Chapter Seven
“Oh, no,” Cameleeput her hands to her mouth. The man Fin had killed was Genevra’s provider. She almost let out a scream when Akkar grabbed hold of Genevra’s arm.
“Let her go!” She tried to remain calm for Hild’s sake, and for Genevra’s. “Akkar, hasn’t she suffered enough? She’s lost much today.”
He looked torn.
“Please, Akkar.”
He let Genevra go but stayed close to her.
“I know what is being said about him,” Genevra announced. “It is not true. Aye, he saw you appear from nowhere, but he did not blame you for our capture. He called you an angel. He said you had come to watch over us.”
Camelee lowered her eyes, unable to look up. She was no angel. Genevra’s master had died because of her. “I’m so sorry. He was running toward me. Fin thought he was going to attack me.”
Genevra covered her face in her hands and cried. But she didn’t do it for long. Soon, she wiped her cheeks, pulled herself together, and went to Hild. “Are you hungry, Child? Must you relieve yourself?”
Yes! Of course! How could Camelee have forgotten that? Oh, poor Hild if she had to stay with Camelee. She was but three or four years old. Did she even know how to use a–potty?
“I will…what can I do?” she asked Genevra, who seemed more together after just losing her only source of provisions than Camelee did after, well, after losing everything she had and knew.
“I’m so sorry for snapping at you,” Camelee told her. “I’m tender about the subject of motherhood, but I had no right to be angry with you.”
“Oh, my dear Camelee,” Genevra poured out to her. “Forgive me for being so bold as to bring it up.”
Camelee stared and studied her. From where did she pull such humility? Camelee knew she, herself, had never possessed such a virtue.
“Come, let us find a hidden place for Hild, and then some food, hmm?”
Hild nodded emphatically, then, “Mumma coming back?”
“Yes, Child,” Genevra let her know.
Camelee decided to keep her mouth shut. It really wasn’t any of her business what the child believed. She would stay out of it.
Akkar protested when she wanted to go, but she invited him to join them and she did it with a smile that left him blushing and chuckling, like the guys she remembered from her first year of college. Only this one hadn’t saved her from that Dane who was about to give her a hard kick. He’d saved the soldier from having to suffer under the chief. But—Akkar was honest. And she liked that about him.
“I have always wanted to be a warrior,” he told her while they walked through the camp with her on one side and Hild on the other with Genevra on the outside. “My father was a farmer, and not interested in the fighting. He didn’t understand my heart’s desire.”
“That must have been difficult for you,” Genevra said, listening.
He turned to her and his gaze on her softened. “It was.”
“Did you run away, Akkar?” Camelee asked him. If he did, he had lied to Wolf.
He shook his head. “I informed my father of my intentions to leave. He shrugged. He did not care.”
Camelee clamped down her teeth then fought to open her mouth to bite out, “The love of a parent, huh? What a laugh.”
“Though I do not have any children,” Genevra told her, “I believe a parent’s love is the sincerest, the purest, and given without condition love there is.”
Camelee smiled politely at her. “I don’t believe that.”
“What has caused you not to believe it?”
She breathed in deeply. At first, she was going to refuse to answer. But maybe she was here to learn some sort of lesson and once she learned it, she could return home. Therehadto be a purpose to all of this, a way home when the purpose was accomplished.
“My parents abandoned me to an orphanage when I was a baby.”
