“I know.”
That does something to me. More than it should.
I lift my gaze to her face. The trembling has eased, but not fully. Her eyes keep returning to the blood on me, maybe because the violence of it lingers.
So I give her the truth she needs.
“When I kill, it is for what is mine and for those under me.”
The words land and stay there.
Her throat works once. “I know that too now.”
Chapter 19
Keandra
The morning after the predator attack, the camp feels different.
I notice it first in the way people look at me now. The women still watch. The men still lower their eyes or glance only briefly when Kaiven is near. No one suddenly smiles and acts as if I have become one of them overnight. But the look has changed. There is less of that first cold measuring, less of the sense that I am something fragile and strange that somehow wandered into the Kai’s tent by mistake.
Now they have seen me in the basin. Seen me afraid, yes. Seen me wrong-footed and untrained, yes. But they also saw me stay on my feet while danger came fast. That matters here. I understand that much now.
It does not make belonging easier.
The camp still wakes before I feel ready for it. Fires still burn low, then rise. Water still has to be hauled, food cut, hides checked, animals seen to, children watched, tools mended, routes planned. Life here does not stop for a woman’s feelings. The predator attack did not change that. If anything, itsharpened it. Work continues because work must. Survival does not wait for people to settle emotionally.
Still, something has shifted. When I step out of Kaiven’s tent that morning, one of the older women who used to look through me as if I were inconvenient smoke passes me a basket of flatbread without being asked. No smile. No words. Just the basket, held out with a quick efficient nod before she moves on.
I take it, startled enough that I almost forget to say thank you.
She only grunts and keeps walking.
Later, at the water line, one of the younger girls shows me with two quick gestures where to stand so I do not get splashed by the runoff from a heavier bucket being poured. Again, no fuss. No friendliness dressed up to make me feel better. Just practical help, offered as if it is obvious I should not be standing in the worst place when there is no reason for it.
I am beginning to understand that this rasha does not hand out warmth carelessly.
The women speak more freely around me now too. Not kindly, exactly, but with less of that first guarded silence, as though the attack proved I am not made of spun glass and panic. I catch more words than before. Not because my Tigris has improved much in only a few days. Because people have stopped speaking around me like I am a temporary object and started speaking with the expectation that I will hear, learn, and remain.
That matters too.
At the morning fire, Oshara sends me to help sort dried herbs from fresh gather cuttings salvaged after yesterday’s interrupted work. I kneel where indicated and begin separating leaves by color and smell the way I was shown the day before. Some I know now. Some I do not. The women correct me when I make a mistake. One taps the back of my hand lightly and moves a bitter stem into the discard bowl. Another makes me smell two nearlyidentical leaves until I can tell which one is safe to steep and which one is only for wound wash.
There is no praise. There is no scorn either. Only expectation.
At one point, a woman near the end of the circle says something in Tigris that makes two others glance at me and then at the mark hidden beneath my wrap. The word for courage is in there. Or maybe stubborn. I am not sure. I catch Sahri, and then something else is said with a short grunt that might mean the same thing. The women’s mouths shift slightly. Not smiles exactly. But not hard either.
I keep my hands on the herbs and my face lowered, pretending not to notice.
Inside, something loosens.
Surviving beside them is not the same thing as being one of them. I still do not know where to put my hands half the time. I watch other women before sitting, rising, or stepping into shared work space. I do not know which children belong to which mothers without pausing to think. I need words translated. I still jump at sounds in the grass. I still wake some mornings with one hand flying to my shoulder before I fully remember where I am.
More than once during the day, I catch myself noticing where Kaiven is in camp without even trying. He is not always near. A king cannot spend every hour beside his wife, not in a place like this. But I begin to register him the way I have begun to register the weather. The sound of his voice near the warrior fire. The sudden straightening of younger men when he passes. The way space makes itself around him without seeming to. The fact that I can feel, even from halfway across camp, when his attention turns toward me.
That should irritate me.
Sometimes it still does. Mostly, after the basin, it steadies me more than I want to admit.
