I know. I fuckingknow.
“You would’ve been a baby, then,” I say instead, swallowing my anguish. “A real one.”
She chuckles, though it sounds forced. “So you admit it—I’m not a baby.”
“Let’s not go that far.” I grin at her, and her watery smile has my heart tumbling. “Dinner’s ready.”
I take it off the skewer, blowing lightly across the charred surface before tearing off chunks of meat.
Mayah takes a bite, and I watch closely to see if she’ll notice the difference—the herbs I’d ground into a power with the pommel of my dagger and sprinkled onto the meat—but her eyes are fixed to the sky.
I don’t have time to feel disappointed because it begins to rain.
We finish eating quickly, and I string up my cloak between two trees. We huddle beneath it, shoulders touching.
The storm grows rougher, angrier, and when a soft whimper escapes her lips, I desperately wish I could controlthisstorm. Wish I could unspool it from the sky and cast it away, so the woman beside me could breathe freely, without fear.
I pull her shuddering frame against my chest, tightening my arms around her, and without thinking, my lips brush her forehead in a soft kiss.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper against her hair. “You’re safe.”
Lightning flashes, violent and angry, and she burrows deeper into my chest, narrow shoulders quivering.
I never want to let her go.
Mine, my hopeless mind whispers.
No, I whisper back.Not yours. Never yours.
When the storm dies down, we lay on our sides facing each other. Her expression is open, unguarded, though something dark haunts her gaze. What happened to her to elicit such terror?
Mayah must read the question in my eyes, because she whispers, “I was a little girl. Six years old. Mama and I were somewhere new. A holiday, she called it. Just the two of us. I don’t remember where, only that there was no snow. She’d read stories to me every night and let me help her in the kitchen.”
Her voice is so soft, so weak, it melts my heart.
“Was she a healer like you?”
She shakes her head. “She was a nonwielder.”
A king taking a nonwielder wife? It’s unheard of.
Mayah chuckles softly at my bewildered expression. “I know. Father’s council was outraged, but he wouldn’t be swayed. He loved her. I wish I remembered more about her, but it’s all faded. Her name was Meerah. She—” Her voice cracks on a sob, and I rub gentle circles across her lower back, hoping to offer some comfort against the choking grief I know all too well.
“I don’t remember much of that night. But she told me to hide in the closet and not come out, no matter what. I listened. There was a horrible storm. Lightning and thunder and rain. It shook the bones of the house. I was terrified. And the smell—it still haunts my dreams. Burnt flesh with the tang of metal.” My hand stills. That scent is permanently ingrained into my conscience.
“Father said it was a stormwielder. Sent by Arbinj,” she continues. Her throat bobs. “He never recovered from her death. A piece of him died that day, too.”
My brows furrow, as I rack my brain, struggling to recall anything about such a major assassination. When Mayah was six, I would’ve been thirteen or fourteen. I don’t remember anything, but I also wasn’t attending every council meeting at that age.
A shaking sob claws from Mayah’s throat, and then she’s crying in my arms, hands gripping my shoulders. My heart twists painfully with her every shudder, and I hold her close, murmuring reassurances into her ear. Gently, I wipe her tears with the pads of my thumbs, and Skies have mercy, she lets me.
“My mother was a nonwielder, too,” I whisper. “Not my birth mother. My father would never risk a nonwielder child. Faramir’s birth mother was a powerful earthwielder from a noble family. Mine was a stormwielder—I’ve never met her. Don’t even know her name. It’s common practice in Arbinj fornoble families to treat their daughters like broodmares—trade powerful heirs for wealth and respect.
“But my mother—Tairna—the woman who raised me, she was a nonwielder. She tended to my scrapes and cuts. Held me after nightmares. She sawme, not just the stormwielder with unlimited potential that everyone else did.” I swallow hard. “And then one day, she was just gone. I was maybe fifteen? My father says she returned to her home in Volca, but I knew he was lying. I could never get him to admit otherwise, and I had no proof. I suspect he had her killed. Probably didn’t want her influencing me.”
“I’m so sorry, Zevayr,” she whispers. Mayah reaches out cautiously, splaying her palm over my heart.
It misses a beat.
