“Six.” He pulled his knees up, leaning his back against the cool rock as Lory sat down next to him. “And Elina was barely a year old.”
So young…
Eying her from the side, he played the question back at her. “How old wereyou?”
“When your parents died?”
Raising a brow, Khayrivven cocked his head. “Whenyourparents died.”
“I never said they were both dead. But fourteen when Mom died. My father was never interested in Evven or me. At least, he said as much when he turned us away when we went to see him—” The memory of the man with the dark hair and stern eyes would haunt her forever. The absolute disdain on his face?—
A small flinch ran through Khayrivven’s body as he studied her. “I’m sorry.” Those words from his mouth nearly brought tears to her eyes, despite how she’d sworn to herselfshe’d never shed a tear about the man who didn’t want them. And perhaps he wasn’t even truly interested in her story. Perhaps, he only leaped into this conversation so she wouldn’t ask about the Amrin Mountains and what awaited her there.
Shaking her head at him, she led the canteen to her mouth and washed the tears down with lukewarm water.
His fingers wrapped around hers, thumb brushing the back of her palm, and a shiver ran through Lory at the intimacy of the gesture.
Khayrivven didn’t say anything else as he stretched out on his side, head a few inches from Lory’s hip, and closed his eyes, his hand still tightly wrapped around hers.
The mountains werea chain of brown and green a few miles ahead when Lory finally worked up the courage to ask Khayrivven if he expected her to die on this mission, her arms wrapped around his waist and her cheek resting against his shoulder where the sabers weren’t in the way.
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
They hadn’t talked about what happened at Lu’Shen’s. Neither had they as much as kissed, and Lory couldn’t find the courage to confront him about what that moment away from the rest of the world had meant.
Beneath her hands, his rock-hard abs made her want to trace every single line, to take the time to learn his body rather than the quick, heated experience they’d shared when she’d been driven by primal need, but holding hands seemedto have become the only type of closeness he allowed with what lay ahead of them.
“We’ll reach the base camp in an hour. There you’ll get the equipment you’ll need to survive in the mountains.” His voice was a comforting rumble, but the meaning of his words made Lory’s stomach clench. “The rebels have been squatting along the mountain paths for years. Our goal is to make travel safe again so trading routes can be opened and we become independent of the sea routes. Criulias might have a faction striving for independence, but the majority of its people rely on trade with the capital. Knowledge, weapons, precious metals, and rich fabrics.”
Sen Dunai might have been a desert province, but they had some of the best craftspeople Brestolya had to offer; every child in Brestolya knew that.
“Sea routes are dangerous, and with Dunai’s inland position, accessibility through land routes is more efficient—not to speak of the volatile weather situations along the Bay of Hope in the northwest of Brestolya. We lose too many ships, and we also need the goods Criulias has to offer. Livestock, grains.”
Lory didn’t think she’d ever heard Khayrivven talk that much.
“Our military fleet isn’t meant to be repurposed into merchant ships, and our captains refuse to take on the daunting journey to Lapia. The Naolapian capital is tucked away between mountains and a narrow bay where more ships have sunk than we can afford.”
The steady rhythm of Caramel’s trot swayed Lory against Khayrivven’s back, the pain in her backside faded to a dullthrob and her sore muscles resigned to dangling limply left and right of the stallion’s flanks.
“So, Sen Dunai is desperate?”
A dark chuckle ran through Khayrivven’s body. “That depends on how you definedesperate.”
“How doyoudefine desperate?”
The responding glance he shot at her over his shoulder made her toes curl in her boots. “Desperate is what I’ve been every minute since I left you in that Guardians-damned room, wondering if I’d ever see you again, and if I did, you’d ever look at me the way you did before I told you what I did.”
Before he’d admitted to his shame and guilt.
No matter if he’d been a mere boy when Elina was taken, that he’d been forced to fight his own people, Lory knew that nothing she said would change the way he felt right now, so she wordlessly slid her hand up to his chest, placing it right over his heart.
His palm covered hers as they rode toward what could become Lory’s last day.
For a few minutes, Lory savored the silent closeness, trying not to think of why they were there or what might happen, but as the sun was crawling toward the edge of the world in the west, not even the steady beat of Khayrivven’s heart could calm her. “What did the Triad say I am to do in the mountains? Do they expect me to fight the rebels?” Why the word tasted so bitter on her tongue, Lory couldn’t tell. Perhaps it had something to do with the way Sen Dunai seemed to be trying to keep the Criulian resistance out of the public focus.
Khayrivven shook his head. “Not this time.” He shifted in the saddle, drawing Lory’s hand back to his stomach and taking Caramel’s reins in both his hands as they slowed to a walk.
“This is a trial made specifically for you, Lory. They could have tested you at the Ward, but they are testing my loyalties, too. They want to see if I’ll stand by and watch as you go into danger.”
