Mariyah gave me her look that meant,What’s with this guy?
“Are you hungry?” I asked after a moment’s hesitation. “I’m not sure what you’re used to eating, but we have plenty.”
“We generally have meat and vegetables with bread. Wine.”
Mariyah and I shared a look of disgust. A meat eater. I shouldn’thave been surprised, but the thought of tearing into flesh that once had a beating heart made my soul quake with horror. “Well, we don’t eat innocent creatures, so you’ll have to settle for things that can’t fight back, like vegetables, grains, and bread.”
“Pity,” he deadpanned. “It sounds like a boring meal without slabs of bloody meat to feast on.”
“Ugh,” Mariyah said, turning away dismissively.
I had the sense that he was joking, though. “Sorry to disappoint—no carcasses on the menu tonight.”
Something flickered across his face then—just the barest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile, but close.
“Will you show me?” he asked. When Mariyah and I looked at him with surprise, he added, “So I will know what I’m eating?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to refuse him—I wanted to go back to letting the alcohol burn in my belly and not think about this man or the enemy land I was about to venture to tomorrow, but then I noticed everyone stealing glances at Commander Talon. Everyone wore various expressions of hostility. I imagined what it would feel like to go to the table alone and serve himself food while everyone watched with barely concealed hate. I stood, slow and reluctant. “Very well.”
“This is so strange,” Mariyah interrupted. “Am I the only one who thinks this is awkward? I mean, didn’t you try to kill each other last time you met? And now Zara’s willing to help you fix a plate?”
I elbowed her and shot her a warning look. Obviously I felt the same way, but I didn’t want to spend my last night here fighting with the man who was supposed to deliver me safely to the emperor tomorrow. The faster I helped him fill a plate, the faster he would hopefully eat and leave. And then we could all finally enjoy the feast.
“My orders were to bring her in alive, so actually, First Daughter Zara was the one trying to killme.”
Mariyah shot me a surprised look. “You weren’t trying to kill her?”
He grinned. “If I were trying to kill her, she’d be dead.”
I laughed. “Is that so? And who was it that got knocked out of the sky?”
“Maybe I let you,” he said, and I rolled my eyes. “No, the truth is, you defeated me, but I survived. I consider the matter settled.” He glanced over at his eagle. “We’d have to ask Neo how he feels, though. He has only just now healed from a broken wing.”
We glanced at the eagle, who looked back at us with the reflection of flames flickering in his enormous eyes.
“Hmm, and what about you, Zara?” Mariyah asked. “How do you feel about calmly talking with the rider who tried to hunt you down?”
A flash of that moment, where I realized he was far more skilled than me, when I feared Shazeera really might be killed, went through my mind. HowdidI feel about it? Everything had happened so fast with their arrival and the treaty that I hadn’t had the chance to really think about it. An echo of that fear slammed through me now, its reverberations making my blood run cold.
And yet…
You are not a sheep,Shazeera had said, and she was right. He had hunted us down, but in the end, I had blasted him from the sky and we had escaped with our lives.
“It was war,” I said. “It wasn’t personal.”
But what if he let his eagle eat horses? What if he personally killed someone I knew?
I tried to ignore those thoughts, but they were like barbs that burrowed under my skin.
“You’re lucky Zara is as emotionally intelligent as her mother,” Mariyah said. “I would hate you until my dying day.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her audacity, and a smile touched Commander Talon’s lips, making him seem slightly more human.
“If you had hurt Shazeera, I probably wouldn’t be as understanding about it all as I am now. You’d be halfway to the other side of the world in a cyclone right now had you or Neo touched her.”
He seemed able to intuit who Shazeera was without my having to tell him, because then he said, “And if you had permanently injured Neo, then I would never be able to let it go.”
Mariyah and I glanced at each other. Did the Zephyrians have a bond with their eagles as we did with our horses? We’d always assumed they’d domesticated wild eagles but couldn’t communicate with them like we did. I wanted to ask more, but something held me back. Maybe it was because I didn’t want to waste my last night with my people talking to my enemy.
