A shiver rattled up her spine and she covered her mouth with her hand. “I had no idea, Nik. I’m sorry?—”
“Muyang was passing through town with Bohai and the others. He saw us and learned of our fates; he offered to pay to free us, but the arena owners—or whoever the hell was in charge—said no. So Muyang simple stole us.” A smile tugged on the corner of his mouth. “And we’ve all been together ever since.”
Silence filled the space between them and Biyu had no words to describe the pain that shredded through her chest and the horrible gut-wrenching feeling of it all. He had been through horrible trauma. Torn from his family. Sold into slavery. And with only scraps of memories of it all. She suddenly understood why he and the rest of the Peccata loved Drakkon Muyang so much. He had truly saved them all from a horrible fate. He raised them the only way he could—by teaching them how to fight, how to be ruthless, how to bepowerful.
“I can’t even speak my mother tongue,” he murmured, his voice almost lost to the raging wind and the sputtering, crackling fire. “I only know a few words here or there. The rest, I’ve forgotten. Even my true name—the name my parents gave me—I have no recollection of. No matter how much I try to remember, I just can’t.”
Biyu moved without thinking until she was beside him on the forest floor, her knees digging into the dirt, and her arms wrapping around his shoulders. He stiffened at the contact, as if unused to comfort.
“I’m sorry, Nikator,” she whispered.
It must have been so hard navigating life while knowing he likely had a family out there, if they had survived the attack, andthat his true identity was lost to the cruelty of war and slavery. She wished she could offer him more than an embrace. Maybe words that could soothe him? But no matter how much she tried to think of something comforting to say, it sounded hollow and superficial. It couldn’t compare to the emptiness of what his child-self had endured.
She wanted to hurt all the people who had hurt him. She wanted to protect him. She wanted to give him back everything that was stolen from him.
Sadness radiated from her and she hugged him tighter. His hand reluctantly rested on her lower back.
“Thank you,” he said.
A moment passed and she finally settled beside him—with him on the bedroll and her on the forest floor. They both sat in an awful silence. He seemed lost in his memories, his lips pulled taut into a firm line, his hands clenching the edge of the blanket. She could only watch him from the corner of her eyes.
“Do you ever think to travel to Lebel and try to find your family?”
He flinched and looked away. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I’m … I’m scared to find out that they were all killed. In my mind, they’re alive and thriving. All of them. They’re living their lives, maybe a bit sad that their son or brother was taken away, but otherwise living a good life. I don’t want to go back to Lebel and find out the truth of why I was the only one who was sold into slavery by the people who attacked us.”
She nodded quietly. There were no words she could say that were comforting. Although her family had been attacked as well, with some of them dying tragically and violently, she hadn’t exactly been close to any of them, so she didn’t feel their loss. Nikator must have been tormented with thewhat ifsand the holes in his memories.
Biyu hugged her knees to her chest and watched him quietly. “When we get to the meeting location with Vita, will we … never see each other again?”
Nikator glanced at her and she wasn’t privy to any of his emotions; the bond was quiet, without a pulse. “Yes.”
“Are you all right with that? You didn’t have a choice when you were taken from your family, but you have a choice here. I want to be with you, Nik. We can be a family.” The words were barely a whisper. Hope swelled in her voice. They could make it work; she knew it.
But then he crushed that hope by shaking his head. “We can’t, Biyu.”
“But—” The argument died on her lips. It would be the same conversation they’d had all these days. He would clam up and keep repeating that she needed to experience life without being tied to him, that she wasn’t capable of making a sound decision when she had been imprisoned for so long, that she didn’t know better. And she would refute all his points that she did know better, that she could think for herself, and that she was more than capable of making her own decisions. Then they would keep circling back to their original points. Over and over until one of them grew tired of it and stayed silent.
He was too stubborn. She was too, but he took it to another level.
“What will you do once I meet with Vita and leave?” Just saying the words aloud carved a part of her heart out, hollowing her insides until all she could feel was throbbing pain.
He reached for his pack and untied it before pulling out a scroll for her to read. She took it from him and unfurled it to find a warping spell etched onto it. She had seen powerful spells like this, where all it took to activate it was some magic, like the marriage spell she had used. A warping spell was incredibly rare. There were few mages who could warp from location to location,and even fewer who could imbue it into a scroll to be used by others.
“I’ll be going back to the palace,” he said flatly. “Muyang gave me this spell to bring you back but … well, I’ll just tell him I couldn’t find you and that it’s better if you disappear.”
She stared at the crisp and clear inky letters of the spell and set it down on her lap. Her mind was already shifting gears. A new, wholly risky, horrible plan.
“There’s nothing I can do to convince you that I love you, right?” she asked slowly.
Nikator stared at her a beat longer, then nodded.
“Are you saying that because you truly care for me, or because you don’t love me and you just want to rid yourself of me without any guilt?”
Almost instantly, horror and rage swirled in his bright eyes. He muttered a curse and said, “I’m letting you go so you can be free, Biyu. If I wanted to be completely selfish with no regard to your mental state, your happiness, or what’s best for you—I would have taken you far away where we can be together for all of eternity. Do you think I enjoy hurting you by saying no? It’s quite the opposite. My heart is in ruins that I cannot have you.”
