“There’s more,” Syril says, lifting a hand. “All the warriors but Mirador successfully banded to Divhs that day until he took off the crown. Only then could he band to a Divh, and he understood that the crown gave him rule, but not connection. For reasons of his own, he chose connection.”
I stare at her. “That’s why he gave his crown to the First House. And why no warrior—ever—has worn that crown since…if it even still exists. But how is it that no oneknowsany of this, how is it…” I fall silent then, once again answering my own question. While Mirador had managed to call the skrill tohim, it was Ehlyn, not Mirador, who’d successfully summoned the Divhs. By all accounts, it was the Divhs who saved the Protectorate. Whether another mancouldhave summoned them doesn’t matter—a woman had.
Syril nods as she sees awareness darken my expression. “So now you understand. This is a story only outcasts can tell, Lady Talia. And even then…we whisper.”
Before she can continue, her gaze sharpens. Without another word, she nods to me, then dissolves into the shadows.
“Lady Talia.” I look up to see Fortiss striding toward me, concern etched over his face. “You should be sleeping. Above all the others, you need to conserve your strength.”
I smile as he hunkers down beside me. “How’s Tennet? His burns are healed, but he doesn’t seem to be improving as fast as he should.”
“He’s…getting there. But Tennet’s connection with Ayne is more powerful than mine with Szonja. In many ways, I’ve made a study of it, as I hope to achieve that same link with Szonja one day. For now, however, it’s serving to keep him in a constant loop of fury and fire, as he fights to save those who are already dead. Not only those who died the night of this most-recent attack, but all who have died at the mercy of the skrill and the Sahktar, all the waves of darkness that have tumbled over the mountains for centuries. The site of the Eighth House is an ancient, ancient place. A city reborn on itself time over time, swallowed by the mountains and reborn again. Something is tying Tennet to it as a protector, and with Ayne as his Divh, he sees not only the failed protections of the moment, but of centuries.”
He eyes me with a bemused smile. “If I didn’t know better, I would say it was because you and he were fated mates, with a tie that binds you both to protect this great land. But, as I’ve already said, I don’t want to accept that, Talia. I really don’t.” He sighs,glancing away from me, as if making an admission to the Light itself. “I can’t.”
His possessiveness stirs something warm in my chest, a feeling I’d never expected to welcome. With most men, such a claim would feel stifling, but with Fortiss…it simply feels honest and true.
The firelight catches on his features, illuminating a strength that isn’t just physical, and that doesn’t need to diminish others to prove itself. When Fortiss looks at me, I don’t feel like a trophy to be won or a position to be claimed. I feel seen—simply seen—for exactly who I am.
What a wonder that is.
Still, I regard him with a bald, hopeful curiosity I work hard to hide. Something has shifted in Fortiss. The man I met a month ago wouldn’t have laid claim so boldly over anything—least of all me. And I want that claim, I realize. I want him. I wantthis,and only this. Nothing and no one else matters.
A warrior should make her decision in seven breaths.
Chapter 42
One. “Walk with me?” I ask, sitting up. I try not to look at him directly, instead focusing somewhere vaguely over his shoulder while my heart gallops forward all fists and feet, like Gent racing across a distant ridge.
Fortiss shakes his head, his expression immediately turning to one of concern. “Talia, no. You should rest.”
Two. I push my hair out of my face, straightening my clothes, and rake my gaze across his face. He’s worried over me—ordinarily, I’d welcome that, but I don’t need him to think of me as some injured warrior. Not tonight.
I offer him a casual, easy smile.Three. “I’m done with resting, Fortiss. There’s a river here, and I, for one, need a bath.”Four. “This far from the Eighth House, I can only pray I’ve cleared enough of the ash of the Western Realms to take advantage of it.”
“A bath?” He blinks at me.
Five. Before he can object, I roll off the pallet and stand, shoving down the dizziness that I feel at the sudden elevation change. I brush by him, but he easily falls into step as I lead him away from where the sick beds are clustered. There are fewer of those beds tonight, I see, and my heart skips a little in relief.
Then it skips some more as I realize Fortiss has quickened his step, drawing up close behind me.Six.
“It’s off to the right,” he murmurs, taking my hand. “This way. We should stay together.”
Seven, and it’s done.
I swallow down another rush of emotion, so intense it borders on hysteria. What’s wrong with me? It’s not like Fortiss and I are strangers to each other. And yet in many ways, we are. We’ve gone through so much in such a short time that every day it’s as if we’ve been forged in fire all over again.
Will he want me the way he did before the great battle? Before I saved him and lost my connection to Gent? Am I just a warrior to him now, not a woman?
I blow all these fears out in a quick exhale. “No one will be looking for us, will they?” I ask quietly as we step into the woods.
Fortiss squeezes my hand, and my heart nearly surges straight out of my chest.
“Not until morning,” he murmurs back. “Thank the Light.”
It takes us no more than a quarter hour to reach the river, far enough away from the camp for privacy, but not so much that should danger come we would be useless to help defend our party. If anything, at least for Fortiss, the distance would allow him to call upon his Divh and she would help carry him into the fight.
With an intuition I don’t know whether to credit to him or to the books of magic he’s been consulting, Fortiss speaks to me in the darkness, spinning tales of possibility. “You will regain your connection to Gent, you know,” he murmurs. “You had the crown on your head for mere breaths, just enough to free Zhang and me and to forge your connection with the skrill. You can’t be punished for a lifetime for such a brief action. Light, I can’t even call it a mistake. It wasn’t a mistake, as far as I’m concerned. Itsaved my life. It restored Zhang’s freedom. It gave us a glimpse of what the skrill can truly do.”
