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He smirked. “With a face like yours, I cry false. I’m sure you leave half-cocked Maridrinian corpses everywhere you go, Valcotta.”
She burst into laughter, easing the tension that had been seething through him since the raid. Calming his heart even as it made his pulse race.
“That is the worst compliment I’ve ever received in my life.”
Keris gave a deep bow, then motioned for her to step back. Clenching his teeth because he knew this would hurt, he sprinted to the edge and jumped. His boots made no sound as he landed, but the impact sent pain lancing through his shoulder, causing him to stumble and catch his balance against her shoulders.
Her skin was feverishly warm even through his gloves, and as Keris inhaled, the scent of lavender and leather and steel filled his nose. A warrior, yes, but also very much a woman, and they stood only inches apart, his hands gripping her shoulders and one of her hands pressed against his chest, holding him steady.
“You’re hurt.” She lowered her hand from his chest. “You shouldn’t have jumped.”
She was probably right, but the reward of being close to her felt very much worth the risk. “It’s nothing. An old injury come back for a visit.”
“There is little worse than uninvited guests.”
God help him, but he wanted to drown in her voice. “I hope you speak metaphorically of my shoulder and not literally of my presence on Valcottan soil, for if it is the latter, my feelings will be tremendously hurt. I might weep.”
She smiled. “Why are you here?”
“Why areyouhere?” When she shook her head, he sighed. “I was reminded today exactly why I didn’t want to come to Nerastis. Why I don’t wish to be in Maridrina at all, for that matter.”
“Then how fortunate you now stand on Valcottan soil.”
Itwasfortunate, though it had nothing to do with the soil. “I know a good many who’d debate that statement, but I’ll let you have it.”
“How magnanimous of you.” She tilted her head, quietly waiting for him to say more, and yet the truth of what had driven him to the dam stuck in his throat, not something he’d admit even to Otis. Especially not Otis, who hated the Valcottans so thoroughly for what they’d taken from him that he’d see Keris’s beliefs as a form of betrayal.
She’s different.The thought rippled through his head, though he had no reason to believe it. He barely knew this woman, thissoldier. And yet he found himself saying, “You’ve witnessed the aftermath of raids against your people?”
She nodded. “Many times.”
“I have not.Hadnot, that is.”
“Until Bermin’s raid on that farm today.” She exhaled a long breath. “Was it as you expected?”
“Yes. And no.” Keris turned to the glittering city, the mist rising to dampen his hair and clothes. “The silence is different than other silences. It’s not the lack of words, but lack of motion. The still hearts and unmoving chests. The empty eyes.” Visions of the farmers at work juxtaposed with them lying in pieces across the farmyard and fields, and he blinked, trying to force them away. “One moment going about their lives, the next, their lives cut short. And for what?”
“Vengeance.” The word came swiftly from her lips, then she hesitated and added, “Retaliation for the loss of our people in the recent raid is the reason Bermin gave.”
A raid that the two of them had unwittingly caused.
“Yes, an eye for an eye. Yet those your people and mine would seek vengeance against care nothing for the lives taken.” He remembered how Otis had barely seemed to see the carnage around them. How the patrols who had come had been wild with anger over the sight and absent any grief for the loss.
Reaching down, he picked up a rock and threw it hard, swearing as pain lanced through his cursed shoulder. “Those in power don’t care in the way they should.”
“I care.” Her voice caught. “It breaks my heart every time I see it. I feel sick with guilt for not having prevented it. And…” Valcotta hesitated, then blurted out, “Have you ever had an idea lodge in your thoughts like a spark, and rather than your efforts extinguishing it, they only cause it to burst into flame? And for those flames to illuminate the world in such a way that you half wondered if you’d been blind before?”
“Yes.” Because her words had lit a spark in his own mind, though he hadn’t decided what, if anything, he intended to do about it.
Turning away from him, she sat, legs hanging over the edge of the dam. Keris lowered himself to the damp stone next to her, immediately feeling the waterfall’s mist dampen his trousers.
“My mother was murdered in front of me by Maridrinian raiders when I was fourteen. She didn’t even know how to hold a weapon, but she fought to save my life. They tied me to the cross holding her body and left me there to die.”
Keris’s stomach clenched. It was a cruelty his father had made popular in his younger years before he’d inherited the throne, and many of the soldiers in Nerastis continued to use it in honor of him. “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t respond, only sat in silence for a long time before finally saying, “I dedicated my life to becoming strong enough to fight back against men like the one who killed her. To protecting those who could not protect themselves. To defending Valcotta from those who’d harm her. And to the pursuit of vengeance. But along the way, I lost myself. Forgot myself. And all that remained was the need for vengeance.” She looked up at him. “That was the truth the spark revealed to me.”
“And now you seek to find yourself again?”
