A heaviness was dragging at my eyelids, pulling me down, into the sweet, drink-like warmth of him. “I wish…” I mumbled into his shirt, but then I was drifting away.
His voice tugged me back. “What do you wish?” He sounded, still, so awake.
I gathered myself back, the thoughts, the sorrows. “I wish…I could have been real for you. That I could have been what you were looking for.”
And I don’t know if it was real or imagined, as sleep took me, but I thought I heard him murmur, “You were. You are.”
DRAZHA
Iwoke in a tangle of limbs and darkness, trying to leap to my feet, the weakness in my limbs betraying me. A fist was bashing on the door, over and over. Where were we? We were-
“Rowena, I’m here. You’re okay.” Khal caught my waist, lowered me back to my place by the hearth. “Let me handle this.” He stood, silhouetted against the faint glow from the rafters. I saw him pick up something in his hand, one of those short spears, and cross to the door. He did not stand directly in front of it. “Name yourself,” he boomed, that same voice I heard the first day in the throne room, none of the softness of Khal in it.
From the other side of the door someone snarled. “Khal, it’s me, would you get your head out of your ass?”
Khal unlatched the door. Vrathgar pushed into the house, his house, I supposed, and shoved the door closed behind him, redid the latch. “Are you alright?” he said, and then his eyes fell on me. It was strange, the hesitation in the orc’s expression, regret? He dipped a slight nod, and I nodded back.
“We’re alright,” Khal said. “No trouble. Though I bumped into Sephar on the way back.”
Vrathgar let out a stream of curses. “He didn't try anything?”
“No. Just taunting.”
“I'll break his teeth if I have to.”
“I'd like to pass that honor to you, but I think it will be mine.” Khal’s face was grim. Vrathgar was scanning the house, looking busy, but mostly avoiding looking at either of us.
Khal broke in. “Do you come with news?”
Vrathgar jerked a nod. “Drazha has returned.”
“Casualties?”
“I don’t know, but they carried injured with them.”
“I should go to her.”
Vrathgar blocked the door, dread in his eyes. “Khal. She knows. Someone met her on the road.”
Khal froze. “Sephar.”
Vrathgar’s jaw clenched. “Maybe Sephar,” he agreed.
“She’ll know about this place.”
“Were you planning on running?” Vrathgar didn’t sound like he was joking.
Khal looked back at me. “I’m sorry. I thought we’d have more time for you to recover. She was not expected until…”
I didn’t know what was going on, only that these men I’d seen face monsters were more on edge than I’d seen them since Tyralk’s life was on the line.
“So you want to talk to your mother,” I said. “Explain things.”
He inhaled. “Something like that.” He looked at me. “I won’t leave you alone.”
I blinked. “I could wait here?—"
“She’d find you. She’d send someone. You are…safer with me.”
