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Their small son shrieks with happiness, his legs pumping furiously. “Anton seems to think I’ll be there, so it must be true.” I reach across the table and offer him my finger, which he immediately grabs onto and tries to cram in his mouth.
“Maybe you’ll bring our new a’deve with you,” Eldon says innocently.
I’m about to tell him to shut his mouth, but Daysa speaks first. “Oh, yes. Please do.”
“She’s hardly the a’deve,” I say, my voice tightening.
Eldon must sense my mood because he stands to leave, handing the baby over to his wife. “My darling, I’ll see you later this afternoon at home.” She blushes as he leans over the table to kiss her mouth before yelling a farewell across the room to his two older children who are playing by the hearth.
Following him outside and over to the stables, I decide to leave his comment about Rina alone. With his ability to make light of almost anything, it’s impossible to argue with my cousin. He’s such a cheerful bastard . . . or what was it that Rina called me earlier, a brute? I feel the beginnings of a smile start to pull at my lips.
As we saddle our horses, however, my conversation with Rina in the pool starts to nag at me, spoiling my good humor. Her questions had made me uncomfortable and I’d dodged every single one of them.
Is it not safe for women?
I’m not sure I’ve ever considered the question. I know my mother was never safe, but that was only from my father. The idea that Rina needs the same protection as she did serves to scratch and pick at old wounds.
Once we’re on our way out to the warrior training grounds, I ask Eldon something I’m not sure I want the answer to. “Would you let Daysa walk from your home to the stronghold after dark?”
“What? Alone?”Alonecomes out sounding like I’ve lost my mind.
“I’ll take that as a no.” After a moment of silence though, I press him. “To my knowledge, not a single eastern savage has penetrated our borders in more than two years.”
“So?” But then what I’m getting at clicks with him. “Luka, you were Warrior Commander of the Range for two years before you took charge. You cannot pretend to be clueless about howyourmen are immune to the consequences of certain actions.”
“Are you saying there are rapists in my ranks?”
“Rapistis a very ugly word, cousin. I doubt even the old deve could have ignored it. He did, however, ignore words likepredatorandopportunistfor over twenty years.”
I rein Nightshade into a full stop. “What are you saying, Eldon?”
“I’m saying,” he turns back to me, “that you can’t deny that the word of a woman would never be taken over that of a warrior’s. Ergo women do not speak up, they adapt.”
Frowning, I watch Eldon turn his horse, Fearmonger, around and come back to me.
“Luka,” he says gravely. “You have the opportunity to make a real difference to the women of this realm, and that starts with righting the wrongs committed against our new a’deve.”
My gaze sharpens on him. “You make it sound simple. A Cyrun brother, a Range warrior, is dead at the hands of a woman from D’heilar. What would you have me do?”
His face pinches. “I don’t care where she’s from. You’ve basically announced that no woman may defend herself.”
“I’ve done no such thing!”
“Haven’t you?” He raises his brows in a way that strikes me as irritatingly superior. “I’m sorry, Luka, but she did this realm a favor by removing a man who caused more trouble than he was worth, and you should have let her finish off another this morning.”
“I would have a mutiny on my hands,” I exclaim, throwing up my hands in disgust. “And it is not my job to police the morality of my warriors.”
“Isn’t it? Your father was weak, Luka. And so far, you’re not proving much better.”
“I never wanted this Mother-forsaken title,” I grit out from between clenched teeth.
“So you’ve said. But it’s yours now. I suggest you embrace it.”
And he has the audacity to set his heels to his horse and leave me behind.
♦♦♦
While my talk with Rina had unnerved me, my cousin’s words leave me stewing in a foul mood for three days. The nerve of him. Calling me weak, comparing me to my father. Perhaps he’d prefer to return to the days of watching the unfortunate – menandwomen – being beaten in the Great Hall for some imagined slight?Not much better than my father, my ass.
