Until Maddek had reached down and helped them out. Dozens he’d pulled from that pit before his soldiers had found a rope to throw down. And there had been some too weak to climb, so he’d been the first to carry them out.
“My mother described it all to me,” said Yvenne quietly now. “And how the Tolehi monk in your group had advised you to leave them to starve, because freeing them meant they would begin attacking the southern realms again.”
Which had been truth. Yet he’d given his orders, anyway.
“I have recognized the faces of Farians that I freed that day,” he told her now, his voice thick. “Children then. Grown later into savage enemies that I’ve killed.”
“I know you have,” she said softly. “But do you regret your orders to free them?”
He shook his head. “I cannot.”
A small smile curved her mouth and she cupped his bearded jaw in both hands. “And I do not regret that being the reason I choose you. Had you given me cause to regret that decision in the years following, then perhaps I would have chosen Cadus or Dagenoh. But I have not.”
“You did regret it,” he reminded her. “The morning after I pulled at your tongue.”
“And no longer regretted again by evening.” Her eyes were alight with laughter. “Or perhaps I regretted until you put that stave into my hand. Take a lesson from that, Maddek. I am also hot of head—but you only need to give me a weapon and I will forgive you almost anything.”
Perhaps it was not a wise lesson to learn, placing a weapon into the hand of a woman angry with him. But if it meant seeing her smile, he was fool enough to shower her in blades. “Is that why your mother disapproved of me, then—because I freed the Farians?”
“No.” Her amusement faded. “She called you idealistic and foolish. But she also said you made the hardest decision that can ever be made: doing what is right and good, while knowing how painful the consequences might be. But you did not make someone else take responsibility for those consequences. You were the first volunteer to return to the Lave, and to mount a defense against them.”
So Maddek had been. He’d felt no guilt for freeing the savages. He never would. But he’d recognized his role in what followed, and had thought to give the southern realms time to rebuild their own defenses, so they would not need a Parsathean army at their southern borders.
That hope had been as strong as the hope that, when he’d held out his hand, perhaps the Farians would not see them as demons and continue their savage attacks. Neither hope had come to fruition. But hope had not been his reason for freeing them, or his reason for returning to defend the Lave. Both decisions were simply what he felt must be done.
“Why then did she advise you against me?”
She drew a deep breath. “You are certain you want to hear?”
He frowned. “Are they words best left unsaid?”
“I know not. I only know that they are not easy words.”
“I will stand firm,” he told her, and amusement flashed over her expression before she nodded.
Her hand cupping his jaw again, she said, “It was because you have never lost.”
Never lost? That made no sense.
She must have seen his confusion because she tried again. “You have never been defeated. And I do not refer to small competitions with other warriors. You are a fine sport. But you have never suffered true loss or defeat.”
That was what her mother had seen? Then Queen Vyssen had not watched carefully. “I have lost warriors under my command, have lost friends—”
“You have,” Yvenne agreed softly.
“My parents,” he gritted out. “My queen and king, whom I loved with my full heart. Your mother was already dead when your father murdered them, so she could not have seen who I was in response to that. Do you think I have not lost anything?”
“I know you have lost those you have loved,” she said. “But have you ever been defeated?”
Chest heaving, Maddek searched her face as if he might find answer there. But he could not think of a defeat. Not a significant one. He rasped, “I have not been defeated. That is a fault?”
“It is not.”
“Then what reason—”
“You must remember,” she told him, combing her fingers along his bearded jaw, “my mother had seen Syssia crushed. She’d seen her beloved mother become a demon that she herself had to slay. She had seen Anumith the Destroyer bring everyone to their knees. And then she was poisoned and betrayed, a warrior-queen born but with her body so weakened she could only watch as my father razed Syssia’s noble houses and as he ground our people beneath his heel. And in that time, she watched everyone as they recovered from the Destroyer’s march. She believed that was when you truly learned someone’s character—after they’d been broken. When they lost someone they’d loved, and everything they’d known was destroyed. When they’d been brought so low, they might never rise again. And when they do rise, then whatever reason they find to keep going, to claw their way up, to crawl to their feet—she believed that reason would reveal who they truly were. She said that she didn’t know who you truly were.”
Jaw clenched, he stared at her. Did Yvenne also not know who he was? But he thought she did. She had seen him in the Farian caves, and had chosen him to wed. She had seen him in the years that followed, as he commanded an army upon the Lave. And she had seen him now, full of grief and rage and vengeance.
His throat was raw as he asked, “Have you known defeat?”
A sad smile touched her mouth. “Over and over again. The only victory I have known so far is that I persuaded you not to kill me, and finally have the opportunity to escape my father and claim my throne. And it is not even a victory yet in full.”
“It will be,” he vowed thickly. “What made you rise to your feet again?”
“Love for my people. Rage against my father.” She paused. “Hope.”
All of which Maddek shared with her. “Perhaps I have not known crushing defeat. But I have known difficulty and loss. I have known grief that tore my heart from my chest. If you must judge who I am, use that.”
“The vengeance you pursue for your parents?”
He nodded.
“I think you do them honor,” said she.
“But I might have done them dishonor.” He saw that clearly now. “If I had torn the alliance apart, after they spent so much of their lives building it.”
She said nothing, but the tilt of her lips and the thumb she slid across the width of his bottom lip said enough.
And now she had been tasked to strengthen that alliance—and to make it grow. “How far did your mother see? How many realms have you watched?”