“I think you’re hard to figure out,” she admitted. “But what I am sure of is that you’ve never found yourself wanting or bereft of pleasure.”
A huff of amusement left him, and he turned back to the bonfire. “Infinari persons rarely do.”
Her eyes narrowed just slightly at his use of the word. She gripped to the railing at the edge of the deck and used it as a prop, lowering herself down to the wood floor to sit. “You chose that word at banquet to speak of the Infi in our streets,” she said as she laid the crutch on the floor next to her. “Why that instead of calling it what it was?”
“Because it wasn’t always Infi,” he said simply.
“What do you mean?” she frowned.
He met her eyes, and she swore she saw a shadow of darkness fall over his features. “Are you genuinely interested?”
“I am,” she said sincerely. “I never understood how you are born with two fates. Can you tell as infants what fate they are of?”
He sighed in silence and sat down on the deck a few feet away from her, his legs dangling over the edge of the wood. His eyes danced with the flames of the fire in the clearing, and she could see his hands fidgeting in his lap.
“It’s in their wailing,” he said softly. “By the Dead Moons. Venari children do not wail upon hearing the Aviteth scream. They grow quiet. Her cry calms them, a comforting lullaby. Infi children scream, as though the screech is piercing their ears, shutting down their core. They turn red. Their skin burns…. And then there are those with both fates, also known as the Infinari.”
“Are not all of them born with such?”
“We used to be,” he said quietly. “Infinari children laugh. As though the sound of the Aviteth is a joke. It’s easy to tell the three different ones as we are only born during the Dead Moons.”
Something dark rested in his eyes, and she could see his mind working behind his gaze, a battle to admit something to her that she wouldn’t expect.
“Which were you?” she asked.
“Every Venari King has been Infinari at birth,” he admitted slowly. “We grow up with an inkling of the fate Duarb would choose for us, but it is not always certain. Previous kings decided that by the age of ten, we would have chosen our fates. We are taken to Duarb, and he marks such a fate in our hands and arms—” He stopped and held up his forearms, revealing the phoenix marks of the Hunter etched crudely into his skin on the back of his hands and his forearm. “Once chosen, the current Venari King takes those marked Hunter under his wing.”
“May I see your mark again?” she asked of him.
He eyed her a moment, but lifted his arms in front of him once more. He pushed his forearms together, and then she saw it, the whole of the phoenix bird, half etched into his left and half etched into his right. The wings wrapped around his muscles on either arm, and the tail flailed out and continued to wrap up his arms, all the way to his shoulder blades and collar.
“The other Hunters… You and Balandria are the only ones with the marks up to your shoulders,” she noted.
“Fair observation,” he muttered, resting his arms once more. “Only those of Kings are marked so crudely. A symbol of the pressures and trials we would have to face as leaders of our kind.”
“And those marked Infi?” Aydra asked.
He fumbled with the ring on his finger. “Most disappear before their markings. They escape into the darkness. But if we do find them…” His voice trailed with a raised brow, and her heart constricted.
“And the infants?”
He slowly raised his eyes to meet hers. “If you were to find an Infi child in Duarb’s roots… if you knew what it would become, that its very presence on this land would mean death and betrayal to all of Haerland… what would you do?”
She swallowed hard. “I would make sure it did not get that chance,” she whispered.
He sighed and turned his gaze to the fire again. “My people have lived as long as they have because Kings over this Age have had to do what they must to keep us safe. But Duarb’s curses do not simply lie with our births.”
“What do you mean?”
He rubbed his arm and met her eyes again, this time giving her a small smile. “Enough for tonight,” he said then. “I’ll have your dreams filled with nightmares if you learn all our secrets.” He stood from the ground then and offered her a hand.
She swatted his hand away. “I can rise myself, Venari,” she smarted, grabbing onto the pole. Her hand slipped, and suddenly she felt his strong arms under her.
Her nostrils flared as she came face to face with him, near an inch between them.
“Sure about that?” he smarted as he helped her rise to her feet.
She grabbed the crutch and smacked his shin with it, to which he winced, but laughed nonetheless.
