“Why?” he asked evenly.
I clenched my hands into fists. “He deserved it. He attacked me, and I defended myself.”
“Did you kill him?”
“I…I don’t know. I had no time to find out.”
“Where did you stab him?” He sounded business-like.
“Here.” I pressed a hand to my right side, high above my breast and close to my arm.
“He’ll live,” Grat dismissed.
“You think so?”
“Sure. I know humans are fragile. But even a puny man can recover from a wound like that with some decent care.”
I didn’t know how to feel about it. On one hand, I was relieved to learn I might not be a murderer after all. On the other hand, only death would stop Reizon from pursuing me.
“Where are you from, Khala?” Grat asked. “Where did these humans come from?”
“From the Avilet Kingdom,” I replied. “It’s way up the ocean shore from here, a few weeks of travel on horseback, I believe. But I don’t know exactly since I left the caravan on their way to the Garland Islands.”
He chewed on his bottom lip, pondering something. “Will you ever want to return to that kingdom? Maybe when things with the stabbing have calmed down?”
“I’m not going back,” I said adamantly.
“But that’s your home.”
“I have no home. My parents died from old age a few years ago. But they had disowned me long before that.”
“Why?” His forehead furrowed.
“There never was much love between us to begin with. Then I disappointed them even more by refusing to marry again after my husband died and especially by not living my life the way it was expected from a widow.”
“Are you a widow?”
“Yes. Just over ten years now.”
“Ten years?” he exclaimed in surprise. “How old are you?”
“I’m turning thirty this year. But I was married young, younger than any girl should marry.”
“Were you forced to do it?”
I nodded.
“Why?” he asked, looking genuinely puzzled.
I shrugged. “Why do people marry?”
“Because they love each other and want to be together,” he replied effortlessly. “Because they don’t want to live in different houses and spend their nights apart. Because they want to have and raise children together. There are many reasons to get married. But if you didn’t even love your husband… Why then?”
He spread his arms wide, looking genuinely puzzled. It was so endearingly sweet of him to believe that marriage only happened out of love and the desire to be together.
“I didn’t love him,” I said. “I never even pretended that I did, but I was married off to him without any consideration for my feelings. My husband was almost four times older than me on the day of our wedding, and we had nothing in common. I’ve never told this to anyone, but…I found it hard to mourn his death because it brought me the freedom I’d never experienced before.” I lowered my voice, as if revealing a secret. “The happiest years of my life I spent as a widow.”
If Grat thought I was a bad person because of it, he didn’t show it. I saw no judgment on his face.
