Most of all I try to will away the images in my mind—of Taar in his final struggle, the chaeora cords biting into his flesh. Of the ravening horror he became, so that I could no longer recognize my own brother’s face.
Of Shanaera’s knife, plunging into his heart.
It’s no use. The whole scene plays out in my memory again and again and again. Quakes reverberate through my body as I squeeze my eyes tighter, but nothing I do can make me unsee it. His death will live in my mind for the rest of my life. However long that may be.
Only a small part of me is aware of Halamar’s presence. He shifted from his side of the cell and placed himself beside me. At some point, I’m not sure when, his arm slips around my shoulders and tugs. It doesn’t take more than that—I crumple against him, and when next I come to myself, I am sobbing into his neck and shoulder. Sobbing like some foolish child who has never seen death before, not like a woman who witnessed the destruction of her entire world before she’d even cut her adult teeth. But it doesn’t seem to matter to Halamar. He holds me, rocks me, and I weep until I can weep no more. Then I simply lean against him, shuddering.
It's his scent more than anything that draws me back. I always thought Halamar smelled like azhorwolf—the musk of the hunt and the spice of secret green glades. I used to crave that scent, back in the days long ago, when I thought we would spend our lives shoulder-to-shoulder, fighting the odds at each other’s side.
Now, suddenly, it reminds me of how unfair this situation is. Did I not long to comfort Halamar like this when his licorneir died, and he became hearttorn? But Halamar had retreated into himself, into his grief, leaving me out in the cold.
My teeth grinding, I plant a hand on his chest and push away from him. He lets me go easily enough; too easily, damn him. I sit upright and dash tears from my cheeks, while he rests his elbows on his knees and stares into the empty space before him. Firming my features into hard lines, I sniff once and break the long silence.
“Kildorath will have us killed.”
Halamar grunts.
“He will have to,” I continue. “As a demonstration to the warriors. They were on the brink of turning against him, when they saw . . . when they realized . . .” My words trail away. I’d managed to tell Halamar some garbled version of what had taken place in the Moon Chamber, but find I cannot bear to speak of it again. Not directly. I give my head a short shake. “Of course they didn’t turn. Not even Saidatha. She just wept. Useless.” My lip curls at my own teary-eyed hypocrisy, but I continue. “And Thuridar threw me back down here at his new chieftain’s command.”
“They’re afraid,” Halamar says quietly. “Afraid of what their world has suddenly become. Desperate for someone to take charge, to make order out of chaos.”
“Order?” I scoff. “Saidatha saw her own husband, covered in death wounds, walking under the influence of Miphates’ magic. You’d think a little chaos was in keeping with the circumstances.”
I run a hand down my face, wishing I could rub the numbness and exhaustion out of my very soul. “Maybe they can be turned,” I start to muse, but stop myself. Those words . . . they sounded dangerously like hope. And hope requires both more courage and more strength than I currently have to spare. “He’ll need to make a demonstration of our deaths,” I continue instead, picking up my original line of thought. “It . . . probably won’t be pleasant.”
Halamar, ever eloquent, grunts again.
“He’ll want it to be shocking. Something so horrible, no one will even think to question his will again. They all know he . . . he meant to wed me. If he orders me dismembered or burned alive, what won’t he do to the rest of them?” I state the words clearly, without a tremble in my voice.
But Halamar speaks then, in a low rumble: “He will not harm you.”
“What?” I look at him sharply.
“He will kill me. I will be the example. But you he will spare.”
“No, Halamar, that’s not how—”
“Because you will marry him.”
“What?”The word bursts from my lips in something akin to a laugh. I shake my head in disgust. “You’re mad, you know.”
But Halamar turns his head then, catching my gaze. “You must marry Kildorath, Tassa. You are the only hope for Licorna now. They have chosen a madman to be their chief, but you can bring strength, wisdom, and order to these people in their hour of greatest need.”
My lip curls. “I will never marry him. He killed my brother.”
“Shanaera killed your brother.”
“She held the knife. But Kildorath ordered him to be bound and stood by as she did it. He bears equal guilt.”
Halamar shrugs. “That is the way of kings and queens. The dance of life and death, the perilousness of rule. You know this.”
“Oh, so that makes it all right for me to marry him then?” I nearly spit, so thick is the bile rising in my gorge. “I won’t do it,Halamar. I would rather burn.”
Halamar drops his head, staring down at the empty space between his own upraised knees. He draws a long breath, holds it, lets it out slowly. Then: “I have seen many terrible things in my life, Tassa. War and pain. Suffering beyond description. I have endured the ordeal ofvelrhoarand, when I begged the gods for death, been made to go on living through it. After that, no death holds any real fear for me. Neither flaying nor flagellation, burning nor dismemberment. It is but momentary, and I will bear it if that is what the gods require of me. But . . .”
His voice trails away for a moment. When he speaks again, the calm, even tone he has steadily maintained in all our interactions these past three years is gone, replaced with something frighteningly vulnerable. A voice on the verge of breaking. “But I cannot watch you burn. That is too much, too far. I beg you, Tassa, please, do not ask it of me. Let Kildorath’s wrath fall on me alone. Let me stand in your place and spare you.”
I stare at him by the light of the setting sun, which offers only the barest gleam down here in this pit. In that strange dimness, I glimpse again the man he once was. The man who loved me. The man I believed would always be mine.
