“Me.”
Luca let that admission sit and fester between them until finally Tala scraped a hand through his growing beard and began.
“Nearly a year into my reign as Warlord, the resistance was eager to strike. My brother embedded within our caravan and eventually confronted the Warlord’s party in the dead of night. He removed my mask as I slept and when he saw it was me, hesitated… he hesitated just long enough for my eyes to flutter open as Alasne shoved a sword through his back.”
Tala’s golden eyes flicked to Luca’s. “I hugged him to my chest as my seconds searched for the others—there had to be others—and held him as he died. Alasne returned to the tent first. I told her, ‘This was my brother—I must bury him. If I don’t come back in a day’s time, you’re to make yourself Warlord.’ And then I left.”
That was it. How Alasne came to power. And Geneva after her. It seemed so reactionary, and yet that simple act had set up more than a decade of strife afterward.
Tala drew in a shaky breath, his weaved fists squeezed tightly before him.
“My life changed when I found power. I was no longer just loud enough to sound authoritative, Iwasthe authority. I was born beholden to the Otxoa, and though I had a decent life, I felt as if I were living it for someone else. I could have walked away; instead I stayed within the castle, growing bitter down to my very core. And then one day your General Koldo offered me a chance to take all that I was good at—being loud, being bitter, being knowledgeable of the Otxazulo’s inner workings—and build something with it.”
He stared into the distance, and perhaps General Koldo’s ghost stared back. “And build something, I did. Something I believed in so much that I turned upon everything I knew, everyone I loved, and for my trouble, I got everything I had ever wanted.”
Luca’s heartbeat had grown to a steady pounding that skipped the rhythm altogether when Tala paused and met his eyes with an expression that broke his heart. “None of that mattered when my brother died in my arms.”
Tala swallowed heavily and wrenched his palms apart. After a long moment, he continued, softly. “So, I buried him in my clothes. I worehis clothes on my body. Gave myself the same scars. Covered up my Warlord tattoo.” He held up his wrist, the wolf there a decent effort to hide the leaping flames. “Grew my hair and beard like his. And then I spent weeks trying to find the resistance.”
After a long pause, Luca asked carefully, “Was your purpose always to joinashim?”
Tala’s gaze snapped up. “Or something more sinister? It is your right to ask, my Otsakumea.” Luca gestured—yes, that.Tala shook his low-hanging head, his slim shoulders arching like a buzzard as the rest of him dipped forward, dejected. “No, I was done with sinister. I was done with what I’d built. I was done with what had broken me and killed my brother. Done. And, I knew I could only end it as him. I wanted to end itforhim. And, over the years, I wanted to end it just as much for me as for him. And for you.”
Luca was silent. All the years between them circling, a cyclone in the Torrentian desert.
If he forgave Tala for this, did that make him merciful or a fool? Both?
This was the man who had murdered his father. This was the man who’d had an opportunity to do so because of Sendoa’s choices. Who had disobeyed the orders of one and killed the other and then spent the last several years living a lie so that he could right his past wrongs.
Yet he fought with Luca when he needed him.
Was his withholding of the truth an act of protecting himself, or protecting the current cause?
Tala forced himself to straighten, to sit up, lean back in the chair, and look Luca in the eye.
“My Otsakumea, it is my greatest regret, what I did with my life. It is my greatest regret what I did to your father, your mother, your family, and you. It is my greatest regret what I did to the people of Torrence, to my brother, to all those who once shared the halls of the Otxazulo with my greedy heart.” Luca felt every ounce of that regret in the sliver of warm air between them. “I must tell you that I know that nothing I have done to repair it will ever make up for it. I’ll go to the stars knowing I have left this earth worse than I came to it. That said, I don’t blame you if you cannot find it in your heart to trust me in my word or actions. I won’t blame you if you wish tolock me in the dungeons of the Itspi until you have a castle of your own.”
Luca’s answer to this was forceful and immediate. “Tala, I won’t lock you up. You already live in a prison of your own making. This isn’t something I hope to ever understand as intimately as you.”
Tala’s lips twitched, his eyes lowering in something akin to guilt. He took a deep breath that seemed to stretch his skeleton past its breaking point before raising his eyes back to Luca’s, deflated once again. “You are as generous as your father, my Otsakumea. I preyed on that generosity once. I admit it. But my admission here should not be all I need to earn your trust.”
Luca didn’t budge.
“Tala, I’ve surrounded myself with people who were once my enemies or should be. I’ve forgiven the pirates who kidnapped me, the boy who stole my beloved’s crown and stood by while she was imprisoned, and the common people who fought by the Warlord’s side for years but who now follow me. I would’ve forgiven Taillefer for all of his various misdeeds had he lived. I would’ve forgiven Sendoa for his mistakes. Why on earth would you think I wouldn’t forgive you?”
“I’ve done the worst of those.”
“Even the worst can become good.”
“You and I aren’t of the same mind upon that.” Tala leaned forward, fervent and eager and hopeful. Desperate. “What else can I do? Make me a list. Announce it to our people. Have them hold me accountable.”
Luca shook his head. He knew he was just like his father. But he was not going to hide the best parts of himself for his survival. That wasn’t what he would do and even though he didn’t know the man, he was sure that wasn’t what King Lotyoa would have done either.
“Tala, keep fighting when I need you. Be by my side. Be by Amarande’s side. Be there when we need you as you have been. That is all I demand and all I ask.”
Tala’s arms wrapped across his body. “If I don’t, strike me down right then.”
Luca nearly admitted to Tala he wasn’t concerned about that. But in the last several weeks he’d also learned to believe people when they told him exactly who they were. Explicitly or through actions that were stronger than words.
