Left behind to bundle the grasses, Toric waved one of the woody stems in his direction like a mock sword. As Maddek rose, the other warrior called out his name. Then Toric abruptly stopped, tilting the stem straight upward, his eyebrows shooting high. Maddek’s hearty laugh rolled across the clearing—a response to something Toric said and Yvenne had not heard, but which prompted both warriors to glance in her direction.
Maddek’s gaze caught hers—and she could not read his expression at all, but for the longest breath, that look held her captive. No longer was he laughing when he glanced away.
Yet Yvenne could not stop looking upon him, and she slowly realized that another statement she had taken as truth had likely been a joke.
To Ardyl, she asked, “Is his beard truly a foul sight?”
For surely no one could believe it so. Clean-shaven or no, Maddek must be thought very handsome. No matter who looked upon him.
The woman’s peal of laughter was answer enough. But Yvenne wanted more.
“Yet it is also true that warriors should be as silver-fingered Rani, who wears no beard?”
“It is truth. But we must sometimes hope to be more than goddesses are.” Drawing her sword, Ardyl added, “You have to piss?”
Yvenne nodded.
“Come then. And mind your feet. The edges of these stalks can slice skin as easily as sharpened steel can,” Ardyl said, and led Yvenne into the rustling grass. Almost immediately, they were swallowed from sight of the clearing. The warrior stopped and stomped flat a small circle for Yvenne to squat in.
Turning her back to allow Yvenne privacy, she continued, “Ran Ashev wore her hair unbound when she stood before the tribes.”
Maddek’s mother. Her dark hair had been braided again when Yvenne had met her. But she dared not ask more—she had promised Maddek not to speak of his mother at all.
“And his father?”
“Cut his braids short. He wore no beard,” Ardyl said, and her voice softened, in grief or memory. “Though he did when his own mother died. He was not only a warrior then, not only Ran, but a son.” Absently, she brushed her fingertips over the piercings on her brow. “Just as I am a daughter.”
The last daughter of a clan that had been slaughtered by the Destroyer. Yvenne had heard that tale their second night upon the road. The piercings were made from the silver rings gathered from the corpses of her family—and Ardyl, then a newborn babe, had been found swaddled within the village’s stone granary, where someone who’d loved her had hidden her away.
Yvenne used the water in the wineskin to wash while Ardyl took her place, then offered the other woman the same when she finished.
“So it is not a foul sight.”
“No.” Ardyl dried her hands on her linens. “When I look upon his beard, I see that the warrior I have proudly followed for much of my life now hopes to become something more. A warrior sends his enemies into Temra’s arms, and so aspires to be like the goddess Rani. But a Ran must speak for all the tribes, and so aspires to be like the best of us.”
Not to be the best of his people. But to be like those who were. What mattered was not that Maddek was the finest of them—for one man could never be—but that he would never stop striving toward that goal.
Yvenne could do a better job of helping him. For she had promised to make him a great king. Yet she had put in little effort so far.
And knowing Maddek wore his hope—and his grief—for everyone to see, even when his immediate expression showed neither, made him even more beautiful to her eyes than he had been before. Yvenne could not imagine always being laid so bare. In that, she had not as much courage as he.
But she did not lack a queen’s courage, and that drove her across the clearing. Yvenne’s roan ate from a small mound of grasses. At the mare’s side, Maddek stood with his back to Yvenne, flipping her stirrup up over the seat of her saddle.
No doubt he heard her approach, but he gave no indication. Instead she heard the soothing murmur he directed at the mare as his fingers slipped along the girth.
She stopped at his shoulder and watched as he began to loosen the knot she’d made. “Did I cinch it too tightly?”
That earned her a swift grin, for the day had not yet come when she had cinched it tight enough. Always one of the warriors had to adjust the fit.
Then he said, “It is nearly right,” and such joy filled her that she was nearly dizzy with it.
Perhaps she would never be a warrior-queen. But she was stronger than she’d been even a full turn ago.
His gaze fell to her wide smile and lingered before he returned his attention to her saddle. “There is bread and cheese on the gray.” Maddek tipped his head to indicate the horse he would ride. “Fassad has also found a nest.”
Fresh eggs were a fine treat. “Will you have some?” She would feed him from her fingers while he adjusted her saddle, if he liked.
“On the road.”
“Then I will, too. For now, there is a lesson owing. You have taught me to make use of what I have, as a warrior does, but I have not returned that favor.”
And even if his lesson had been part of a jest, it had been worth learning.
He shot her an amused glance, then lowered the stirrup back into place. Facing her, he crossed his arms over his broad chest. From his towering height, he caught her gaze and silently waited.
Waited for her to make him a king.
She could not think of one thing to say. Her mind raced, collecting all that her mother had ever told her, yet not a single word seemed relevant now.
Because those had been conversations, she realized—not simplified lessons. Conversations built upon conversations that stretched back to Yvenne’s earliest years. Her mother had begun teaching Yvenne before she’d ever taken a step.
Now she knew not where to start. But perhaps Maddek knew where he ought to.
“What would you first want to learn?”
He huffed out a soft laugh, but what amused him she couldn’t determine. Nor did she ask. Instead she remained quiet as his gaze lifted from hers. He stared out over the tall grasses, as if searching for something in the distance, before looking to her face again.
“We both had parents who taught us valuable lessons from an early age. I cannot think those lessons were so different. Yet you are a queen, and I am only a warrior. What did you learn that I did not?”
How could she answer that? Yvenne struggled to think of what her mother might say—but perhaps that was the difference. Almost everything Yvenne knew was what her mother had told her. But those had not been lessons given. They’d simply been lived.
“Perhaps . . .” She hesitated a moment, remembering the Parsatheans’ reaction to how her mother had watched everyone. But Yvenne could not be sorry for it. She and her mother had little else. “Perhaps it is because my mother and I did not only live our own lives. There was the tower, but there were also so many people that we watched—not only royals of other realms or their armies, but Syssians who went about their lives. Every day, my mother would look in on them and describe what they did, what made them laugh or cry, what difficulties they faced. And in that way we added their lives to our own.”