I wondered how I would react had our positions been reversed. Likely in the same exact way.
I took his hand, pressing it to my heart. I could feel the thud of it against his warm palm. I watched a shudder race through his large body, as if he was remembering when it was still.
“You feel it now,” I whispered to him. “It beats. Foryou. Because of you. Never forget that.”
“Mina,” he growled.
But I saw him beginning to understand. I saw him beginning to accept that this wasn’t a dream. This was real. I was here.With him.
And it was here I would remain.
“I need to hold you,” he rasped, his arms sliding tighter around me. “I need to feel you.”
And for a long time, he did just that.
* * *
Late into the night,as the celebrations of the horde began to die down and the moonlight speared through the venting hole at the top of thevoliki, we continued to lay side by side. Looking at one another, for we had not taken our gazes off one another once.
His arms were wrapped around my waist, his knee pushed between my thighs. Every now and again, he smoothed his hand through my hair.
And when the time felt right, I whispered, “Wrune, what’s happened? What happened after my shield fell?”
Though I felt his muscles tense at my request, my husband did not deny me.
And so I listened.
I listened as he told me that the Dead Mountain fell, though the reality of thatmagnitudeof power—power required to topple a mountain—whether it was my own or thesarkia’sor both, left me reeling.
I listened as he told me about the wariness of the horde, that many wanted to leave the eastlands after the fog surged.
I listened as he told me about theVorakkarof Rath Drokka and his queen, who had arrived earlier that morning.
“Will I meet them?” I asked him.
“Of course you will,” he murmured. “When you wish.”
I listened as he told me about the Orala Pass being frozen over, the grim confession in his voice when he told me the priestesses could not be reached for another season. Our calls for aid would be unheard…or knowingly unanswered. They couldn’t be certain if the priestesses had received messages from thethespers.
Then he told me that the majority of theVorakkarswere on their way to our horde. To reevaluate. To reassess. To formulate a new plan. And he told me theDothikkarhad called them all back to meet inDothik, that he would have to heed the summons within a month’s time.
“So soon?” I murmured, worried for the journey. Worried for his absence from the horde.
“Lysi,” he murmured. “But I am here now. And I will make sure the horde is settled in a new territory, far from the east, before I will journey toDothik. Perhaps we will go to the north?”
My breath hitched. He’d mentioned something about returning to the northlands before.
“Towards your grandfather’ssaruk?” I questioned.
“If you would like to see it,” he murmured.
“I would,” I told him. I wanted to see where he’d grown up.
“And along the path we take to journey there, we can find your father’s grave. So you may visit him.”
The sentiment behind the words made my throat tighten.
“Really?” I whispered. I knew, from my studies of the maps of Dakkar, that that path would add days, if not a full week, of travel.
