“Turmah,” she whispers, blue eyes wide. “She was already with child when she returned.”
“You knownothingof what you speak!” Tormik shouts. He quickly masters his emotions, though, casting a quick glance at the warriors that have emerged, watching in silence.
“Return to your tents,” he says. “Recent events have made my daughter … sensitive. Perhaps it was wrong of me to send her to Arbinj. She is upset. The Commander has harmed her.”
“He has not!” Mayah shouts. “Youhave!”
I’ve never seen her like this—so enraged, so anguished. Not even when I murdered her love before her eyes.
“Admit it,” she pants, shoulders shaking. “Say the words.”
Skies damn me into ash.
Her mother was killed by a stormwielder.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Tormik replies. If not for the iron binding me, I’m certain sharp pinpricks would be jabbing the back of my neck.
“Mama. Who killed her?”
Tormik folds his arms over his chest and steps around his raging daughter.
But Mayah doesn’t accept his dismissal quietly.
“It was you,” she hisses, whirling to face him.
“Sleep, Mayah,” Tormik calls over his shoulder. “You’ve embarrassed me enough for one night.”
Her shoulders vibrate with rage, hands clenched at her sides.
And then she attacks.
Her booted foot stomps into the ground, and a wall of water rises in front of Tormik, freezing into a glimmering block of ice.
The entire camp falls silent for a suspended heartbeat. Then, whispered murmurs of surprise erupt at once.
“…she can waterwield…”
“…it can’t be…”
“…did you know…”
Tormik slowly turns. His frosted eyes gleam with lethal rage.
“Yes,Mayah,”he snarls. “It was me. I made a mistake marrying Meerah. A filthy common.” He spits on the ground. “I loved her. Treated her well. And still she asked for more.” A cold scoff. “Alwaysmore. Just. Like.You. ‘Better treatment for nonwielders,’” he mocks with a sarcastic smile. “Still, I could have lived with it. But she couldn’t, as it turns out. She ran.”
By the Skies.
“I would have let her go,” Tormik continues his confession. “It would have been a burden off my shoulders, truly. But she took you—my heir. That, I couldn’t forgive. So I came for you. To bring you home.”
“You told me it was Arbinj,” she seethes, her voice thick with tears.
Tormik fuckingshrugsas if it’s of no consequence that he murdered her mother, then lied about it.
“Arbinj has harmed our women before. Our wives. Daughters.Mothers. They will do so again.”
“And all the storms?” Her voice splinters. “Why? Why put me through that?”
“I couldn’t stomach the fear the … experience left in you. I wanted to rid you of your weakness. I wanted tohelpyou.”
