Chapter Sixteen Samira
SIXTEEN SAMIRA
My cabin became a chamber of echoes. Screams as guards were ripped apart, the snap of a neck, the jeering of a crowd. They surrounded me. I heard the horrific sounds again and again, feeling as if I were slowly going mad. I was trapped in a reverberating cave of torment.
A shadow fell over me, and I flinched.
Keir lowered himself into a crouch in front of me.
Those searing yellow eyes level with my own where I was curled up beside the fire.
I hadn’t realized it was night until then.
The corners of the room were dark, save for this one patch before the hearth.
Hours had gone by since I’d witnessed a man’s senseless murder, yet it felt like mere moments.
I tightened my arms around my knees and ducked my head. “Please leave.” My voice was hoarse but not weak, thank the gods.
Keir’s clothes shifted. Something clinked on the floor beside me. Against my better judgment, I lifted my head.
A tankard of kefir.
“Not thirsty,” I said.
“It’s not for thirst.” He jerked his chin toward it. “Go on. It’ll make you feel better.”
I made no move for it.
Keir stared at me a beat longer, and some reckless, rebellious corner of my brain that had forgotten sixteen years of conditioning refused to be the first to look away this time.
I wanted him to see the blame, the contempt, the devastation.
Maybe the Kaldfolk felt no remorse for murder, but they should.
He should. I looked into the suns of his eyes, let them burn into me, and sent fire right back.
He looked away.
Satisfaction momentarily outshone my despair.
Keir scrubbed a hand over his cheek. “I thought you went on raids with the Khada Guard,” he said to the wall. “I thought you’d be used to violence. I didn’t think it would…” I waited for him to finish the sentence, but he didn’t. Just continued to look everywhere but me.
“I’ve seen a lot of violence,” I said. “Doesn’t mean I’m used to it.”
He nodded. Slowly, his gaze dragged back to mine. His brows were pinched as he studied me. As if a particularly difficult question had been posed to him. His nostrils flared slightly. “You smell so sad,” he murmured, so quietly I wasn’t entirely sure I was meant to hear it.
My throat closed up. This time, I was the one to drop my eyes.
I was sad. Devastatingly so. I hadn’t known Hedin, but I had known Tabia and Chef Nena and Nadia. Any of them could have been ended just as brutally as he had been. Maybe the Kaldfolk had laughed as they’d done it. They’d definitely laugh when they snapped my neck.
They would laugh, and no one would cry. My queen had given me up to die. Not even she would mourn for me. No one would care. And the realization made me inexorably sad.
“I put honey in it.”
My head snapped up.
Keir gestured to the tankard. “Makes it go down smoother.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I guess the honey outweighs the alcohol—”
“No, I mean, why did you do that?”
He rubbed his cheek again, eyebrows still knit together. I wondered if that was the same question he’d been pondering. “Your sadness smells a lot worse than your fear.”
Heat crawled up my neck. It was a weird thing to be embarrassed about. I wasn’t even sure why I was, but I found myself mumbling, “I’ll take another bath.”
“Won’t help,” he replied, voice like hard gravel.
“Oh.”
Keir’s eyes roved over my face with that same searching stare.
Something about that look made my heart beat a little faster and goose bumps ripple down my body.
Keir’s chest expanded on a large inhale and didn’t sink again for a prolonged beat.
I felt trapped in his luminous gaze. He’d just told me that I reeked, and yet the way he seemed to be savoring that breath…
Keir jerked up to his feet, and I jolted out of my trance. “Drink it,” he ordered, not unkindly, before he strode out of the room, steps rushed.
My gaze dropped to the kefir. Hands unsteady, I picked it up and tipped its contents back.
Smooth. Sweet. Warm. It melted into my bones and wrapped me in a ribbon of comfort.
I stared at the closed door. I struggled to make sense of the interaction, of the burn in my cheeks and the subtle pounding of my pulse throughout my body. The way he had looked at me, how he seemed just as confused as I was. The peace offering with honey held in my hands.
For the time it took me to drink the kefir, I was too baffled to be sad.
Early the next morning, there was a knock at my door. Energy shot through my veins, and I lurched off the bed and grabbed the empty kefir tankard, brandishing it over my head. But it wasn’t Keir. “Amunet?” Rade called. “May I speak with you?”
With a sharp exhale, I set the tankard back on the nightstand, not really sure what I’d planned to do with it if it had been Keir. Clearing my throat, I called, “Yes.”
Rade opened the door. Neither Keir nor anyone else was standing guard. I thought I spotted Velka racing by, but Rade shut the door again before I could be sure.
I kept a studious distance between us, remembering his frightening display of rage yesterday. While he might not have instigated yesterday’s murder, he hadn’t stopped it. He held a hefty share of the blame.
Which he seemed to realize as he gazed at me with remorse weighing down the edges of his lips.
“I would have come sooner, but I thought you might want some time to yourself.” He sighed and scratched his beard.
“You shouldn’t have witnessed the fight.
That was not the introduction I wanted for you. If I’d known you were there…”
He would’ve called it off? Had me forcibly removed? But he didn’t finish the sentence, and I was too frightened to ask.
He dipped his chin. Drew a deep breath. “I know what Ashorans say about us,” he said, “and I was hoping to change your mind.” The king huffed a sad laugh and shook his head. “I guess that’s not going to happen now, is it?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. Lie, or risk his wrath? I still had no idea what the red marks on the side of his head meant. Blue clearly represented a Shifter, but I hadn’t seen what black and red could do yet, and I didn’t particularly want to find out.
Rade saw the flightiness in my gaze and saved me from answering. “I don’t want you to be afraid of us, Amunet. I’m sorry that you are. Keir never should have forced you here.”
He sounded genuine. But I knew better than to trust a Kald. Somehow I found my voice enough to ask, “Then why have you kept me here?”
Rade scratched at his beard again, a nervous tic, his sheet of black hair rippling down the left side of his body like a silken river of night. There wasn’t a trace of the fury I’d glimpsed during the fight. That didn’t mean it wasn’t carefully tucked away and just waiting to jump out.
“You can leave,” he said suddenly.
My body jolted as if it would take off immediately.
Rade’s light brown eyes bored into mine. “Once I show you why Keir did what he did, you can leave. I will not be your captor. I just—need you to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“What we’re up against.” He took a small step forward, just the barest approach.
I didn’t back away. Was it some sort of heretic magic that was putting me at ease?
Maybe that was what his red tattoos signified.
He was a witch, using his power to make me relax.
Because I couldn’t deny there was something about Rade that made the tension in my back lessen and my heartbeat slow just the slightest bit.
The softness in his oak-colored eyes, the crookedness of his smile, the calm radiating from him.
“My Seven…” he started. “They are the best and worst of us. Strong, loyal. But they’re all…
broken sounds too harsh. Cracked might be better.
There is a crack inside all of them. It’s what makes them the best at what they do.
But we are not all like them. I am not like them.
” He shuffled a few steps closer, until I had to tilt my head up slightly to meet his gaze.
“All I ask is that you wait to condemn my people until I have explained. Please.”
I was wrong; it wasn’t softness in his eyes but desperation. Desperate for my help—for Amunet’s help. Whatever he wanted to convince me of, he needed. Very, very badly.
I swallowed hard. “What do you want to show me?”
He drew a deep breath. I could feel the nervousness surrounding him, a nearly tangible cloud. “It will be a lot,” he warned. “But I will protect you. I promise.” He held out his hand. Asking me not to fear him, to come with him, to trust him.
I couldn’t do most of those things. He could be lying about letting me go. But if he wasn’t, all I had to do was take a look at whatever put that panic in his eyes. And then I’d be free. I would have done my part to keep the Gods-Chosen safe without having to die.
I slipped my hand into his.