Lying in the dark, Marai merely a few feet away, Ruenen couldn’t believe she’d found him again. He didn’t hear her slow, steady breath of sleep. She was awake, as anxious as he was.
He replayed her words: I wanted to kiss you. That . . . that was real.
It had felt real. She was the answer to a question he’d been asking himself for years. The boy with a thousand questions . . . now he only had one.
I wanted it more than anything, she’d said. But peering at her across the fire, body so rigid, maybe Marai kissed him out of obligation, not affection.
She’d looked so utterly terrified running through the portal that he’d barely been able to breathe. Because it was him she’d seemed afraid of. His touch she had run from.
Ruenen didn’t know what he’d done wrong . . . he’d always tried to be respectful. He wanted her to be in charge of when they stepped over that line. But she’d kissed him when he’d least expected it in that alley. He’d forgotten about her boundaries. The second her lips touched his, all common sense left his brain. The clouds around his life had finally parted. Her kiss was a melody swirling around inside him; a song that burst brightly into creation from his heart. He would have held her forever if she hadn’t backed away.
But her expression, eyes so wide, skin deathly pale, froze the blood in his veins. A face he would see over and over, in his dreams, out of the corner of his eyes as he wandered. Was he the villain? Did he overstep? Did he misunderstand?
Then she’d left him . . . disappeared through the portal as the hunters grabbed him. He wasn’t afraid, not when they subdued him, not when they bound his hands behind his back. No, he thought of Marai. He thought of her face. And he hated himself, and her, and the whole messed up situation. He’d been wronged, but had he also wronged her?
When the kind stranger appeared and stabbed the two hunters holding him, Ruenen stopped feeling. A hardness had settled in his core; a heavy stone trampling his emotions. He didn’t want to return to Tacorn to become Rayghast’s plaything. He wouldn’t allow himself to be tortured to death; his mangled body to be paraded around in conquest.
With a knife, the stranger had cut through the ropes binding Ruenen’s hands. The silver-eyed, mahogany-skinned man had given Ruenen an opening, and he’d asked himself, what would Marai do?
Ruenen had grabbed hold of a sword dropped by a fallen hunter, and then slit the throat of another.
You’re too heavy on your feet, Marai’s voice critiqued. Ruenen dodged and whirled, maneuvering around the hunter’s blade, and stabbed Rayghast’s man in the side, angling his blade upwards. The hunter collapsed. Ruenen killed three more, then he was free.
He grumbled now as the darkness lifted and the forest became gray with early morning light. Ruenen hadn’t slept a wink. He sat up with a groan and packed up his blankets, snuffed out the campfire embers. It was the first time he’d ever risen before Marai. She stirred on her patch of soil. Like the first time he’d ever seen them, her violet eyes pierced his lungs, stabbed his heart, and froze him solid.
He made sure to keep his face solemn. He hadn’t forgiven her yet, but it was becoming increasingly more difficult the longer he stared into those eyes . . .
“Let’s go,” he said, although he had no destination. He knew they couldn’t linger, not after Marai’s incident at the Three White Cranes.
She blinked, surprised by the command. She packed up quickly, and followed him through the woods. “Where are we headed?”
“I don’t know,” he shot grumpily over his shoulder. He stomped through the dirt, taking out his frustration by snapping twigs and kicking rocks.
A melodious sound drifted up to him. Ruenen spun. Marai strolled behind him, hands in her pockets, surveying the forest.
“Are you humming ‘The Lady Butcher?’”
Marai gave him an innocent shrug and kept humming. She didn’t exactly have an ear for music; her rhythms were off and the notes were quite pitchy. But she smiled at him as she passed by, taking the lead. It was a real, true smile, directed solely at him.
It almost broke him. His anger at her washed away like sand in the tide. Ruenen would do anything for that smile.
“This is north, you know,” she said after a few minutes. “Is this really the way you want to go? To Varana? Where Emperor Suli could grab you?”
Ruenen scowled at the back of Marai’s black cloak. “No, I don’t want to go to Varana. I’m assuming you have an idea, though, of where we should go instead.”
“West might be promising . . .”
To Nevandia.
Ruenen hadn’t decided yet. But if they turned and made for the Red Lands, the Middle Kingdoms . . . that would be a statement to himself. That would mean he accepted, that he was ready to take the throne.
How could he possibly be ready to rule a country? He’d been instructed for a few years as a child, but he’d forgotten all he learned. He would have to lead troops into battle against King Rayghast who had massive forces and magic. Tacorn was a military state. Soldiers trained for war beginning at the age of five, becoming diligent and adept killers, who either served in the army, or served for the army. Women were expected to breed soldiers, as one might breed horses. But the same was not so in Nevandia, a land of mostly farmers and miners. Each Nevandian life taken . . . that blood would be on Ruenen’s hands.
“I can hear you thinking,” Marai said. “I understand your fear, Ruen, but you’ve proven many times that you are brave and noble. You’re already so much better than Rayghast will ever be.”
She said this all matter-of-factly, as if deciding to become king was as simple as picking out a new cloak (black, of course).
“I haven’t come to a decision yet.”
“Whatever you decide, I vow to fight for you,” said Marai, turning back around. “Because we’re going to face Rayghast one way or another. I’ll help you defeat him, but I’d rather have an army behind us.”
She spoke in that same terse, indifferent tone, the one he was used to. The Lady Butcher. She was giving them both a purpose, something to believe in. To fight for.
They walked all day in that silence Ruenen had grown accustomed to in Marai’s presence, and over the hours, his anger at her continued to ease, but he still made sure to scowl at her whenever she glanced his way.
Can’t let her off too easily.
Ruenen had spent many days walking in silence since escaping the bounty hunters, but it had been oppressively lonely. He learned that there were many types of silences. There was the revenant, hallowed silence of a temple or monastery. The fearful silence of a prison cell. And then there was this silence, easy, not strained. Existing together in space and nature. At peace.
Every damn path turned them West. A collapsed bridge forced them further inland. A trades-worker strike in rural Syoto closed all nearby roads to traffic. Ruenen bitterly suspected that the gods were shoving him in their preferred direction. He wondered if Marai had stoked the strike days ago in advance of reuniting with him. Fate was guiding him towards his destiny.
That night, the forest opened up into a field with rangy, fragrant green grass.
As they set camp, he felt sure that whatever choice he made would be the wrong one. That he was doomed to fail no matter what.
Marai stared up at the night sky. He’d watched her do this many times before, but it felt significant then. A peace washed over her. There was something in the stars, the argent moon, that lit her eyes with possibility. Her gaze then snapped to him from across the campfire. Ruenen quickly looked away and cleared his throat, pretending to tie his boot.
“I believe in you, Ruen,” she said.
