The Eternal One dismissed Kai’s fears and named Atsadi during the ceremony. She’d known full well the kind of male he was. All the while assuring her that he was safe. She’d let him near Fala—that was unforgivable.
The hum of voices washed over her as she neared the top, pulling her like an invisible hand, and Kai charged into the torch-lit chamber. Dozens of the robed Unseen surrounded the Llinunae Stone or crowded the gold-veined walls, lines burrowed between their eyes. Some picked at the stone wall; fragments of rock turned to dust and fell to the floor, revealing newly formed cracks and holes.
“We must—” the Eternal One was saying to them, hands lifted. She stopped upon Kai’s abrupt entrance, and her arms collapsed. “Welcome, Kai Silver Wolf.”
“Don’t welcome me just yet.” Kai’s chest heaved for breath, and she swept a hot glare across the room. “Our mountain faces collapse. Our people face extinction, and what are you doing to help? Do you think yourself untouchable here? Those men crossed oceans and seas to take our home. They traveled through extreme cold to pit their swords against us. If we fall, you fall with us.”
“Kai—” the Eternal One began, pushing through the throng.
“No.” Pain throbbed inside her chest, and her throat tightened. Her next words strained on the way out. “You put him in my marriage bed.”
Literally or figuratively, it didn’t matter. Kai had begun to consider what her marriage would be like with him in their bed. In their home. She’d let him walk her through rooms he’d been shaping with his own hands andimaginedherself there. Fala’s eyes had brightened with hope. For a little while, Kai and Fala would become mothers to his children.
They were a family.
What the Eternal One had done to them was unforgivable.
The Eternal One glanced around at her people. “Leave us, please.”
As the Unseen shuffled out, the seer, Soyala, remained behind in her black robes, her black hair long and straight, her black eyes all-knowing.
“It’s all right, Soyala,” the Eternal One said. “I can explain.”
“If you’re sure.”
The gray-robed woman nodded. “See to the others. Answer their questions if you can.”
The seer followed the last of the Unseen with only a single glance back, then disappeared.
Alone, the Eternal One smiled. “I’d ask you to sit, but I don’t believe you will.”
“Atsadi is a traitor to our people. Did you know?”
The woman’s expression fell, then her gaze, then her shoulders. She sank onto the stone bench beside the Llinunae Stone. “Tell me what’s happened.”
Kai paced in long strides, arms folded tight, and recounted everything she knew. From the moment the Perean unit arrived to Atsadi being named their accomplice. She went silent and still after that part, refusing to acknowledge the minutes that came after. Atsadi’s desperation to get through to her. His willingness to fall on any sword she put in his path until his innocence was proved.
“I’m sorry this has happened,” the Eternal One said.
“Don’t be sorry. Explain yourself. You knew my reservations. You knew my fear. And still, you?—”
Kai’s voice caught, and she spun before the woman could witness the pain contorting her face. The tears in her eyes.
No. She couldn’t feel this now. Later. Later, she and Fala could grieve together.
“You warned me against distraction,” Kai said, then turned to face her. “I admit I ignored that advice, and it blinded me. I lethimblind me to what’s going on in our own union. He weakened our people by weakening me. And now our people suffer. Because I let myself love him. Because in my desperate hold to protect my heart, I forgot about everyone else.”
The Eternal One was already shaking her head. “Atsadi is not where your battle lies. I stand by that.”
“But, the prisoner?—”
“Not everything is so black and white.” Her brown and blue gaze lowered, and she let out a long, slow breath. “That said, I fear this is much bigger than even I, myself, realized.”
Kai planted her feet before the woman, gripping the cool bone hilt of the blade at her side. “What do you know?”
“A great deal, actually, but nothing that will help you where Atsadi is concerned. I can only ask you to trust your instincts.”
“Atsadi—our situation—is merely a room within the mountain,” Kai said. “I have to focus on what I can’t see beyond the walls of that room. Isn’t that what you advised me from the start?”
