I waited for the judgment to come. Roman had never reserved it before. I doubted he would now that I'd confessed to the true sorrow of my heart, the worst of the guilt I bore every day stemming from my own betrayal. But he didn't speak and, after a time of silence, I found myself raising my gaze to get a glimpse of him and reason out why.
He was looking up at the sun, eyes closed as if basking in those glorious rays.
“Captain?” I asked a moment later.
“Do you know how I became Captain of the Guard?” he replied.
I shook my head even though he wasn’t looking. It was a rhetorical question anyway. He knew I didn’t know his story. How could I?
“I didn’t grow up in Leo’s court,” he said. “You know those other human cities he mentioned? I was born in one of them. It doesn’t matter which one. My mother didn’t have the slightest clue who my father was so I grew up on the streets, fighting for everything I had, starving when I didn’t. That kind of life makes you see everyone as an enemy. It keeps you scheming to undo them at all times, even in your sleep.”
I didn't speak, simply listened to his tale as he had to mine.
“My mom died when I was nine,” he continued. “Some curable disease we were too poor to afford treatment for. It made me angry and that anger never left me. So I used it. I turned it against anyone who turned against me until I’d developed quite a bloodthirsty reputation. A local lord tried to recruit me for the military. I refused so he had me arrested. Apparently, he only allowed violence which directly benefited his rule. Leo happened to be visiting that day. He saw me arrested, saw me spit on the lord’s boots as they hauled me away to the cells, and he gave me an offer. Rot in the dungeons or join his guard. It was an easy choice but I resented being forced into proper service. I picked fights with the other guards, stirred up trouble whenever I could. Any prince in his right mind would have cut me loose, but not Leo. He took me on, turned me into his project of sorts. He was determined to find out what made me so angry and help me get past it. It didn’t work, not completely. I’ll probably never be rid of my anger but his favor calmed me for a time until, a few years later, he realized my reputation might do him some good after all and appointed me as Captain.”
I just watched Roman when he was finished, wondering what, exactly, I was supposed to have gotten out of his tale. Or was it just a bonding experience, a way for him to expose more of himself to me? Was this how the Captain offered friendship?
“My point is,” Roman said with a sigh as I sat blinking at him like a fool, “men like you and me, we hurt people. We don’t always mean to but it’s what we are. Trust doesn’t come easily to us. Fury does. The difference is that, when I found someone who saw past all that bullshit to who I could truly be inside, I gave myself to them; in defense, in friendship, in loyalty. You didn't. And I’ll never understand it.”
With that, he snapped his horse’s reins and rode on ahead of me. The conversation, which had just begun to seem friendly,ended in abrupt displeasure as was often the case with Roman. This time, however, his words dug deep. I'd opened up to him, had declared the guilt I'd felt for so long and never told anyone about before and he'd thrown it right back in my face. And what’s worse, he'd verified my worst insecurities.
“Incoming,”Ksenia’svoice rang out suddenly ahead and I looked up to find her landing Phantom just a few feet before Roman.
The beat of the creature’s enormous wings stirred a blessed breeze through the hot desert air that pushed my hair back and sent the canvas strips of the saddlebags flapping. But it was the look onKsenia’sface that stopped my heart cold. I’d seen that look before on soldiers preparing for a scouting mission into the wild sands, onKleiobefore facing the Council, on my grandfather before a meeting with the Tribunal. Grim determination. Something was wrong.
“They’re here,”Kseniaclaimed and my heart dropped to my stomach. “A whole camp of them.”
“Geist?” Roman asked.
Ksenia’seyes flicked my way once before she answered, “No.”
My breath caught. A camp of soldiers from Pavos awaited us ahead. Who were they? Had I known them? WasValin there? Or Castor? I flinched when I realized it could be my own squad. TheGeistwere cruel enough to do that, to send my own squad after me.
“What do we do?” I asked, angling my horse closer while trying to keep the panic from my voice.
Roman cast a glare in my direction but I ignored him.
“We can't take on a whole camp,”Kseniasaid. “But going around would take too long and the northern pass is too treacherous. The horses will never make it.”
“The south?” I asked.
“Dead Man’s Dunes,” Roman muttered. “No water for a hundred miles. Even the rats don’t survive out there. The horses would be dead before we even made it halfway and we wouldn’t be far behind.”
He finished with a curse, glancing one way and then the other as if he could see the way out of our predicament by simply looking for it.Kseniaonly sighed, peering back in the direction of the camp as though she expected them to come charging over the hill at any moment.
“What if we flew?” I asked, giving a pointed glance at Phantom. “Can he carry three? Or even two at a time?”
Roman andKseniaexchanged a look I didn't understand and, whenKseniaanswered, it was slowly.
“He could…” she began. “But he won’t.”
I raised a brow.
“Zverchoose their rider, Viper,” Roman explained. “Only one. And they allow no one else to fly them. Some never choose at all, preferring their freedom over the bond of loyalty. Trying to mount him would be an insult and, if he chose to allow it, the highest honor. But very fewZverever allow anyone but their Chosen to ride atop them.”
“So we'll die in the desert,” I spat bitterly, “because of an animal’s honor.”
Ksenia’sknife was at my throat before I could blink.
