“Did you speak with him?” he demanded.
I licked my dry lips and watched as he tracked the movement with his eyes. “Yes. He asked me if you were alive and I told him you were.”
His nostrils flared. I watched him process the words, but he never took his eyes off me during it all.
When he spoke next, I had the faint realization that he softened his voice purposefully as he asked, “Why did you not tell me this yesterday?”
I turned to the basin, dragging my gaze from him.
“Mina,” came his voice. He wanted my gaze and so I gave it to him. “Were you alone when this happened?”
“Yes.”
“He doesn’t know you go into the fog?”
“No,” I whispered. “I don’t think he cares. I think many here wish that I would walk into it and just…not return.”
Those last words twisted from me bitterly. And for a moment, I was ashamed that I said them out loud. Ashamed that I was feeling sorry for myself when I was kneeling next to this horde king, who had been imprisoned and beaten.
And for no reason at all, I reminded myself. The fog would be gone soon regardless of our actions.
The horde king was silent. He watched me dip a cloth into the fresh water I’d brought and wring it out. Gently, I moved forward, dabbing it along his brow before I moved it to the gash over his cheek, right underneath his high cheekbone. I folded the cloth over to a fresher side before I moved to his lip.
The air seemed to grow tighter in the room when I tended to him there. I touched him so gently that I wondered if he could feel me at all.
“Rowin is my name,” he finally grated, his voice rumbly and…soft. As soft as my own touch.
My eyes went to his. I felt my cheeks heat when I saw he was looking at me intently. All of his attention was on me and I had no idea what to do with it.
“One of them,” he amended. “It is the name of my line, the name of my mother’s line, and of my horde.”
His mother?I wondered.
“How many do you have?” I asked. “Names, I mean.”
“Two,” he said. “Though only my father has my given name.”
“Does he live in your horde?” I asked, my eyes on his lips, though I’d moved the cloth to the edge of his jaw, where there was a smear of blood.
Those lips moved when he said, “Nik. Like yours, he is buried in the northlands.”
My breath hitched. My hand stilled.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Those red eyes flashed. “The only thing we are guaranteed in this life,sarkia, from the moment we take our first breath, is that we will die.” I drew away from him. “It is everything in between those two moments that I spend my time dwelling on. My father would not have wanted me to mourn him. He would have wanted me to move forward. For the sake of the horde. And that is what I do.”
That sounded…cold.
Then again, I’d once thought it possible this horde king was carved from stone. Perhaps he was, after all.
But who was I to judge that? He had a world of responsibility on his shoulders and I had none. Of course, we would process loss in a different way.
“Drink before I bloody the water,” I told him, dropping the cloth to the ground and lifting the basin to him.
He drank easily this time, stopping when there was enough to clean the rest of his wounds. I rinsed the cloth once more and went over his face again in silence, thinking about what he’d revealed to me.
“What is it like in your horde?” I asked, a question I’d pondered nearly my entire life. “What is life like there?”
