Iryana summoned one of her arrow forgings and threw it at him sideways. Pyetar grunted softly as he swatted it away, and Iryana couldn’t help but smirk. He always seemed to bring out a part of her that was unguarded and reckless.
“Stop whining,” she ordered. “Do you believe in me so little that you think I need to sacrifice you to help my family?”
He shook his head at her, but his expression softened.
“Since you are not planning to interrogate me on my brother’s behalf, can I ask you something?”
“No.”
“Iryana.” Her name was a plea.
The sound of her name.A slight shiver trickled up from the base of her spine.
“Fine.”
“What happened between you and your family? You weren’t living with them, and didn’t seem to be close. But you clearly care deeply about them,” he trailed off.
Iryana didn’t know if she wanted to answer, if she even could. After dredging it all up for her forging, she wasn’t keen to touch those wounds inside her. They were still raw.
His expression darkened, and Pyetar turned away, seeming to draw his own conclusions.
She couldn’t stand seeing that look on his face again. Suddenly, she didn’t want to push him away again. For one moment, perhaps she could pretend she was someone else, someone for whom opening up was easy.
“Those years after the dakii came,” she started, but her throat tightened. It took a few shaky breaths before she could continue. She could feel Pyetar’s eyes on her, but she kept her own diverted to the trees. “Those years, we were fleeing for our lives, losing each other and losing our homes over and over again. It wasthe hardest thing I think anyone in my family had ever gone through. But the years after that, once we were settled and had a home, a great wall to hide behind, were even harder for me.
“Seeing what the fighting had done to us, how some of us were permanently changed. Sometimes people can be so twisted and warped they don’t fit together anymore, not without hurting each other. It changed me, I think. And I didn’t fit in; I couldn’t breathe around them. I just kept messing up, and they couldn’t understandwhy.
“I wasn’t alone the whole time we lived at the post. For a while, I lived with my parents. And then my mom left. And then my dad passed.” It was such a gentle word for how he was at the end.
“And you were alone?”
“So were my sisters.” Iryana squeezed her bow tighter. “But they fit in at the main house; they had the rest of the family to lean on.”
He looked like he had swallowed his first response, a conflicted look crossing his face. But he just said, “You have sisters?”
“Two.”
“Do you miss them?”
Iryana wasn’t sure how to answer. It wasn’t just that she missed them; there was a place in her heart that ached for them constantly. That struggled with the years she had missed, especially with Misha and how fast she was growing up. Did they even consider her their sister anymore?
“Yeah,” she breathed. “I miss them.”
They walked quietly for a few minutes, listening for anything other than the soft crunch beneath their feet and the occasional light-footed scamper from in the trees. Iryana felt raw, like she had agitated a barely healing wound.
“I know what you mean about the dakii changing people.”
Iryana looked over at him. “Yeah?”
“My father was already general of the 18th Brigade when the dakii came, stationed in the hills between the great rivers. My brother was sixteen, a man in the army’s eyes, stationed with the 18th as part of his final training. But I was far too young to have enlisted yet. I was at home with my mother when it all began. I had started some training with private instructors my father had hired, but mostlyI studied with my tutors, read books and played with the other children where we lived. Gave my mother plenty of trouble.”
He smiled slightly at that, though his eyes were sad.
She couldn’t picture it, Pyetar as a small child running around playing tag and being a nuisance to his mother.
It was nice being able to talk about, though. Nice to not be avoiding each other.
“My mother knew we wouldn’t survive on our own.” Pyetar sighed regretfully. “So before things got too bad, she brought us to where the 18th were stationed. It was bad. Terrible, really. The brigade used to be far bigger—a vast army of soldiers you couldn’t help but feel safe with. Yet their numbers bled from the army as if it had an open wound. It was like a siege, except there was no one left to maintain the supply line, no troops to replace those that were injured, nowhere to retreat to.”
