“You didn’t,” she said, lowering back into the water. “I just didn’t know anyone was listening.”
“It’s quiet in here,” he noted with a nod at the chamber, and at least two dozen more females about. “It’s unlikely your voices carried much farther than me, but they did.”
Heat filled her cheeks. All it took was one wandering tongue—just one—and the whole mountain would be dissecting her grief by morning.
“My apologies,” she said, “if we disturbed you.”
He smiled faintly, and for a brief moment she?—
Kai had found males handsome before. She was hardly blind. Finding them attractive was never the problem.
“To be honest…” He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly sheepish. “It helped.”
“Which part? When I failed to comfort my wife? Or the part where she reminded me how terrible I am at it?”
“When you were vulnerable about the ceremony.” He sat forward and scrubbed water over his face, then sighed. “Not knowing if your life is aboutto change… Sometimes I wish I could be more like your wife; she seemsready.”
Kai didn’t know how to respond to that. She hadn’t asked. Not once. Fala had every right to be angry with her.
The male rose then, slow and powerful, water sluicing off his tall, lean, muscular body.
Kai didn’t look away fast enough, and she cursed under her breath. A warrior should never be distracted by a beautiful man, naked or not. And why was she surprised? No one entered the sacred waters dressed.
But gods, he was beautiful. And distracting.
Outside the pool, he wrapped a drying cloth around his waist. “Maybe we’ll see each other again at the ceremony, and if we’re honored by the gods, we can toast to each other’s happiness.”
Kai turned in the water and folded her arms across the stone, watching him tread wetly for the exit. “Will you feel honored, though?”
He paused at the threshold to the corridor, and a single shoulder came up. His chin lowered. “If she’s half the female you or Fala are, I won’t have a choice.”
Kai startled and came out of the water several inches. “You know who we are?”
He glanced around. “I’m no stranger to the healing pools. She’s hard to miss. And you…” He glanced over his shoulder, and his next words were quiet, secret. “Everyone knows who you are, Kai Silver Wolf.”
Then he was gone.
She didn’t know if she was hoping to see him again…or hoping she wouldn’t.
And she never even got his name.
Kai approached Stoneheart Hall, the great central chamber in the heart of the mountain, half a step behind Fala. Her wife’s back hadn’t softened in the last hour, and any words Kai summoned to break the tension died in her mouth and tasted like ash.
Fala passed beneath the centuries-old stone archway with the clan symbols etched into the black rock. Twenty symbols, eleven lost forever towar. Kai could only imagine the heat and chaos when all twenty clans had gathered with the central fire pit ablaze.
The pair of First Clan warriors standing guard stiffened further upon seeing Kai, their knuckles whitening around spears with polished wood shafts. Both were outfitted in their ceremonial uniform—hardened leather breastplates reinforced by bone and metal. They wore cloaks made from animal hide, fastened at the shoulders with gleaming silver broaches. There wasn’t a wrinkle, rip, fray, or smudge anywhere to be found. Not even a stray hair was out of place in the tight buns they pinned low on the backs of their heads.
Kai nodded her approval, and the females—to their credit—didn’t treat it like a release. They remained in position, still as stone.
Inside the hall, the air was alive with sound. Bronze Raven females of Fourth Clan played music near the central dais. There were bone flutes, drums covered with animal hide, lutes, rattles, and pipes carved from animal horns.
Laughter and conversation cascaded across the hall and the stone tiers radiating outward from the dais. All nine clans mingled and arranged woven blankets to sit on.
On the dais, eight clan matriarchs gathered with Kai’s mother, Shadi, and spoke in hushed tones, their expressions subdued. Attending was their duty—there was no room for the nervous energy currently coursing through their clans.
One day, Kai would stand there as the Grand Matriarch, sitting on her cold stone throne central to eight other females as the Eternal One arranged marriages, whether or not they were wanted.
Acid climbed Kai’s throat, and she coughed to keep her throat from closing up.
