She didn’t think. She was already racing to him. Disheveled, covered in soot, and incandescent with rage, he was the most breathtaking sight. He had only just set Gaius down and whispered something to him when he saw her. Some of the grief fell from his eyes in favor of overwhelming relief. Closing the rest of the distance, he fiercely pulled her to him.
“Are you injured?” Smoke had roughened his beautiful voice.
“Nothing serious.” Her voice choked. “I’ll kill them for this.”
A harsh breath against her hair. He drew back to cup her cheek, taking note of her injuries. “Thank you for surviving.”
She leaned into his palm, nodding mutely. The world blurred into pinpricks and dull voices as the adrenaline and anger that had propped her up for so long ebbed loose. Kadra held her close while her vision righted, his vigiles coming to take Gaius to a healer.
He looked more haggard than she had ever seen him, features taut with rage and the promise of retribution. She hadn’t realized how badly her brush with death in Komis had scared him until she had witnessed the blood visibly returning to his head when she’d entered the Aequitas.
Black eyes caressed her face. “How long has it been since you slept?”
“The night before last, and I’m regretting even that. I should have returned to Edessa right after seeing that farmer’s memory and asked you about Noceo—” The rest stuck in her throat when she felt him go still against her. She forced it out. “Drenevan bu Kader,” she whispered.
His aquiline features tightened. “Yes.” A grim, bleak blow to the chest.
Cracked open, she stared at him, bleeding, robbed of speech. Something almost desperate flared in his eyes the longer their silence strained.
“Sarai, I—”
“Kadra,” Cassandane called hoarsely, limping toward them. Raw, healed skin peered through the hole in her robes where Noceo had stabbedher shoulder. “By all the gods and Saints, thank you,” she rasped. “I owe you for this.”
“No.” His voice transformed it to a grim epithet, muscles bunching in his jaw.
Oh. The impasse between them forgotten, Sarai shook her head. “This isn’t your fault.”
“Agreed.” Cassandane’s eyes narrowed. “Wisdom knows, the Unraveling is proof that you’ve an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, but we don’t choose our family. No one who bought into talk of omens and fueled the past several months of turmoil has any right to say differently.” At his silence, she sighed. “That’s a nasty burn, Kadra. See to it.”
Frowning, Sarai followed her gaze. Her jaw dropped at the congealed mass of blood and skin across his back.He took the brunt of the blast. His arms had banded around her while rock had shattered and burst.
“You need a healer. This is beyond what I can fix.” There would be debris embedded within his injuries. She lacked the dexterity to pull out every piece.
He lifted a shoulder in an elegant but weary shrug, telling her that he wasn’t keen on it. He only trusted her with his body. Prior to that, he had been content to bandage his injuries without a care for how they healed.Men.
“I’ll have my healer, Destus, take a look after he works through the dying,” Cassandane offered.
Kadra inclined his head. “Thank you.”
“Likewise, Magus Supreme. Even Aelius wouldn’t have been able to pull that off.” She stared sadly at the Aequitas’s corpse. “The healers are setting up tents around the Grand Elsarian Temple. Plenty of space for the living and the dead and enough gods to watch over them all.” She took in the carnage with muted despair. “Saints and the Wretched, at least he didn’t make good on his threat to turn Edessa to rubble.”
Sarai’s vision blurred. She could see it now. Flames stretching across the horizon, cities pleading for salvation. The fury that gripped her wastoo much for her exhausted body. Black closed across her eyes. Her newly healed legs gave out.
Kadra scooped her up before she hit the ground.
“Your back!”
“Rest,” he ordered.
He was right. Two disasters in as many days. She was at her limit. And yet, they had left so much unsaid that she feared what awaited her upon waking. Kadra watched her for a moment before walking to the tents with her in his arms, ignoring her protests of being able to walk.
“Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake.” He pressed his stubbled cheek to her forehead in a rare, public caress. “I’ll tell you everything, Sarai.”
Why didn’t you before?She was too groggy to ask. Gray veiled her vision like slow-moving fog, the landscape between wakefulness and dreams parsing out the worst of her fears.
The truth was that she wouldn’t have minded as much if it had been anyone else. But among themanythings that had inexorably drawn her to Kadra was the strange, old-fashioned honor he kept, whereby he spoke nothing but the truth. It was unthinkable as a politician. Gods, how it had baffled her that a man so deeply enmeshed in violence had bound himself to such a strange principle. So, she’d known in Komis that for him to have lied by omission meant that these secrets were cataclysmic.
Wetness rolled down her cheeks. She dimly heard a rough curse before fingers wiped at her eyes.
