ready, I ducked inside. By the look he gave me, he’d expected me to argue. But with my throat and lungs still aching and bruises covering my body, I was more than ready to accept some reassurance that I wouldn’t awaken again to slithering shadows wrapping me in a crushing embrace of death.
I felt my way through the darkness inside the shelter and sat near a wall, listening to Kyrundar move past me and fumble for something in his pack.
“Where is it…ah-ha.”
A golden-hued light flared to life, and he placed a glowing stone the size of his fist on the ground. The light elf magic cast a warm illumination over the spacious interior. Next he pulled on a thin white shirt, then retrieved a roll of bandages and a knife. He moved to my side and reached for my arm.
“You started to shift, so I need to check on this. Don’t argue.”
I cast him a flat glare. “I wasn’t going to.”
“Oh. Good.” He unwrapped the bandage. Soon I felt the gentle coolness of his magic prodding around the aching wound. “I don’t think the curse has spread, but my barrier is weakened. I’ll have to strengthen it again.”
“Understood.” I didn’t meet his eyes as I added, “Thank you.”
Either I was getting used to the pain, or it wasn’t as bad. Perhaps because Kyrundar didn’t have to pull the ice curse back through my veins this time. His expression still tightened with discomfort, but it was over quickly .
“We need to travel faster,” he muttered. “Do you feel that?”
“What?” I looked down to see his fingertips pressing against the discolored edges of the dark-red puncture mark.
Kyrundar sighed and started wrapping my arm in a fresh bandage. “You’re losing sensation around the affected skin. The cold is likely killing your flesh. I’m trying to slow it, but the curse itself needs to come out. It needed to come out days ago,” he added under his breath.
“Thank you for doing what you can,” I said.
His eyes locked with mine. “You’re welcome.”
The warmth of his sincerity crackled through the heartbond. I cleared my throat and stared across the shelter at the curved wall of packed snow. “I didn’t know the heartbond could be sensed while you’re asleep.”
His hands slowed, but then he tied off and trimmed the bandage. He moved to sit with his back to the wall beside me. “It might be because I fell asleep while…I don’t know. Holding it? Concentrating on it might be a better way to explain it.”
“Why would you do that?”
He wriggled as if getting more comfortable. “You’ve seemed restless. I hoped somehow I could put you at ease. Help you calm your emotions enough to sleep.”
A lump caught in my throat. That was why the last few nights the heartbond had felt so…cozy? Kyrundar was doing that? On purpose ?
I didn’t know what to make of it.
That wasn’t true. I knew why he would do that; I even knew why I might like it.
But I didn’t want to admit that I’d realized he liked me, and I certainly didn’t want to admit I liked him as well. These feelings were a ridiculous and passing side effect of the heartbond.
After all, what did he see in me?
I knew what every woman who had ever swooned over Kyrundar Ilifir saw. I saw it, too. He was the most attractive man I’d ever met—tall, muscular enough to be striking but not so much that he seemed uncomfortably chiseled out of rock, with a sharp jaw, high cheekbones, and those ice-blue eyes and silken, white-blond hair like a waterfall over his shoulders. But Kyrundar was so much more than that. His confidence sometimes grated, but perhaps that was because I envied his self-assurance. Despite being an ice elf, he had an inviting, exuberant smile that could melt a glacier’s heart. He had a way of drawing people in, making them feel included, and inciting celebration amid the most mundane gatherings.
And he had swooning female fans the empire over, constantly foiled my plans, never took anything seriously enough, and was a distraction in battle. This newfound attraction wouldn’t last, so I shouldn’t entertain it.
So I did what any fearless rengir would do.
I changed the subject.
“I shouldn’t have let myself get distracted and allow the night elf to escape.” I tore off a blade of stiff grass and started tying it in knots. “We need more answers than what the panthera and wolvus provided. I should also warn Sajen. I should have already told him to abandon it, but I’d hoped this would go away—or perhaps that he’d find something.”
“What does Sajen have to do with anything?”
I leaned my head back against the domed shelter. It was cool, but not freezing. “I let him talk me into allowing him to help me,” I grumbled. “He was going to ask around about the attackers at Grivolen. If this night elf is associated with whatever the league is, they are serious about keeping their secrets. What if Sajen is in danger because of me?” I grunted and tossed aside the knotted grass. “This is why I don’t ask for help! I stand alone, and I fall alone.”
If assassins harmed Sajen because of me, I wouldn’t forgive myself easily.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Kyrundar stretched out his legs. “We’re rengiri. We’re meant to stand together.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I shook my head. He would never understand. “I’m going to sleep.”
But Kyrundar’s hand on my shoulder stopped me. Not by force. His touch was light, undemanding and easily escaped. Still, his hand arrested my movement.
“Zee,” he said softly. “Do you push me away because of me, or because of you?”
“Both,” I blurted. What did it matter? He might be able to sense the truth through the heartbond he kept accessing, anyway. “How am I supposed to prove myself with you or anyone else interfering? How will I know if the outcome, positive or negative, would have been the same without interference? If I do something on my own, I’ll know I earned the results, good or bad—and so will my family. You know wyveri are matriarchal, right?”
He nodded and released my shoulder. “Ever since the wyveri king died after summoning Ascadrion. You have clans, right? Each ruled by a family with the matriarch at the head, and they answer to a queen?”
“Basically, although it’s more like the queen answers to the matriarchs except to judge disputes between the clans.” I buried my fingers in the grass beside me. “My mother is the matriarch of our clan.”
Kyrundar was silent for a moment, and when he spoke, the question wasn’t what I expected, although it made sense. “Is your sister older or younger?”
“Younger.”
The word hung in the muffled quiet.
“You left your role as the next matriarch to be a rengir,” he said. There was no judgment in his tone, simply a gentle observation.
His acceptance crumbled the last of my reticence, and words flowed from my mouth.
“My decision to go to Harcos simultaneously enraged and pleased my mother and sister. I’m not sure my older brother cared much either way.” I moved my fingers around in the grass, tangling them in grass blades. “Wyveri value strength and self-sufficiency. Well, we say we value self-control, honor, humility, wisdom, and intelligence, in part because we fear being known only for our capacity for destruction. But we don’t tend to be very good at supporting each other in those goals. We’re supposed to be honorable and discerning and to exercise self-control on our own, just like we fly on our own.”
Kyrundar snorted. “Wyveri have wings. Of course you fly on your own.”
I pursed my lips. “I mean as children.”
He straightened. “Are you talking about learning to fly? I’ve heard some birds push their young out of the nest, but surely wyveri don’t—”
“Essentially. Once we can shift reliably and our wings are deemed strong enough, we leap off a cliff over the rocky coast into the strong winds off the sea, and we either fly or we die.”
“What!” I winced at his loud voice so close to my ear. “Sorry. But, what? How old were you? And how old would an elf be?”
“Usually around eight, so that would be the same for an elf.” Humans, shifters, and elves had similar development until around age twelve, but after that, shifter aging slowed to less than one-third the rate of a human, and elves’ aging to nearly one-ninth the rate of a human. That was why, despite Kyrundar being one hundred and fifty-five while I was seventy, we were roughly the same age relative to our lifespans.
“How many wyveri die doing this?” he demanded.
“Death is rare, although severe injuries aren’t uncommon. Many clans and families are doing away with the practice, but not my mother.” I chewed on my lower lip. “She was so proud of how young I learned to shift, how well I did on my first flight, how powerful my di’yar is. She used to say my dragon fire burns hotter than average.”
“Used to?” Kyrundar moved to sit in front of me, watching me intently. “Why did she stop?”
My head drooped forward as I avoided his gaze. “I didn’t have her control. Her patience. My prodigy in shifting became a liability, as I shifted too quickly, too frequently, and with too much energy in my di’yar. I had to work hard to develop the icy control a wyveri matriarch is supposed to have.”
His snort interrupted me, and I snapped my head back up to scowl at him.
“Sorry.” Kyrundar’s lips twitched. “It’s just…I once complained to Syl that I might be an ice elf, but you are an ice queen. All cold control and condescension.”
I stared straight ahead at the packed snow wall. “I am what a wyveri must be. Unfortunately, I never became what a clan matriarch must be.”
“Which is?”
“Hospitable, gracious, both respected and liked. A humble yet confident leader who can spend all day sitting and listening and visiting people in their homes, who knows everyone in the village and remembers their names. Someone who can mediate a dispute with such equity and gentleness that the ruling is honored without damaging the matriarch’s relationship with either party. You’ve said it yourself: I’m not good with people.” I sighed. “I wasn’t meant to be a matriarch, and the entire village whispered about it.”
“So why did you choose the Order? I imagine there were many other things you could have done.”
I lifted a shoulder. “Not really. I needed an option that took me away from the islands, and things like becoming a merchant, clerk, or priestess didn’t suit me. By the time I was fifty-two, my lack of direction was becoming embarrassing. So I joined a merchant’s caravan as a guard for a trip, as a trial. I told my mother it was temporary and that the experience would teach me skills that would help me be a better matriarch. That’s when I realized how many people on the mainland still hate and fear wyveri.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
What did he have to apologize for? He wasn’t responsible for the prejudices of other people. “It wasn’t all bad,” I added quickly. “It was also the first time I met Nakirosha.”
“Nakirosha Tulyerin? My cousin?”
I gaped at him. “Your what?”
“Well, my…fourth or fifth cousin or something on my mother’s side, and she’s three hundred years older than me, but yes.”
“All three of us have been at the same Haven together twice, and that didn’t come up?”
Kyrundar made a face. “Why would it? We’re all rengiri, and honestly, that’s a closer connection than distant cousins. And what about you? Neither of you mentioned knowing each other.”
“I don’t think she remembered me,” I admitted, hoping I wasn’t blushing. “She came to our caravan’s aid when we stumbled upon a nest of void-tainted rekaras. I was still so young, and it was dark, and we spoke only for a moment. But she was spectacular. She didn’t care that we were wyveri, only that we were people who needed help. She was confident and assured and knew her worth, her purpose. She was respected and admired. That was what I wanted. I dreamed that I could change people’s minds about wyveri—and about me.”
Kyrundar smiled. “So you applied to Harcos?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. When we returned home, I went to our village’s chapel to pray for guidance. The priest and priestess were out when I arrived, and I have no idea how long I’d been kneeling before the altar when they entered. The priestess seemed surprised, almost confused, and a little saddened. Then she told me she felt Iskyr had told her to give something to the next supplicant she saw kneeling before the altar. She handed me a sprig of blue harbell flowers. On the Wyveri Islands, harbells are given to bless a large change in someone’s life, particularly moving to a new place or a new role. That was when I applied, but I didn’t tell my parents until I received the letter inviting me to take the in-person tests. They discouraged me from going, and when I wrote to tell them I’d been accepted, I received a one-word reply: understood.”
“By the void.” He shook his head. “I decided I wanted to be a rengir when I was five. My parents thought I would grow out of it, but I never did. They were supportive when I applied and was accepted at Harcos, though, even if my mother cried about how little she would see me if I made it into the Order. She still complains about it every time I visit home. But then, she isn’t wrong. Those visits are rare. Still, most parents are honored to have children among the rengiri, not disappointed or even opposed to it.”
“I suppose we’re special,” I quipped.
Kyrundar went still, and his ice-blue gaze locked with mine. “You certainly are,” he said, his voice oddly husky.
I swallowed hard. “Anyway. That’s why I need to do things on my own.”
Kyrundar’s jaw tightened, and his upper lip curled. “Forget your ridiculous mother and sister and your entire clan. They don’t know what they lost when they lost you, and you have nothing to prove to them. If they can’t see how amazing you are simply because Iskyr gave you a different calling than the one they envisioned, that’s their problem. As surely as he hung the stars in the night sky, Iskyr made you to be a rengir, Zidra.”
I didn’t consciously reach for the heartbond, but the complete confidence with which he said the words rushed through me. His emotions burned with the ferocity of defiance and a deeper, more tender passion that warmed me from the inside out. The part of me that usually whispered any affirmation was a lie, that either the speaker was secretly mocking me or I didn’t deserve their honest praise, was silenced by the strength of unwavering belief and deep affection I heard in his voice, saw in his eyes, and sensed in my soul through the bond. For a moment, I borrowed his confidence and let myself rest in the belief that I didn’t have anything to prove to anyone.
Maybe the heartbond—and Kyrundar himself—wasn’t so bad.