Ujak looked across the table at Vodan. Mypujeraksaid, “It will be the most dangerous to navigate on our journey. We need to formulate a plan on how best to cross it. The wagons may be too large.”
He said it in a way that told me they’d already been speaking of this. Possibly for some time. And I hadn’t noticed. Not at all.
“With all due respect,Vorakkar,” one of the elders said, “we have been in discussions about our journey for almost two weeks now. And we are nowhere near as prepared as we should be.”
“You have been distracted as of late,Vorakkar,” another elder said quietly. “For the sake of the horde, we need your full attention if we want to be ahead of the thaw.”
When I said nothing, it was Vodan that spoke.
“Let us call the meeting for tonight. The hour is late,” Vodan said to the council. “We will reconvene tomorrow morning.”
The fire burning in the basin crackled loudly at mypujerak’swords. I felt a twisting bitterness in my chest for only a moment before I pushed it down. Deeper and deeper down, as I had done for the last two weeks.
“Lysi,” I murmured. “Enough for tonight.”
I didn’t miss the look the elders exchanged among one another. Nor did I acknowledge Ujak when he inclined his head and said his goodbye for the evening. The elders shuffled out after him, after pulling on their pelts, but I remained standing at the high table, staring down at the map of Dakkar, left alone with Vodan.
“Seerin.”
Turning away from the table, I pulled on my pelt. I didn’t want to return to myvoliki, where I still smelled her on my furs, but I certainly didn’t want to be alone with mypujerakeither.
“Seerin, I have never seen you like this,” Vodan said quietly, rooted in his place. “When will it end?”
It will not end, I thought, knowing it was the truth. I believed this was permanent. It certainly felt permanent…this numbness. Except for brief flashes of emotion, I was simply existing.
“Seerin!” Vodan growled.
Piercing and sharp, I felt another flash and turned around to face him.
“What do you want from me, Vodan?” I rasped.
“I want you to act like theVorakkaryou are! This cannot go on.”
“I have done everything you wanted,” I told him. “If you are unhappy with the outcome—”
“I did not ask for you to act likethis,” he growled. With my fists clenching at my sides, I struggled to push my anger down now. Already, the emotions were packed too tightly, one on top of the other. Another would make me burst wide open, like a festering, unhealed wound. “It has been two weeks, Seerin. I thought that perhaps this obsession with thevekkiriwould pass already.”
“Obsession?” I repeated softly.
He knew it was the wrong word to pick. Anger bled from me, thickening the air in the tent until it was almost suffocating. In the last two weeks,thiswas the first time I’d felt such raw, aching, fierce emotion. I could suppress it no longer.
“I love her,” I growled, though it was something he already knew. How could he not know? He knew me better than anyone. He knew I would not be this swayed by an ‘obsession.’
“Seerin—”
I took a step closer to him. “After I took her from her village, you asked me something. You asked me what she’d said to me. You asked me what she’d said to make me take her away.”
Vodan remembered that moment well. Nelle had been passed out from the pain, bleeding. He’d helped me clean her wounds.
“It wasn’t what she said,” I told him, holding his gaze. “It was what Isaw. It was what Kakkari showed methroughher. In her eyes.”
Vodan’s lips pressed together.
“I’ve felt Kakkari in me for a long time. I felt her when I first saw you. I know why she led me to you…because we created this. We built this horde together, as we were always meant to. She knew you would be a good and loyal friend to me,” I said, though my lips twisted as I said the words. “And I to you.”
He looked to the ground as I felt everything I’d dampened for the past two weeks emerge in one startling rush. All the grief and anger and loss and betrayal and longing. All theguiltfor hurting her. All the self-hatred for betraying her trust.
At night, all I saw was the realization in her eyes the moment she knew I was pushing her away. And it haunted me to the point where I’d barely slept. It gutted me, watching her confusion, her disbelief, her heartbreak. She’d always been so expressive. I could read her so easily…and I’d seen everything. Every painful, disturbing detail.
