“Be careful,” she said, but her words were overrun by Kara’s voice.
“You can’t run away from me, Dravek. I’m your wife.”
She reached for his arm, and he turned on her.
“I said, stop!”
Her head jerked back as if he’d struck her. Then her eyes went blank and her jaw slack. She stared past Dravek at the orange horizon.
In the shocked silence, Sura realized that the excitement of Kara’s invisibility had made them forget one important fact: Dravek now had second-phase powers, too. He could erase a person’s memory.
“Kara?” he whispered. “Kara, look at me.”
She squinted at his face as if she were trying to recall his name. Finally her eyes sparked with recognition. “Dravek.”
“Yes. Yes, it’s me, love.” He went to embrace her, and she stepped back.
“What are you doing?”
He lowered his arms. “You know me, right?”
“Of course. You’re Daria’s little brother.” She took another step back, eyes darting. Her face lit up when she saw Etarek, then clouded again as she examined their surroundings. “We’re near Tiros. Why?”
Sura’s heart froze.
“Oh, no,” Etarek whispered.
“So I can train with Vara.” Dravek’s voice shook. “So we can deliver the Kalindon pigeons. You don’t remember?”
“I delivered pigeons before. With Daria and her father.”
“Yes, last year. You remember, that’s good. What else do you—”
“Hello,” Kara said to Sura with a tentative smile. She turned to Dravek. “Who’s she?”
Carefully he grasped her shoulders. She gave his hands a curious look but didn’t shrug them off.
“Listen to me,” he said, “and know that I’m not lying or playing a joke.” His gaze bored into hers. “I’m your husband.”
“My husband?” She broke away from him and gave a nervous laugh. “Why would I marry you?” Her hands flew to her mouth as soon as the words were out. “Oh, no, that sounded awful. It’s not that I don’t like you. But you’re not exactly the marrying type. I can’t imagine anyone—” She stopped and twisted her hands together. “This is a joke.” She looked at Etarek. “Right?”
“No…” Dravek clutched his hair. “Spirits, no. Kara, I’m so sorry.” He reached out for her. “Let me explain.”
“No.” She backed away, then turned to Etarek. “You tell me.”
He looked at Dravek, who nodded. Etarek motioned for her to sit beside him. As he explained what had happened, Dravek paced the edge of the ridge.
Sura dreaded her own entry into the second phase. Would she herself someday cause the same harm in a moment of anger? If only they’d reached Vara a few days sooner, Dravek could have learned to control this treacherous power.
“I’m pregnant?” Kara’s eyes filled with tears, and she clutched Etarek’s wrist. “Am I sure it’s his?”
“That’s why you’re in this state,” Etarek said. “He entered his second phase the same time you did. You argued, and he—” His glance shifted to Dravek, then back again. “I’m sure it was an accident.”
Sura wondered if Etarek had heard something in Dravek’s voice that cast doubt on that statement.
“We’ll get your memory back when we get to Tiros,” she told Kara. “Vara will help us.”
Kara looked at her. “Who are you?”
“This is Sura,” Dravek said, “my Spirit-sister.”
Etarek kept his voice level. “Her mother Mali is in prison for leading the Asermon resistance.”
“Oh.” Kara’s eyes went soft and round as she looked at Sura. “I’m sorry.”
Dravek took her hand. “Let’s go talk this over, just the two of us.”
“The two of us?” She yanked her hand out of his grip. “You stole months of life from my mind, and now you expect to cuddle up? Make love?”
“No, I just want to talk. Maybe I can help you remember.”
She scoffed. “Think your famous tongue can bring back my memories? Or maybe just make new ones?” She turned away from him again. “We’ll talk tomorrow, Dravek.”
He stood slowly, his face twisted with dread. “I’ll get my things and sleep with Etarek. We’ll switch tents tonight.”
“I can’t sleep with her.” Kara looked at Sura. “I don’t even know her.”
“Then I’ll sleep outside.” Dravek went to his tent and yanked out a blanket. “You can be alone.”
“I’m a Wolf. I can’t sleep if I’m alone.” Kara turned to Etarek. “Can I share your tent?”
Etarek shook his head. “I’m with Sura.”
“It’s only a few nights. We’re almost to Tiros.”
Sura took a step toward them. “You can’t sleep with my mate.”
Kara clucked her tongue. “We won’t do anything. And this way, Dravek won’t have to sleep outside.”
“You want me to sleep with your husband?”
“I don’t care what you do with him.” She met Dravek’s eyes, which filled with pain, then softened her voice. “You’re his Spirit-sister. I sleep with my Wolf-brothers on long hunts. To keep warm, plus it bonds us.”
Sura gritted her teeth. The last thing she and Dravek needed was more bonding.
“I’ll sleep outside.” Dravek threw the blanket over his shoulder and stalked up a narrow trail.
Sura turned to the others, intending to stake her territory. Kara looked up at her, and behind the Wolf’s defiant bluster, Sura saw confusion and despair.
“We’ll take turns sleeping alone,” Sura said. “I’ll go first tonight. You stay with Etarek.”
Kara’s shoulders relaxed. “Thank you. That’s very kind.” She rubbed her arms. “I’m sorry for being unreasonable.”
Sura bent to pick up the dirty dishes. “I’m sorry you lost your memory. It must be terrible.”
“It feels like I woke up from a long, cloudy dream. The worst part is, everyone sees a different me than I do. And I’m the one who’s wrong.” She chewed her fingernail and looked at the place where Dravek had disappeared. “Am I in love with him?”
Sura wondered. “Enough to marry him.”
She looked at Etarek. “It must have happened fast.”
“You’ve been together about six months,” he said. “And since then you haven’t been seen with another man.”
Surprise crossed her face. “Not even you?”
Sura blinked. “Were you and Etarek mates?”
He gave Sura a warm smile. “A long time ago.”
Kara made a hmph noise, then turned toward the west and the sky’s fading light. She lifted her hands before her face and scrunched up her forehead. She shimmered from view, then reappeared.
She breathed a sigh of wonder. “It’s true, then.” She cupped her hands over her belly and gave a sad smile. “Was I happy when I found out?”
“Very happy.” Sura went to the Wolf but stopped short of touching her. “So was Dravek.”
Kara sighed with her lower lip out, blowing her hair from her face. “I wish I could have that moment back.” Her brows pinched together. “But what if I can’t? What if my feelings are tied to that time and place?”
“You were destined to love him,” Etarek said. “How else can you explain something so unlikely?”
Kara shook her head sadly. “Love is an accident, not destiny. You’ll understand when you’re my age,” she added, as if she were fifty-two instead of twenty-two. “I probably did love Dravek, though it doesn’t seem very easy.”
Sura gazed into the campfire’s dying flames, and wished that were true.
Dravek lay on his back, watching clouds obscure the stars. It reminded him of how the light had disappeared from Kara’s face as the memories slipped away from her. She’d looked so vacant. Lost. Alone.
But nothing in her mind changed the fact of the child in her womb. Whether she ever wanted him in her bed again, he would stay in her life.
Then there was Sura, who
occupied his thoughts, especially as he lay awake at night, hearing how thoroughly Etarek pleased her. She sounded so happy, and yet on the rare occasions when Dravek met her eyes, he saw an unendurable sadness lurking within. He wanted to take that pain away, though he knew he would make it worse. Destruction seemed to be his only skill.
Dravek turned on his side on the hard rock just as a rumble of thunder rolled across the sky. Moments later, he heard the rain make its way across the rocky cliffs until it pelted his face and hands like a thousand wet pebbles. He drew the blanket over his head, but soon it was drenched.
Something nudged his foot. He pulled down the blanket to see a cloaked figure standing over him.
“Are you crazy or just stupid?” Sura hissed. “Come inside.”
“I can’t.”
“Then you’re crazy and stupid.” She yanked the blanket off him. The rain drove into his face so hard he couldn’t see. To avoid drowning, he stood and followed her down the trail and into the tent.
“The right side’s leaking.” She tossed him his pack. “Get changed over there where you won’t drip on the dry part. Good night.”
Dravek heard her lie down on the far side with a grunt. He peeled off his wet clothes, shivering even in the warm night air. As he rubbed himself dry, he glanced over his shoulder at Sura, though he couldn’t see her in the near-total darkness.
Her scent mingled with his own and Kara’s, and the blanket wrapped around her smelled like Etarek. To his nose, even more sensitive in his second phase, it was as if all four of them were in the tent.
Without meaning to, he cleared his throat.
“I’ve already seen you naked,” she said. “I was at your wedding, remember?”
Her sardonic tone eased his tension. “Then what’s the harm in looking now?”
He heard her feet fidget under the blanket. “It’s too dark.”
“And I’m already dressed, anyway.”
She laughed. “You are not.”
“Outwitted me again.” He grabbed a dry set of clothes from his pack.
“A salamander could outwit you.”
He said nothing as he dressed, then stretched out on his back beside her. Water seeped over the left half of his shirt, so he scooted closer to Sura.
“I told you it was wet.” She inched forward against the tent wall to give him more room.
He lay on his side facing away from her. Her back pressed against him, and her heat radiated through the blanket and their thin layers of clothes. He sighed and draped an arm over his face, as if that would fight off the images of skin and sweat. The rain pounded on the tent roof.
“What did it feel like,” she said, “when you made her forget?”
He didn’t want to remember that moment. “It felt like fire.”
“I know you’d never hurt her on purpose.” She drew in another breath, as if to utter another sentence that began with, “But…”
He couldn’t bear the silence of her doubt. “I’d do anything to take it back.”
“I had a friend who lost her memory falling out of a tree. One of the Otters treated her concussion, and she was fine a few days later.”
“Kara’s memories are burned. I don’t think they can be recovered, any more than a log can be rebuilt from its ashes.” He covered his face with his hands. “I can’t believe I did that to her. I don’t deserve her love.”
“But loving you is part of who she is.”
His throat tightened. “Not anymore. Now I’m back to being her best friend’s obnoxious little brother.”
“If that was how she saw you, how’d she fall in love with you in the first place? Snake seduction magic?”
He hesitated. It was hard to explain without dishonoring Kara.
“No magic, just meloxa,” he said. “And no, I didn’t try to get her drunk. There was a party midwinter—celebrating a birth, I think. We shared a few dances, then she took me to bed. I think she wanted to prove she could resist me a second time.”
“Despite your famous tongue.”
From her voice he could almost see the mocking smile curve Sura’s lips. He wiped his cheek as it heated with embarrassment.
“Anyway, her plan didn’t work. She became despondent or furious when I’d so much as look at another woman.” He frowned. “She didn’t mind the men, I suppose because they couldn’t give me children—they couldn’t trap me the way she wanted to. That was her word, trap.” His voice hardened. “Like I was another wild animal for her to hunt.”
“Why would you agree to be trapped?”
“I loved her. I hated seeing her unhappy.” He gathered the courage to admit the full truth. “And I loved the way she craved me. I grew addicted to the need in her eyes, even as it diminished her. One night in the middle of making love, she gave me an ultimatum—marry her or she’d leave me that moment.”
“That’s not fair. And I bet she was bluffing.”
“I almost said no. There was a moment when I saw it all so clearly. That what we both needed most was to get away from each other.”
Sura turned to face him. “What stopped you?”
He hesitated, wondering if she could understand. “I imagined the look on Kara’s face if I said, ‘yes,’ and how she would look if I said, ‘no.’ Seeing her smile, knowing I was the cause, made me feel like less of a monster.”
“Why would you think you’re a monster?”
He shifted onto his back and turned his face toward her. “My father raped my mother.” His mouth twitched after he said it, as if it wanted to take back the words. “I was made from violence and pain, from the power of several men over one woman. She almost died giving birth to me, and then took her own life because I was a constant reminder of what had happened to her.”
“None of that is your fault.” She lifted her hand as if to touch him, then pulled it back.
“Are you afraid of me now?” he whispered.
“No.”
Her voice trembled, but he didn’t smell fear, and her hands were as warm as ever, lying on the blanket between them, an inch from his chest. His heightened Snake senses threatened to drown him in his awareness of her heat.
“Sura…”
Her breath caught, and he felt her skin chill. The passion in his voice had made her afraid—and not of his forgetting powers.
“Yes?”
He brushed his warm hand against her cold one. “I’ve never wanted to not hurt someone as much as I want to not hurt you.”
It was as close as he could come to a declaration of love. He could never have her, no matter what she felt, no matter what happened to his marriage. They were Snake and always would be.
Sura wove her fingers around his, and the heat under their skin flared. “What do we do?” She was whispering now as the rain turned to a drizzle.
“I don’t know.” Holding his breath, he lifted her hand to kiss her palm.
She let out a choked cry, then seized the front of his shirt and pressed her forehead to his. “I can’t do this,” she whispered, “be with you and not be with you. It makes me hate myself.”
“No.” His throat tried to cut off the words. “Hate me instead.” He brushed his lips over her cheek, feeling her jaw move as her mouth opened. He wanted to cover it with his own, but resisted, moving to kiss her fluttering lashes, then her forehead.
Sura stroked her smooth cheek against his stubbled one, breathing him in. The warm, rich scent of her desire drenched his mind, and his hands shook with the effort not to caress her body.
The rain strengthened into a roar, and he pulled Sura into a tight embrace. They clutched at each other, and for a moment he felt relief flow through him like a cold drink of water. Then the press of her against him became agony, and he nearly bit his tongue in half to suppress a groan of longing.
“I wish I could make us forget who we are,” he said. “Then we could find a place where there’s nothing between us.”
She pulled back to look at him, her nose almost touching his.
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“Could we do that?” Her eyes turned sad. “Run away and leave everything and everyone we know? Everyone who needs us?”
He didn’t want to think about all the others, not now when they were so close and she smelled so good. “I need you.”
He lifted her chin to take her mouth, taste her tongue, fill himself with her wetness. Already he could feel her lips swollen with the heat of desire.
The rain stopped. Sura and Dravek froze, their breath mingling in each other’s mouths, which held their place a fraction of an inch apart.
“We can’t do this,” she whispered.
He forced himself to let her go, and Sura eased herself out of his embrace. His body mourned the loss of her, as if she were the sole source of warmth in the world. She turned away.
He drew the blanket up to cover her shoulders, trying not to notice that they were trembling, like his hands. “I’ll sleep outside now that the rain’s stopped.”
“The ground is wet.”
“And cold. It’ll help.”
She didn’t reply, only curled her knees to her chest as if doubled in pain.
Once outside, he lay on the damp ground and let it steal his body’s unbearable heat. It seemed as if his desire for Sura could set the sea on fire.
Though he ached to release himself, he vowed to store this feeling deep inside. One day, as his power grew, it would rain fury on his father’s people like hail.
He would burn them all.
23
Tiros
Sura shivered in the shadow of the Tiron watchtower, where Cougars stood ready to shoot arrows into her and her traveling companions. It reminded her of the Descendant garrison near Asermos.
Between the watchtowers stood four powerfully built, solemn-faced young men with swords and knives unsheathed. Kara stopped and bowed in greeting. They nodded in return, each of them watching one of the visitors. The center guards—the two with the swords—wore bear claws on leather cords around their necks. The outer two wore long, thin carved wooden claws— Wolverine, Sura guessed. She tried not to stare at the fetishes, a sight she hadn’t seen in years; Kalindons didn’t wear them, and Asermons weren’t allowed.
“State your name, Animal, home and business,” the taller and older of the Bears said. “Now.”
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