Page 136

“Depends on who you ask.” Gunter winked.

The boy twisted in my grip. I’d nearly forgotten that I’d stopped him. I released his tunic and held up my palms.

By the time he ran to his mother, most of the murky darkness had dissipated, the hardness of my soul soothed for now.

The woman hurried to her feet, a tight hold on her son’s arm. Her eyes shot back and forth between me and Lyra. “You…you are the outsiders who the seemódir mentioned.” Her attention remained on me. “You are…gods, you look so like him.”

I took hold of Lyra’s palm and spoke, I want to know who she is. Tell her about us.

“The prince uses hand speak. He’s asking about you. No one in his household, I don’t think, knew Nivek had a wife.”

She sniffed and used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes. “No. It wasn’t known over the ledges. Nivek believed a bond with an Unfettered would not be accepted.”

They are soul bonded? I arched one brow.

“You had a sealed bond?”

“I thought it was merely his custom for vows. But when a man from his clan spoke the words, something shifted within me. I felt it. I still feel it, merely…distant. He spoke of you.” She smiled, a little despondent. “He told me of his younger brother, who followed him everywhere and pleaded to join him on his journeys. He told me he wanted to bring you soon. He wanted you to meet Sindri.”

She squeezed her son’s hand.

The boy who looked too much like my brother.

My brother’s son.

A boy we never knew existed.

“Please.” She took a step closer. “I did not learn everything that happened after we lost him. Will you…will you tell me?”

At my nod, Lyra spoke the gruesome tale. From her hunted craft, to Nivek’s bravery, to the division of my soul. Sindri looked at me then, almost a little impressed.

Lyra told him that through my soul craft we’d spoken to Nivek.

“He said if we are not believed then to tell those he left behind that you are inked on his heart, his bones, and his soul.”

Nivek’s wife covered her mouth, and tears filled her eyes. “Those were the words he spoke when our bond was sealed. He said them again when Sindri was born.”

I touched Lyra’s arm. I want to see her marks from the sealing.

“Do you have the soul runes?” Lyra held up her hands, and after a pause, the glimmer of runes coated her fingers.

The woman held up her own hands. There, shimmering beneath the dirt on her skin, was the flicker of runes.

I cursed Nivek in my mind, hoping somewhere in Salur his soul could feel my annoyance at his secrets.

I used my chin to point at the woman. Now her tale. I want to hear everything.

“Roark wants to know how you met Nivek.”

The woman’s voice steadied as she described the first time she crossed paths with the foreign prince. She thought him odd, but she’d been a suspicious Unfettered girl who was leery of the craft over the Night Ledges.

She’d met him when they both were only seventeen seasons. He’d taken his first lone trade route since my father no longer could. Nivek intrigued her when he played a rowdy game with young ones, tossing a pigskin ball about the square.

“Gods, when I met his eyes for the first time, it was as though fire dug out my heart and replaced it.” She smiled a little wistfully. “He did not explain soul bonds for another season, merely teased me, insisting he was irresistible so that was the reason I felt so strongly.”

They’d sealed their bond right after Nivek’s eighteenth season. In secret. My brother shadowed our old soul weaver’s memory of it. He could not tell our clan the truth.

When she finished, no one spoke. What was there to even say? My brother had a wife. A son. He had a soul bond, and he sacrificed his life so I could keep mine.