“I'm sorry,” I said, “that they keep pressuring you about marrying me again.”
He swallowed. “You don't need to worry about that.”
“If…if you're holding back on my account, you don't need to. I don't…I don't mind. If you wanted to play-act it so she'd forgive you.” I stumbled over myself trying to justify, “Not that you have to. You shouldn't have to do anything you don't want to. I don't want you to…feel shame? About a promise that isn't real. I don't think it would count, since I'd know.”
He sighed, and raked his fingers through his hair, his eyes scanning the trees. “It’s not like that.”
Apologies kept tumbling out of me. “It’s your people’s ceremony. Of course it would mean more?—"
“No. I meant what I promised the first time. And I still mean it. I don't have some grudge about saying it again.” He took my hands to pull me up beside him on a crest, slid down himself and then turned to grasp my waist.
“Then why?” I blurted it out, right as I realized that while he was lifting me down- while I was in his arms, looking into his face- was a terrible moment to ask this.
He stopped, not letting go of me, like we were locked in this moment with his hands on me, his eyes boring into mine. He didn't speak, didn't move, and maybe I was a little fool, because I didn't want to make a sound and break the spell.
He released me, suddenly, and pulled away. “I'd have to lie with you.” His voice was gruff. “And I already dragged you through one wedding night.”
“...oh,” I whispered.
He turned around, kept walking. I tripped after him.
“I like to think I learn from my mistakes,” he muttered. “And perjury is not on my list of favorite crimes, so.”
I grabbed a branch to steady myself. “Doyou have a list of favorite crimes?”
He laughed quietly, brokenly. “Do you?”
“I liked picking pockets.” I tried to keep the pain out of my voice. “I think I'm still good at it.”
His step faltered, and he paused, for a moment. “There's a lot I don't know about you.”
I climbed up beside him. “Maybe after this, we can ask each other things.”
He nodded. “That would be good. After.” He looked at me. There was stubble on his jaw. His eyes still looked pained, probing…
“Did you take a different path this time?” I blurted out. “...we're climbing this time, and I thought…”
“Oh. Yes. I took my short cut. I wasn't…” He trailed his hand through his hair. “I wasn't thinking.”
Up ahead, voices murmured. Once or twice, one rose in laughter. It didn’t sound like a gathering where Khal might die, but I knew the anger in Drazha’s face, the pain in Piotr’s eyes.
And I knew Khal. I’d known him for so short a time, but I could read him, the lines of tension in his body, the way he moved.
The clearing we came to was ringed in low stones, the foliage cleared from the center. A dirt arena. Khal slowed a little as he approached, made sure he was holding my hand. There were more faces than had been here at dawn when Drazha’s horde moved into the basin, old people, children, mothers with babies suckling at the breast, warriors. Though I guess I couldn't tell the difference between their mothers and their warriors, could I? Their eyes were curious, their gaze brazen.
Khal stopped to greet people as we walked through, clasping arms, nodding respectfully to the elderly and listening to what they had to say. A child ran over, and he picked them up in one arm, kept talking. His one hand still clasped mine, like a promise.
A girl touched the embroidery on Zhana’s dress’s sleeve, said something to me that I didn’t understand. A child, maybe one of them from the creekbank? He ran over to a knot of adults and pointed at us, rattling something off in their language, and their faces changed, appraising. I heard the murmur passing around, "—pthralhirgar.”
As the moon joined the sinking sun in the sky, Drazha arrived. She still carried her weapons, but necklaces hung around her neck and over her shoulders, more tied at her belt. I wondered if she had made them all, like Khal’s, or if they were trophies taken in battle. Golden rings, carved bone, precious stones and polished glass…she was chaos, and she was power.
I found the place in my stomach, in my bones, where my own power pooled, and I pulled the slightest thread of it, tenuous, and found it was enough to understand her speech.
“My son has arrived,” her voice boomed, as if we had not been here first. “And he has brought with him one he wishes to make his wife. The princeling has become a warrior.”
A laugh rippled around the gathered horde, the waiting community here.
“But in doing so,” her voice was cold, “he has broken the tenets, and brought an enemy’s daughter into our sacred hold. I,” she raised her arm, “recuse myself from judgment. The other pillars may decide.” She lowered her arm, and stepped back.
