He held up her hand to clean next, and she quietly cursed herself for letting him do it.
“For most Xaal, once we earn our masks, our bare faces are only seen by a select few. To be unmasked outside of those chosen, especially outside of our clan, would be dishonorable,” he explained.
Disappointment lanced through her. She imagined that a spinster from Earth was not one of those lucky few. “Who has the honor of seeing you?”
He paused in his movements, and she wondered if she’d made some mistake. “My mate can, and my bruvya, Kravis. He dined with me most days.”
She swallowed hard. “You have a mate, then?” The word sounded much more serious thanhusbandorwife. More fiercely intimate and sacred.
Ved chuckled low in his throat—an unmistakable sound that she wanted to draw from him again, but she was fully focused on his response. “No, Isobel Nott, I am untethered. A mate would be problematic. As qon, it is difficult to be concerned about such things.”
“Such things as love?” she asked. That seemed to be the only thing shedidfocus on. The idea of it, the magic of it, and thus the very real lack of it in her life.
He hummed in agreement. “It’s a weakness.”
Isobel furrowed her brow as something tightened in her chest. He spoke about love like it was a chink in his armor or the lesser of two weapons. “But love, especially true love, can be so powerful. Why would you see it as a vulnerability?”
“Because it is,” he said gruffly. “It can be twisted and used against you, it can muddle your senses. One might as well put their weapons out to rust and let their armor fall into disrepair. Love is nothing but a death sentence.”
Isobel pressed her lips together as he stepped away from her. The absence of his heat was instantaneous. She thought to argue the point but felt she had little ground to—she’d never been in love. The closest she got to it was reading it in her books. How did she know what was and wasn’t a weakness? Especially to a Xaal. Especially tohim.
With great effort, she let the topic go in favor of safer waters. “Bruvya…” She tasted the word. “What does itmean?”
The muscles in his back shifted as he reached for a tool. “Bruvya is what we call those we’ve chosen as our closest comrades. We usually only have one, but some Xaal have more. Kravis is my brother—we’re sworn to each other. Through battle, through blood. In this lifetime and even in death.”
There was something in his tone that she couldn’t quite decipher. “But he isn’t actually your sibling?” He’d said his brothers were dead. Yet she found it hard to understand choosing someone outside her family. If she were Xaal, would Henry be her bruvya? Or Clara?
“No, we do not share the same birth Xaal. We were from warring clans. There should have never been a reason for us to choose each other.”
Isobel was captivated. “How, then?”
Ved made a thoughtful sound as he placed a large cylindrical object she couldn’t fully process the function of onto a nearby ledge. Inside the strange design of it, there was a glowing green liquid that sloshed around. “When I was unmasked, in my youth, I was weak. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep up with the others in training. The will was there, but my body could not match it. I was slower, smaller, breakable. There is no place for such a Xaal in a clan.” His voice was rough but otherwise carefully devoid of emotion. It was like he spoke of someone else, distancing himself from the child he’d been.
“I find it difficult to imagine you as anything other than…” She gestured to his powerful form.
He grunted and continued on, “One freezing night, I was awakened by three of my peers. They beat me and dragged me to an icy field.”
“Why would they—”
“Do not pity that youngling, Isobel Nott. I couldn’t fight them off. A weak Xaal is a dead Xaal.”
Swallowing hard, she nodded. She didn’t have to like or fully understand it to know that it was the way his world was. It’d been established the moment he crash-landed here that it was a far harsher one than hers.
“After taunting me and beating me, they cut me open and left me to bleed out. They were so certain I would die that they didn’t stay to finish the kill.”
She gasped, and his shields flickered orange and darkened again. Isobel pressed her lips together even though her heart broke. It was some piece of his culture that didn’t translate to life as she knew it. But she ached for that little version of him. Why hadn’t someone protected him?
“I should have died there, but I bargained with the death gods, using my own blood as offering. I vowed I’d never be weak again if I survived. But it wasn’t the gods that answered me, it was Kravis. He’d been watching the entire time. He came to stand over me, and I knew he wasn’t of our clan. I expected him to finish the kill, but instead, he merely said, ‘Then fight. Tell death you do not yield.’
“He had a skid nearby that he carried stolen goods from our clan on. But he didn’t carry me or help me to it. He made me drag myself there, across the ice, while I bled.” It sounded like he was smiling at the memory.
“My God,” Isobel said, covering her mouth. She couldn’t imagine a child going through all of that. How alone he must have felt when he was in that field, freezing and bleeding out. How had he survived it?
“Although it took me the better part of the night, I was able to get to his skid. Then he took me back to his clan. Kravis bargained for me. His clan agreed to house me but only gave me basic care. I had to fight to survive on my own, I had toearnthe privilege of life. Therewere many times I should have died—I’d lost far too much blood as it was, and my wounds festered. I was delirious with fever for days, but I fought,” he said through gritted teeth, “and the moment I could stand, I left that death hut where the weaker version of me died. And when I did, Kravis was the one who welcomed me into their training.”
“And that’s when he became your bruvya?” she asked.
Ved laughed, a rich, deep thing. “No. He became my bruvya when we almost killed each other. I knew from that moment that he was the only one I wanted to battle beside.”
