Sendoa took a deep breath. If he was ever going to atone for his mistake, he must get this right, despite his plan disintegrating. “What are your terms, Geneva?”
But the Warlord did not answer. Instead, she asked, “She’s here, isn’t she?”
Geneva didn’t need to say Koldo’s name. And she wouldn’t; Sendoa knew that much. “Yes, of course.”
“Always by your side, but notatyour side.” Geneva’s eyes flashed to his hand, no band of gold to be found. “Doesn’t that hurt?”
Sendoa didn’t blink—she would expect him to fight back. To relent would be to invite questions he did not want to answer. “Does your heart hurt for our daughter? Or did you cut her out of your heart like you did me? You have not mentioned her once and she’s the bond between us that is unbroken.”
Geneva bared her teeth. “I left Amarande because I love her.”
“Love her?You do not even know her—”
The Warlord moved like a lightning strike.
A lunging step, a glint of metal, and blood began to bloom in a slash on Sendoa’s cheek.
The act left the king so stunned, Geneva was able to grip his chin with her blade-free hand, forcing him still and level, with nowhere to look but in her eyes as his cheek wept.
“Do not question my love. You have no idea what I have done for my daughter.”
The Warrior King did not answer as her anger washed over him, as fierce as the bear her native kingdom had long ago adopted as a sigil.
All teeth and anger and ferocity.
Geneva tapped the knife tip against his skin, just below the cut. “That, Sendoa, is my gift to you. I could have easily slit your throat and let your whore general drag your body back home. And yet I did not. It is also my promise, that if you do not attack me, I will not attack you.”
In answer, he stared back. Unblinking. Breathing hard. Restrained.
“Let me operate as I please, keep my identity off your tongue, and the Sand and Sky will not know that you made the first cut in slicing a thousand years of unity apart.”
Was that truly what she wanted? With all the power he’d let her believe she had over him? That was it? It was a noble but weak combination—there had to be more behind it.
“That’s your trade? Anonymity and freedom?” he asked, calm. There had to be more. He was just not sure what. And that, like the surprise of her very presence, was unsettling. It was not often that the Warrior King was left in the dark.
Expression betraying nothing, the Warlord removed the blade fromhis skin, releasing Sendoa enough so that he could see the dagger full on. His blood glinted in the firelight, the reflection of it in Geneva’s eyes.
“You keep my secrets, Your Highness, and I shall keep yours.”
CHAPTER32
THEsky was a muted navy when the general arrived at the fire pit nearest to Ardenia.
Koldo dismounted, wrapped her horse’s reins around the jutting edge of a boulder, and walked to the pit. She climbed over the lip and descended into the ash-filled crevice. She didn’t need to go far—only twenty or thirty feet—before the newest ash line became clear, even in the waning light.
Yes, five or six days ago—a week at most—the Warlord’s caravan was here. Burning bodies and stars knew what else when the title of Warlord passed to another. Privately, and within the Warlord’s tent, in the utmost secrecy, without any fanfare. The tattoo chiseled on a wrist, perhaps a few ceremonial words, the passing of a flask. And then the emergence of someone new wearing the Warlord’s clothes and title.
The rules among the Warlord kin were clear—no one within the caravan saw the Warlord’s face uncovered. Security was paramount and only those trusted enough or about to die would see the Warlord’s naked identity. Often it was impossible to know which you were until that very moment.
Yet those who traveled with the caravan were not blind to change. To Koldo’s knowledge, Geneva had been with the caravan for most, if not all, of Ferdinand’s life and had been Warlord for a great deal of that time, too. The signs of change were obvious—new orders, the consolidation of caravans, and in its most obvious indication: no Ferdinand. The Warlord’s face was unseen, yes, but his face was well known and stood out. At least, that was Koldo’s experience during her yearly investigative trips to the caravan—though, in truth, Ferdinand was always exactly what she was looking for whenever she visited.
Here and now, Koldo found something she was not expecting from this fire pit. Horse tracks. More than that—evidence of a fight.
The general stepped closer. She was tempted to light a torch butknew that might actually make it more difficult to see in this sort of twilight.
The large pit in the ash had all the markings of a horse briefly falling to its side before becoming upright a few feet away. Directly facing the site where the horse had regained its footing was a minefield of hoofprints. Koldo skirted around the edge of them, her keen senses at work as she took in the angles, the pressure of the marks, the positioning.
A single horseman confronted by more than a dozen opponents.
