The golden marks beneath my bandages seem to pulse with warmth, as if responding to her proximity. I pray she doesn't notice the faint glow seeping through the white cloth.
"I serve you," I whisper. "That's all I know how to do."
She releases my chin and stands, towering over me. "Be very careful, little ant. Even the smallest insects get crushed beneath boots when they forget their place."
My heart thumps impatiently, but not with fear this time. No, with something angry and impatient. And I worry it's only growing.
20
GALTHAN
Ipace the length of my tent like a caged beast, my boots wearing a path in the rough canvas floor. The walls feel too close, the air too thin. Every muscle in my body coils tighter with each passing moment.
She's with Rytha. Right now, as I stand here doing nothing, that cruel bitch has her claws in the one person who?—
I slam my fist into the tent pole, making the whole structure shudder. The sharp crack of bone against wood does nothing to ease the rage burning in my chest.
What is this? This relentless, consuming need that claws at my insides like a living thing? I've bedded females before. Taken what I wanted, given what was expected, moved on without a backward glance. War makes simple creatures of us all.
But this... this is different. This is madness.
I think of her hands, torn and bleeding from scrubbing stone with nothing but her shirt. I think of her kneeling in the dirt while Rytha sneers down at her like she's something foul. I think of those golden eyes, wide with terror when the goddess marked her, and the way she whispered my name in the darkness like a prayer.
The tent walls close in further. I need air. I need space. I need to stop thinking about how she felt beneath my hands, how she tasted, how she looked at me like I was something more than a weapon forged for killing.
I shove through the entrance flap and stride into the pre-dawn gloom. The camp sleeps around me, snores drifting from a dozen tents, cook fires reduced to glowing embers. My breath mists in the cold air, but the chill does nothing to cool the fire in my blood.
My feet carry me without conscious thought through the winding paths between pavilions, past sleeping guards and hobbled horses. The festival grounds stretch before me, abandoned and ghostly in the weak starlight.
And there, at the center of it all, burns the pyre.
It shouldn't still be burning. Days have passed since the goddess first lit those flames, and despite bucket after bucket of water thrown on the wood, despite every attempt to douse it, the fire burns as bright as ever. Golden tongues of flame dance against the darkness, casting shifting shadows across the empty square.
I stop before it, tilting my head back to stare into those impossible flames. Heat washes over my face, but it's nothing compared to the heat that's been building inside me since the moment I saw Thalia's arm burst into golden light.
"Goddess." My voice sounds rough, foreign to my own ears. I've never been one for prayer, never believed much in divine intervention. Orcs make their own fate with steel and blood.
But here I stand, talking to a fire that won't die.
"Is this your will? Your truth?" The flames flicker higher, as if responding to my words, but that could be nothing more than wind. "Guide me, Goddess, if this is you, real and showing me my path."
Silence answers me. The fire crackles and pops, wood shifting in the eternal heat, but no divine voice whispers wisdom in my ear. No golden light descends to illuminate my choices.
Just flame. Just heat. Just the endless burning that started when Thalia knelt before me with her offering.
I laugh, short and bitter. "Of course. Leave me to figure it out myself."
The irony tastes like ash on my tongue. Here I am, a warrior who's spent his life following orders, making simple choices between life and death, victory and defeat. Now I'm begging a silent fire for answers to questions I don't even know how to ask.
What I want is to give in. To stop fighting this need that tears at me like claws. To follow her scent through the camp, tear down Rytha's tent, and claim what my body screams is mine.
But duty chains me here. Honor. The weight of two clans' expectations. The betrothal that will bring peace and prosperity to both our peoples.
All of it crumbling to ash because of one small human who healed my wounds and looked at me like I mattered and the Goddess agreed.
The crunch of footsteps on frost-hardened ground breaks my reverie. I don't turn—I know that measured gait, the way each step carries the weight of decades.
"Restless nights breed restless thoughts."
