I thought about this Davik before me now. Then I thought of the Mad Horde King, with his storm of rage brewing underneath. How opposite they were.
His eyes locked with mine. His gaze dropped to my lips and I realized I was smiling at him. I ducked my head, biting my lip to hide it, as silence stretched out in thevoliki.
The horde king turned back to Lokkaru. “You told me of your mother, of yourlomma. And your father. Do you remember?”
A long breath escaped her. When I looked at her, I was surprised to see the tears glimmering in her gaze.
“Lysi,” she said. “Of course I remember, though not what I said.”
This will take time, I realized, my shoulders dropping slightly. There were only three weeks until the black moon and we hadn’t even begun to search for the heartstone yet.
“Nik,” she said, her eyes darting around thevoliki, like she was seeing something we couldn’t. “That is not true. I remember. I rememberLomma. She told me…what was it? She told me love grows and it grows true, as long as it is nourished. Like my father.”
Davik caught my eyes again. He shook his head once, though IsworeI spied relief in this expression.
“You must be hungry,cossa,” she said to me. “You look hungry.”
She held out a bowl of something dark blue and mashed. I took it from her. Then she presented me with another small plate of flat, beige-colored circles. She peeled away the top layer, scooped up the blue mash with it, and folded it neatly inside. Then she pinched the circle closed until it was neat before giving it to me.
“Good for the womb,” she informed me, looking at the wrapped beige ball in my hand. “Kasbaroot.”
The womb?
Davik made a chuffing sound in his throat and my face flamed with realization.
She thought…she thought that Davik and I…
I stuffed the ball into my mouth to avoid saying anything, to avoid meeting the horde king’s gaze. I looked anywhere but at him and my eyes caught on another table in thevoliki. On it was a smaller basin fire that was heating what looked like animal fat in a clear jar, melting it into a liquid.
Next to the basin was a bucket, a stick wrapped in twine lying across it. I realized what it was. She was a candle maker. That was when I saw all the candles around hervoliki, most melted down into pools, though none were lit now. Their color was chalky white, but back at my village, one of the women had made wax with vibrant colors, using things she’d foraged from the forest for dye.
An idea came to me. My grandmother had become quite forgetful in her old age too. Her memories came and went. Some were gone forever but others returned. I’d noticed that she remembered the most when she was nottryingto remember. She would tell me stories as she wove strands of fiber together for a blanket or a shawl, stories she might not have told me otherwise.
“Do you make candles?” I asked Lokkaru softly, gesturing over to the table, the taste of thekasbaroot lingering in my mouth. It had a pleasantly sweet yet spicy aftertaste and the circle she’d wrapped it in was a thin dough, chewy and soft.
Her eyes followed my hand and her spine straightened when she saw her crafting station. “Lysi.”
“Will you teach me how to make them?” I requested. I gave her a soft smile when her eyes returned to mine, when her head tilted. “I’ve always wanted to learn.”
The Ghertun could see in the dark very easily, so there had been little use for candles, or fires, orlightunderneath the Dead Mountain.
The idea excited her. When I glanced over at Davik, he was regarding me with a stoic, almost calculating expression.
“Lysi,lysi,” Lokkaru said, rising from the table with surprising ease.
“A woman in my village used to add dye to the wax to make them colorful,” I told her. She rounded on me with an intrigued expression. “Perhaps we could try to add dye for some of them.”
Her expression was lively with the possibility. That mischievous smile was back. “We could steal driedkuverifrom Arinu.”
My brows rose.
“Terun,” the horde king said, shaking his head. “Though you do not regard given names with importance, others do not feel the same. I have already told you this.”
My gaze flashed up to Davik’s and his jaw tensed when he saw me looking. His words were a reminder of last night. I knew his given name now. He’d asked me to say it, over and over, before he’d…
Before he’d kissed me. Again.
I cleared my throat.
