Suddenly, the pain in my calves was nothing compared to the ripping feeling in my heart. “You moved on,” I whispered.
“You left. Did you think I’d stay in that cave waiting for you?”
He went silent while I struggled with the emotions that rocked me and the memories that I thought I’d banished. Goran had found someone else. Of course he had. It wasn’t as if I’d been waiting for him, I reminded myself.
But you were, you stupid bitch. You were waiting and running away.I wanted to think that was the voice of the Goddess in my head, but I knew it was me.You’ve left every male who ever loved you, or wanted to. Every worthy male, except…
“Alexios,” I rasped, panic striking again. “Where is he? A Beta. He had my cloak. Where is he, Goran?”
The silence stretched between us, almost as painful as the sensation that was returning to my ankles. “The last I saw, a Beta was running back into the fire to retrieve your bags,” Goran finally said.
My lungs went as numb as my feet. When I could speak again, I repeated his words like an idiot. “The last you saw.”
“Yes.”
“How long…?”
“You’ve been unconscious for three days. We’re just over the border of Starlak, in the Mirlake Forest.” I heard a horse nicker close by, and then Goran standing and moving around. “Now that you’re awake, we’ll make better time on Wrath.”
I tore the bandage from my eyes. “We need to go back. I have to find Alexios.”
Goran was a large, blurry shape a few feet away. “Why?”
I blinked away tears. “Because he’s mine,” I said, my raspy voice coming out as a snarl.
He cursed. “Yours.By the stars, are youcryingfor him?”
I’d only told Goran one lie in the year we were together: that I wouldn’t shed tears over any man. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t tell him another. And I’d never let him know how often I’d cried over him, both before and after our divorce.
“Yeah,” I said softly, thinking of the past five years with Alexios. How much he’d given up to help me with my apothecaries. How I’d come to depend on him. He was my best friend.
I tried to stand, but stumbled. I couldn’t feel my feet at all; the fenrick leaves had more than done their job. Goran cursed again and caught me before I could fall, wrapping me in my cloak.
This close, I could see him well. His hair was longer than it had ever been, falling around his stony face. His skin was every bit as tanned as ever, though the laugh lines that had stretched from the corners of his cobalt blue eyes were gone, replaced by brackets around his mouth. His eyes had changed the most. They’d been pools gleaming with humor and joy, with love for me that he’d never hesitated to let show.
Starlakian males were warriors, but also poets. He’d written dozens of poems for me and about me, back when I’d known him before. He’d loved me intensely. Now his gaze was flat, as hard and cold as the cliffs on the edge of the Northern Sea. And something else significant had changed.
I swallowed hard, staring at the long braids trailing down his neck. Some were covered in small bronze beads in the shapes of wolf, bear, lion, and dragon heads that I knew were his warrior’s braids, indicating the loyalty of the men who followed him. But a few of the others bore oddly-shaped shell and bone tubes with protective runes and flowers inscribed on them: tokens of love for Starlakian marriage braids.
I knew better than to look for the beads I’d woven into his hair a decade before, but I sought them anyway.
His lip curled in a sneer. “We can’t go back. He’s most likely dead. If the king of Mirren catches you again, he won’t make the mistake of allowing you to keep your head. I’ve already called five thousand of my own warriors to guard the border.”
“They recognized you?” He gave a sharp nod. “You’re at war?”
“Only if they’re foolish enough to cross into our lands.”
I knew I should be horrified, but deep down, some small, sick part of me held the thought close, like a sharp jewel. He’d risked going to war for me. I made myself look at the new decorations in his braids, reminding myself he wasn’t mine anymore. “You know they’re fools. And proud ones.”
He grunted in agreement, then lifted me up in his arms, carrying me toward the large shape that became a horse as we grew closer. “I’ll take you to Wren’s and then come back with more troops.” He placed me on the back of the warhorse, then sprang up behind me.
I swallowed hard and forced my voice to sound calm. He might already hate me, but he would hate me more if I played this card. For Alexios, though, I would burn all my bridges. “You swore once that you’d do whatever I asked. No matter how hard it was, or how dangerous.”
Starlakians loved battles, poetry, and making vows that haunted them until death, and possibly beyond. He’d made this one to me the day we’d married. I’d never forgotten it, and whispered it now.
“You hold my heart within your flesh, inside your heart you hold my soul.
My goddess, lover, ruler, queen: from now until the world grows cold,
