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I run through my memories of the fight Numair and I had had back in the alley, and my throat tightens with guilt. Magnar has tortured his father every day, and Numair had to live with that knowledge, unable to do anything to help him.
He glances toward us, and my heart skips a beat. I recognize that gaze as the one I’d already seen back in the Throne Room.
“Did Erik also have black hair?”
Lara nods.
“A birthmark at the back of his neck?”
“How do you know that?”
“By Evanae.”
Lara is staring at me, but I shut my eyes. Yet the memories are too vivid, and the whip falls on the rebel’s back. Again, and again.
“He was a brave man,” I say, my voice hoarse with tears.
“That he was. Three years in a dungeon, and he had never said a thing.”
Lara shushes any question lingering on my lips when Numair crosses the garden with a grin dancing on his face. He leans on the table next to Lara, and she presses my hand tight in hers.
“We’ve built this marvel,” he says. “It’s your turn.”
“No pressure, I see.”
Lara giggles.
“Before you build forests out of nothing,” Numair adds. “Izod and Mylena are setting out some food.”
“I’ll go get some,” I say, eager to leave the two clueless lovers alone.
The way Lara crinkles her nose makes me falter. She glances at Numair and sighs. “If Mylena is here, it’s better if I go,” she says and starts toward the swinging doors.
Numair keeps looking at the greenhouse with the same bewilderment I must have written all over my face, and for a second, I let myself believe that there are other things than pain and torment in these plains of sand. So, when the words form, I don’t even try to stop them. “Don’t you see it?”
“See what?”
“The way Lara looks at you. The way she seeks your presence whenever you’re around.”
“Lara? She’s just a friend. We’ve known each other since we were kids,” he says.
The swinging door opens again, and Lara appears balancing three bowls in her hands. She glances toward us, and even I can see the blush sparkling on her cheeks.
“Oh,” Numair says, dropping his hands.
“Yeah, oh.”
Lara reaches us with a small smile dancing on her face. “You haven’t met her yet, but let me tell you, I just saved your life. With the way she’s eager to throw daggers at anyone out there, Mylena is a danger even to herself. What’s gotten into her?”
“She might have been under the impression Valdus would be here,” Numair says with a shrug.
I bite my tongue to stop myself from saying anything since I was under the same impression. Yet he made it abundantly clear I’m not to meddle in his affairs, and even if it’s far from done, he has made my dream possible. If I owe him anything, it’s offering him the peace he so earnestly requested.
Kyle settles down next to one of the small fires we’ve built in the crease of the dunes with a loud pop in his prosthetic knee. We clank our cups and listen to the music. Numair has been playing for an hour, and Lara has been singing each and every song. We’ve heard everything from the ballad of the boy lost in the desert and killed by a fireskull, to the one about the massacre of the life binders by the late King Anadar and his demise by my father’s hand before he had claimed the throne.
Her voice drifts across the sands, until the roar of an engine rises above all the music and singing.
Numair is on his feet in an instant. His guitar lies abandoned by the fire, a revolver sitting in his hand. In an instant, most rebels have flocked around him.
