“I’m sorry,” I whispered, stroking his chest, feeling his solid heartbeat underneath my thumb. “I’m sorry,sailon.”
The affectionate name made his eyes flare. One of his hands slid up from the curve of my waist, glancing over my outer breasts. Being with him like this felt natural. Letting him touch me like this, feeling his eyes on me felt as natural as breathing.
“It was long after mylomma’sburial when he finally could,” he said. “My grandmother said she watched him fall in love with me in that single moment, where before there had been hatred in his eyes. But not hatred for me. Hatred for himself.”
“But he named you Wrune,” I murmured, trying to understand.
“Lysi,” he said. “But you see, in Dakkari, the word has another meaning. Ruin can lead to rebirth. It can lead to hope and beginnings.”
My nose stung with realization. “He saw you as his new beginning. After your mother.”
“Lysi,” Wrune rasped, his voice sounding tight. Something in his gaze shifted, however, a moment later. “Though I was his new beginning, he never forgot the past. He carried it with him. Every moment of every day. He held onto his guilt, his shame, his love, his torment. Because if he had never loved my mother, if he had never risen through the ranks of thedarukkars, if he had never married her, if he had never lain with her…then in his mind she would still be alive. He thought thathewas her true ruin, her true death. And nothing could sway him from that belief. He thought that Kakkari had warned him with my sister’s birth. That he deserved punishment for planting the seed within my mother again.”
“But they loved each other,” I murmured. “Didn’t he remember that?”
“He did.” He took in a deep breath and my hands rose on his chest with it. “His mind, however, began to warp after her death. As the years dragged on, he made me his new purpose in life. Because if I had been the price of her life, then it had tomeansomething. I had to be something great.”
“Wrune,” I whispered, hearing a bitterness in his tone that made my belly sink with dread.
His hand came to cup my own. He dragged it down, pressing my fingers deliberately to small, golden scars that decorated his flesh. One by his abdomen, long and slim. Another across his pectoral, deeper and ragged. Another few by his shoulders, his neck, down his side, over his arms, over his hard belly, on his hip, then the other hip.
He had me trace so many scars that I lost count. Tears filled my eyes but I didn’t let them fall. I understood what he was telling me without him needing to speak a single word.
“That many?” I asked, looking down at him, trying to keep my chin from quivering and my voice from shaking.
Wrune relaxed underneath me.
“He took me out to the frost forests every morning before the sun rose and every evening after our meals, when the rest of thesarukslept,” he said. “He trained me hard. Without mercy. Without reprieve. This scar,” he said, tracing the first I’d touched, the one across his abdomen, “was my first.”
“How old were you?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.
“Two, I suppose,” he murmured and his answer stole my breath. I remembered when Hassan was that age. With plump cheeks and wide, innocent eyes. Clumsy with his movements too since he’d just begun to walk.
I couldn’t stop the tears from falling then. I couldn’t imagine it. I couldn’t imagine a father, no matter how grief-stricken, mercilessly training andscarringhis young son.
“After they married,” Wrune said, “my father no longer wanted to battle. Instead, he became themitri, the weapons master.” He gestured to the sword which I’d pushed up against the bathing tub with my barrier. “He made me that sword. And I have wielded it since I was young because he believed that it would make me the strongestVorakkarour world had ever seen.”
I stared at the blade. I knew how much Wrune cared for it. Sharpening it, cleaning it, polishing and oiling the steel of the hilt.
My husband’s lips lifted into a humorless smile. “It was around this time I began to understand that my father was not…all right. When my grandmother discovered the scars, she was horrified. And yet, my grandfather was swayed by my father.”
“He let him continue?” I asked, wide-eyed in disbelief.
“Lysi,” he murmured. “I was the last of his line. My grandfather’s line, which had long boasted of great horde kings, was coming to an end. The name of Rath Rowin would die with him unless I made the name great again. That was my father’s dream, keeping my mother’s line alive. And after the death of his daughter, his only heir, it was my grandfather’s dream as well. So, the training continued. Though it was now even more regimented than before. And that was my childhood, Mina. That was how I grew up. With a father that was half-mad with grief and a grandfather who would stop at nothing for me to continue on with his name.”
I could think of nothing else to do but lean down. My hair fell around us, curtaining us against the outside world. Our eyes connected and a fierce expression came over Wrune’s face as I kissed him gently. He didn’t like talking about this. I saw that. Ifeltit. It hurt him. It made him ache. And I wanted to take it from him. I wanted to take it all.
“Mypattaralways warned me,” Wrune said, a soft whisper against my lips when I pulled away. Smoothing my hand over his cheek, I stilled when he said, “He always warned me that females would be the end of males. That I should never let a female too close or else I would lose myself the way he had lost himself.”
Sobering, I lifted from his lips, straightening. Realization was spreading inside me, hot andrapid. A rush of sudden understanding.
“That I would be ruined the way he had been ruined,” Wrune finished. “I never wanted to be like him. If I allowed myself to love a female, that would be my fate. It had been drilled into my mind even before I knew what my father meant. And so I vowed that I would not take aMorakkarifor love. I vowed that I would only take aMorakkarito strengthen my horde. AMorakkariwho would give me strong sons that would carry on the name of Rowin, long after I was gone. My father and my grandfather made me into aVorakkarand they’d done so mercilessly. The least I could do was repay them with a strong line and a strong horde.”
Such a heavy burden to bear, I thought silently, my vision blurring further with tears. When they rolled down my cheeks, Wrune reached up to brush them away.
And Iunderstoodnow. I understood what he was willing me to understand. About why he was the way he was. Why he’d been so cold and detached once he took me to his horde. Why he’d pushed me away after thetassimara, hardly able to look at me.
Because he’d been afraidIwould be his ruin, just like his father had always warned him about.
