“I appreciate it,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought of that.” He remembered the fight in Iolair, wondering what he could have done differently.
“Captain,” the Huntress said off-handedly, “how long have you been doing this?”
The question startled him. “Sword work? Nearly all my life.”
“No family farm or trade to take up?”
“No.”
She eyed him skeptically. “But why the sword? Was it for glory?”
“There’s no glory in being paid to kill.” He sobered at his own words, wondering if Cara was influencing him more than he’d thought.
“But that’s what mercenary means, isn’t it?” she pointed out with her usual bluntness.
He snorted at the irony.
“Besides, there is glory in victory,” she continued.
He paused, considering where her questions were leading. “Don’t tell me you want this kind of life.” He hadn’t intended the disdain that colored his words.
“Maybe I do,” she huffed.
“Look, I know you’re a good fighter. It’s obviously in your blood, but why?” Was he really arguing against what he’d devoted his own life to? Falin was level-headed, almost callous if truth be told. She’d do well as a Sword. But the weight of all the men and women who’d died at his command haunted him. “Why would you want this?”
“Why shouldn’t I want it?” she challenged, almost angry.
“You could have a better life. In Foresthaven,” he said softly.
“No,” she said. “You heard Rebeka. I can’t go back.”
Her confession was a strange and vulnerable offering. Khoury thought that Rebeka had been making empty threats. He hadn’t considered that helping them might have cost her so much.
Unshed tears brightened the green of her eyes. “When Rebeka captured you in Foresthaven,” she said, staring at the flames, “Sorchia thought it best not to tell the Sisters’ Council. Like Bradan, she wanted to help Cara. And I’d always wanted to see the world beyond. But disappearing without a word like that. And the false Culling…” Her voice failed her. She picked a piece of straw from her tunic and angrily threw it in the fire. “They’ll assume I deserted.” Her nostrils flared with self-loathing. “Of all disgraces, that is the worst. It’ll only justify their refusal of my Sisters’ oath last year.”
She’d never taken the oath? Khoury couldn’t understand why they would refuse her. She might be prickly and arrogant but she was tough and fiercely loyal. “Then you’re not…”
She forced a grin, though he could see the hurt behind her eyes. “Not officially, no. And they wouldn’t have me back now.” She cleared her throat and looked expectantly at him. “So, I thought I’d make a good mercenary.”
“You would,” he agreed reluctantly. “You will.”
She stared at the fire for a moment. “I take it home’s not an option for you either.”
He nodded.
“How come?” She looked up with a raised eyebrow and a hint of challenge.
Oddly enough, he wanted to tell her. His tongue was thick with his secrets, things he hadn’t even shared with Archer, and the memories had been restless ever since the Keep. But speaking them wouldn’t change the past, so why drag it up?
“Hot-headed good-for-nothing boy, I’m sure you know the type,” he said.
She sniffed in disdain. “Coward.”
He coughed to hide his discomfort. He knew she was right. And the story was still on his tongue, waiting. She gave him a gentle nudge with her shoulder as if sensing his weakness. The homey scent of hay wafted from her hair.
“Go on,” she said.
Her friendly interrogation drew a shadow of a smile that loosened his tongue. “I grew up in Barakan.”
Her brow furrowed as if she recognized the name, but she shrugged and motioned for him to continue.
“There isn’t a more treacherous place in the world,” he said. “Not even the Far Isles, I’d wager.
“My father was a good man and honorable. But that’s a dangerous path in the mountains. He…he got in someone’s way.” Khoury pushed the words out through tight lips. “And they killed him for it. Him and the rest of my family.” He kept his eyes on the fire, not wanting to see her pity.
“How old were you?”
“Ten. I had two older brothers.” He swallowed, unable to even say their names. “I was there when they were…murdered.” His mother had tried to save him and had died for it. But he couldn’t tell the Huntress that. He couldn’t even think about that. He forced the vision of his mother’s blood from his mind.
“I was so angry. I tried to fight. I ran straight in, sword swinging.” He chuckled as he pictured himself, a gangling youth against mounted warriors. “But I was too young, too inexperienced. In the end, beaten and nearly dead, I fled….”
His voice tightened to a whisper with the shame of it. “I left them there and never went back. Not even to bury them.”
Only crackling flames broke the silence as he waded in the pain of the past until she said, “And the sword work?”
Drawing his mind forward, he remembered how Old Khoury had found him, bleeding and half-dead on that deserted road. “A passing mercenary took me in, helped me heal, taught me to fight better. Where else was I going to go? The man who killed my family was determined to finish the job. There was a price on my head. I guess, after a while, it’s just what you do. Besides, I had nothing left to lose.”
Her warm hand grasped his forearm. “Mason, I’m truly sorry.”
Hearing her use his first name struck a chord, especially since he’d borrowed the old mercenary’s last name to keep his past from finding him. “No one else knows, not even Archer.”
“A true gift then,” she whispered as her hand tightened comfortingly on his arm before she put it back in her lap. “I won’t share it. I promise.”
She tossed the bones in the fire. “One thing, though. Sorchia used to say that those who have nothing to lose, often have nothing to win either.”
Khoury chuckled at how true that was. Though he was well-respected among the Swords, something was missing. Cara’s face swam in his mind’s eye. “She’s a wise one.”
“I didn’t think so until I left,” Falin said with a snort. She shifted away from him suddenly and moved his tabard with tentative fingers, revealing the bent links in his armor.
“Did you know you’re bleeding?”
“Only a little.”
“Why didn’t you go to Bradan?”
“He has enough to do tonight.”
Falin slapped him across the thigh in reprimand. “Get in the tent,” she commanded imperiously. “We can’t have you falling off your horse tomorrow because you’re too stupid to have it looked at. I’ll go get Bradan.” Falin stood up and grabbed his arm.
Khoury waved her off. “Don’t bother, it isn’t serious.”
“It will be when your muscles cramp up tomorrow,” Falin argued, tugging on him. He refused to move. She squatted down in front of him. “Fine, I’ll get Archer,” she threatened in a singsong voice.
Khoury had to laugh. “Okay, okay. You can bind it if you must. But don’t bother Bradan or Archer with it. They can be such mother hens.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes as she helped him into the tent.
INSIDE THE TENT, Falin watched Khoury drop to his knees on the sleeping blankets, slipping off the blue tabard with his good arm. Her throat was tight after hearing his story. Now she understood why the loss of Cara hit him so hard. She was glad for the distraction of a simple task.
The chain links were distorted, torn at the joint under his arm. As she helped him remove the hauberk, his sharp intake of breath told her it hurt more than he let on. The armor was surprisingly heavy. Falin was impressed that he could fight with all that weight.
She knelt down in front of him, untying the strings at the throat of his bloodied cotton shirt. When she removed it, the tangy scent of sweat mingled with blood sent
a warm flush to her face. She examined the wound, his skin smooth under her gentle hands. A large purple bruise ran from his left nipple under his arm toward the edge of his shoulder blade. It was swollen and a small cut oozed blood where the tip had struck. It wasn’t deep and the bleeding would stop on its own. She moved his arm in a circle, watching to see if the wound gaped. Then she pressed her palm to his ribs and circled it again with no grinding of broken bones.
“Motion’s good. I’d put in a stitch so it doesn’t keep opening. You’ll be able to fight tomorrow, but it’ll hurt.”
“It always does,” he replied. “Just do what you can.” Khoury sat perfectly still as she cleaned the wound.
Shame heated her cheeks that a simple touch and Cara would have healed him already. Xantherus’s suggestion that she was Cara’s cast off pieces burrowed deep into her bones and robbed her of her pride. Her strength was lost in the riot of emotions that tumbled through her. Threading a small needle from her pouch with thread, she busied herself, closing the wound with a few small stitches and smearing it with one of Cara’s ointments.
She looked up to find Khoury watching her curiously. “Thank you,” he said, moving his arm gingerly back and forth.
Her restless hands demanded occupation. She retrieved clean bandages from another satchel. Khoury was quiet as she worked, and she wondered what he was thinking.
Maybe I shouldn’t have made him talk about his past, she thought. How would I feel if someone killed Sorchia and I just ran? She couldn’t imagine carrying that terrible shame, much less confiding it to anyone.
As she leaned over to wind the bandage around his chest, she overbalanced and fell against him. Lifting her head to avoid banging into his chest, she found her face so close to his their breath mingled. Her uncomfortable laugh did little to cover the sudden tension as she gazed into his eyes. She put a hand to his chest to right herself.
“Are you always this clumsy?” His voice rumbled under her hand. The light-heartedness of his smile didn’t dim the intensity in his stormy eyes. The firelight flickered over the planes of his cheek, reminding her how he’d kissed her once.
In a dream.
Only, now that she thought about it, it hadn’t been a dream at all. The night after Rebeka’s attack, she must have been in Cara’s mind, sharing their…
She shook the blush from her cheeks but curiosity had taken hold. She didn’t think she would return from the Keep. Not as she was now anyway. Unlike the others, she knew she only had now. Why shouldn’t she taste that wild passion for herself?
She wrapped his chest snugly, trying to focus only on her task, but her mind kept replaying that fire lit scene.
How would it feel, she wondered, to lay with him like that?
A tense excitement curled in her chest at the memory of him kissing her.
After tying off the bandage, she couldn’t keep her fingers from lingering on his skin, tracing the scars on his torso and arms, each one a mute testament to his violent life.
“Sorchia used to say our lives are written in our scars.” She kept her eyes down, not sure what she wanted from him.
“Again, she’s a wise woman,” he murmured.
Was there something more in his voice? If there was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Then she found the large, puckered scar that spanned his torso on the right. His breath caught at her touch but he said nothing. Curious, she examined it more closely. She’d never seen so much damage. Underneath the skin, at least three ribs were bulky and deformed. Broken, she thought. She followed the stiff scar with questioning fingers around his side to the back. The wound extended all the way to his spine and with some deformity in the bones of his back as well.
“Mothers’ love!” she said.
Was this the wound he’d suffered as a boy?
Her finger gently traced the outline of the wound again, and she looked up to find Khoury’s eyes searching her face. What was he expecting to find?
“It was a long time ago,” he said, and then let the silence swallow them.
Needing to break the tension, she slid to the ground next to him and raised the cuff of her legging above her knee. “Well, mine’s not big but it’s a beauty,” she said. A scar ran across her right thigh down to the middle of the calf, it was as wide as his thumb. “I got this trying to beat Rebeka at swords when we were eight. We didn’t know where to find the practice swords so we got blades from the smithy.” She laughed. “Big mistake.”
He reached out a hand to touch her scar but drew back.
“Your turn,” she said, pulling the legging back down.
Catching onto her game, Khoury pointed to a through-and-through wound on his right shoulder. “An arrow during my first city siege. Broke it off and fought for half a day. Hurt like a bitch for months.”
She examined the wound closely and grinned. Then she lifted the hair off her neck where a burn scar ran from one shoulder up the back of her neck. “I fell backward into the cooking fire. Fighting with Rebeka, again.” She laughed.
This time he joined in. They swapped scars for a while—the time when he nearly lost his finger, or when she fell out of a tree. Then Falin pulled her jerkin off her left shoulder.
“These three are from a hunting cat that wouldn’t leave the village alone. I got three more across the belly, too. Was lucky it didn’t gut me,” she continued with bravado.
KHOURY FROZE AT the sight of the three scars on Falin’s shoulder. Cara had the same scars. His head spun for a moment. How could they have the exact same scars?
“What?” Falin asked, noting his stare. “It wasn’t really as close as all that. I knew I’d win.”
His tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. He didn’t know what to say. Even without the mystery of her connection to Cara, she seemed different tonight. Approachable. Alluring. He studied her in the lantern’s soft glow, her features softened by shared laughter and her eyes bright with something that was neither pity nor disgust.
Then she leaned forward and placed a kiss on his scar. The one that embodied all his shame, all his terrible history. And something inside him wanted to reach out and pull her to him. But he did nothing. Said nothing.
She turned away from his silence and wound the extra bandages neatly, shoving them back in the satchel. Her eyes were focused on her hands, but he noticed the flush of pink on her neck and cheeks.
He’d never mentioned his past to anyone, nor had he ever compared battle scars. Most women shrank from the marks on his skin but, like Violet, Falin knew about battle and courage and death. She’d raised his spirits like another warrior might.
But why the sudden interest, he thought. It wasn’t like her, all the talk and the tenderness. The battle at the tollhouse had been furious and short. He wanted to forget the sounds of sword against sword. He desired the feeling of soft strands tangling around his fingers. Did she feel the same need to be touched?
His hands covered hers to stop their busyness. She looked up and, finding him close, impulsively pressed her lips to his. Surprised, he let her kiss him at first. Then he cupped her face with a calloused hand and drew her closer, deepening the kiss himself. Tantalized by her taste, his tongue swept her mouth. Her breath caressed his cheek.
“Falin.” His voice came out husky as she playfully kissed the corner of his mouth. “Wait.” He pulled back, dropping his hands from her face to her shoulders.
She sighed, closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to his. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I know you love Cara. I just wanted to know…”
She turned her head away and Khoury watched her cheeks redden.
“Know what?” he asked.
Her eyes darkened with purpose as she stroked gentle fingers along the scars on his face. “Know what it feels like…to be…touched, to be held.”
He grabbed her hand, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Huntress, I…”
“We are kindred spirits, are we not? Warriors know there is only now.” Her eyes met h
is with clear intent. What she was offering was not out of pity or naiveté. She was no love-struck girl.
He was stunned.
“I…am…more than honored, Huntress.” His voice was husky with emotion but when he paused to clear his throat, she placed soft fingers across his lips.
“But you will not betray Cara. I understand.” The disappointment in her voice wounded him.
“No, it’s not that. There are no promises between Cara and me.”
She quirked a skeptical eyebrow.
“No spoken promises, at any rate,” he clarified, unable to look her in the eye. “I—”
“You’re an honorable man, a loyal one. And she is…everything I am not.” Her hand lifted his chin so he could meet her rueful eyes. “But Captain, don’t fool yourself into believing you have nothing to lose. There are many whose days would darken were you to fall.” Her green eyes held more than he’d ever guessed.
Khoury was torn. His father had never strayed from his mother, faithfulness was part of the family code. But need sparked a selfish passion in him. He snagged Falin’s hand, pulling it close and pressing a kiss to her palm.
She only asked for now. Surely, a few hours wouldn’t be wrong. She stroked his lower lip with her thumb, her eyes following the movement with hunger. Reaching out, he pulled her body roughly to his chest and kissed her with reckless desire. And she met him in equal measure, responding to every touch, echoing every breath. Never pressing further nor holding anything back.
He cursed life’s cruelty to send him Falin now. Now, after he had allowed himself to care for Cara, after he had promised to keep her safe. He did love the white-haired woman, enough to die for her. But, here in his arms was someone he never expected. Someone who understood his pain and his rage and the cost of strength. Perhaps because she was a warrior, she touched him in a way that Cara never could. All he desired in that moment was to lose himself, delighting in her strength. To be only Mason.
But he couldn’t. Not with the Black Keep looming over them.
“No.” His voice was harsh with emotion. “This isn’t right.”
Quest of the Dreamwalker (The Corthan Legacy Book 1) Page 35