by Liz Craven
“Dhakir.”
She blinked twice. “He wants our name?”
“No, he wants your name. As I understand it, you are the head of your own family within the tribe.”
He’d been forced to kill his father for her and he wanted her name? He still wanted her? “He told you this?”
“Not in so many words. He asked me if I thought Talon would mind. Of course, he’d been sitting by your side for two days without sleep. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have given up that much.”
She peered around Tristan with hope swelling her heart. Maybe he didn’t blame her. Maybe there was still hope.
The door opened and Marlus strode into the room. He stopped short seeing Ilexa sitting up in bed. “Look who’s conscious.”
“How’s Quatres?”
“He has a strong gift—and a strong spirit.” Her mentor crossed to stand by the bed. “When the doctor declared you untreatable, Quatres tried to use his gift to help you. The attempt was feeble at best, but you have to admire the boy’s spirit. He will make a fine healer.”
“You’ll watch over him on N’yota?” She worried her lip. “He’s not a child of Havilla.”
Marlus patted her hand. “Of course he is. The way we define the divine has no bearing on his gift. Though, it will set those religious stuffed shirts in the temples on their ears.”
She grinned at that. “So you’ll keep an eye on him?”
“I will.” Marlus gave Tristan a shove and ignored her brother’s disgruntled look as he usurped the younger man’s position on the bed. “But first I’m going to look after you.”
Marlus placed a hand on her forehead and she closed her eyes, enjoying the cool, familiar mind touch of another healer. She floated in the quiet darkness while Marlus worked, letting herself enjoy the temporary peace. She finally felt him withdraw and opened her eyes with reluctance.
“You’re healing well, but I’m going to give you some exercises to do to rebuild your muscles.”
“All right.”
“You will do them.”
“All right.”
“I mean it, Lex. Three times a day.”
“I said I would do them.”
“She’ll do them.”
They all turned to see Thane rubbing the crick in his neck.
“You’re awake.” Ilexa tried to cover the stupidity of that remark with, “How are you feeling?”
He rose and moved to stand beside her. “I’m fine. The question is how are you?”
“She’ll make a full recovery,” Marlus assured him.
“I need to contact my family and tell them she’s conscious.” Tristan locked gazes with Thane.
They exchanged hard looks in a silent, masculine communication she couldn’t understand. Appearing satisfied with the outcome of the nonverbal conversation, the two men nodded at each other.
“I’ll be back in a little while.” Tristan paused when he reached the doorway. “Any message I should relay?”
“Give everyone my love,” Ilexa replied, though she was pretty sure the question hadn’t been directed to her.
“I will.”
Marlus rose. “I will give the two of you some privacy.”
The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Ilexa staring at Thane and wondering what the hells to say.
***
Thane settled on the vacated spot beside Ilexa. She looked pale and tired. The ordeal had drained her. She’d not fared well on Dunia.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” She cupped his cheek with the soft palm of her hand. “It’s you I’m worried about.”
Guilt had him pulling his head back. He didn’t deserve her kindness. “I’m fine.”
“Thane, I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I’m so sorry about your father.”
Hate for the man burned like acid in his chest. He couldn’t bear to hear Ilexa, with her beautiful spirit, speak of a man so. She shouldn’t know such horrors existed, much less have ever been confronted with them. “Do not speak of him.”
She didn’t so much as blink at the harsh order, much less heed it. “Thank you for saving me. There aren’t any words to tell you how…sorry I am about Nytham.”
He wanted her to stop talking about it. He’d rather face his father again than hear her mention him. The greening bruise on her cheek where his father’s flying head had struck her only inflamed his fury—and his need to see her safe. “I think you should return with Tristan to N’yota.”
She shook her head. “I know you think I need a big ceremony on N’yota, but I’d prefer to marry you quietly. Here. Though I would like to go visit when Lia has the baby.”
Deity, it nearly killed him to tell her “I won’t marry you, Lex. I’m sorry.”
Tears swam in her eyes. “Because you had to kill your father to save me.”
“No!” How could she believe that? How could she stand to consider marrying the spawn of the bastard who tried to kill her? “I want you to return to N’yota.”
A speculative expression settled onto her face. “And leave my waume behind?”
“Don’t say that! Ever. Someone might overhear you.” His panic for her eclipsed his thought process for a moment. “Not that it matters. Waume doesn’t mean anything on N’yota.”
“It does. By signing the League charter, N’yota recognizes all Central Alliance laws and contracts that are executed within its borders.”
“Shit!” Thane shot to his feet. He’d forgotten that legal tidbit. “You can’t call me waume, Lex. Someone might here and you would be bound.”
“I will call you that,” she shouted, leaping from the bed.
He barely caught her before she pitched face first to the floor—her legs too wobbly to support her.
“You will do those exercises,” he growled.
“Don’t change the subject,” she ordered haughtily as he settled her back on to the bed. “I will drag myself to the hallway and call you my waume to the first passerby if I must.”
“Lex, think.”
“I am thinking.”
“Do you really want to spend your life with a man of Nytham’s blood? Do you want that blood flowing in the veins of your children?”
“I want to spend my life with you and I want your blood to mingle with mine in the veins of our children.”
“You aren’t being rational.”
She swallowed hard. “Love isn’t rational, Thane. And I’ve loved you since I was a little girl.”
She’d have shocked him less if she’d punched him in the kidney. “Lex—”
“No.” She cut him off with an emphatic slash of the hand. “I know you don’t love me and that’s fine, but you will not run me off.”
He wanted to weep and wrap himself in her forgiveness and love, but he couldn’t. She deserved so much better than him. “You aren’t thinking clearly right now—”
“Could you be more patronizing?”
“Lex, you need to recover and not let sympathy and pity drive your thoughts and words.”
She shrieked at him in such a high-pitched frequency, he couldn’t understand her. He supposed that was for the best given the expression on her face.
Finally she took a deep breath. “You’re stuck with me, Thane. You might as well accept it.”
Unable to face such heart-wrenching sincerity, he rose. “You need to rest. I’ll talk to you later.”
He nearly crumbled, his hand on the door knob, when he heard her say in a wistful voice, “I do love you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Thane waited outside the communications office for Tristan to emerge. It turned into a long wait and Thane finally slid his back down the wall and settled cross-legged onto the ground. A man with no name, no family. He had no pride left to protect.
Sometime later, Tristan appeared. The man looked startled to see him sitting there.
“I trust your family wanted the explic
it details of Lex’s recovery.”
“Just Talon and my mother.” A half-grin quirked Tristan’s mouth. “More Talon than my mother. Everyone else was happy to know she’ll be fine.”
“Your brother cares deeply about his family.”
A flicker of amusement lit Tristan’s eyes. “I assured him you were recovering as well.”
Pain sliced through him, but he kept his face impassive. “I need you to take Ilexa off Dunia immediately. Don’t let her speak to anyone. Drugging her first would be best.”
A cold mask settled onto Tristan’s face, wiping the humor from it. “You planning on breaking my sister’s heart?”
I do love you floated through his mind and he steeled himself against his softening resolve. “It’s for her own good.”
“Explain ‘her own good’.”
Tristan growled the words, but Thane couldn’t fault the younger man. He hated himself at the moment. “There is an old Hakimu expression—blood will out—and I am Nytham’s son.”
His ahali’s brother regarded him for a silent moment. Then surprised him by sliding down the wall to sit beside him.
“On N’yota, we have an expression as well. No one can walk the path before you but you.”
“Blood will out,” Thane repeated wretchedly. “Maybe further down the path, but it will out.”
Fuck. He was miserable and wallowing in it. Fuck it. He deserved to wallow and proceeded to engage in wallowing for ten minutes, before being interrupted.
“I have spent the last two years watching my sister turn into a shadow of herself. That fun-loving, lighthearted spirit slowly disappeared, and none of us knew why. She trusts you enough to confide in you and let you bully her into telling her family her troubles. We’ve spent months, years, trying to get her talk to us. She finally confessed her problems via subspace, all because she trusted you first.”
“Her time on Dunia has hardly returned her fun-loving, lighthearted spirit.”
“Once innocence is gone, it can’t be retrieved, but Lex is no longer lost. Her spirit is back. It’s just matured.”
Thane didn’t know how to respond to that.
“I’m not going to drug my sister and haul her offworld,” Tristan finally announced.
Fear raced through his veins. “If she calls me waume on Dunia, she will be bound to me by League law.”
He could see the other man turn the words over in his mind. Finally, Tristan said, “I will be honored to call you brother.”
“Ilexa deserves better,” he shouted in shocked response.
“I’m not sure there is better. I can think of no other man who would risk his life to save hers, who would kill his own father to rescue her, and who would drag her to safety believing she was permanently paralyzed even though he was tied to her for life.” Tristan dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Welcome to the family, Thane.”
Thane sat in stunned silence as Tristan pushed back up and strode off in the direction of Ilexa’s room.
***
Ilexa awoke to blessed silence. She cracked a wary eyelid, searching the dark for the bickering over the chessboard.
“Your brother and mentor have retired for the night.”
A match flared to life and the Malkia lit several candles on the bedside table. In the flickering light, the woman’s ethereal eyes gleamed with inner illumination.
“Malkia,” Ilexa greeted, forcing herself to a seated position.
“I promised your brother I would sit with you.”
Embarrassment burned her cheeks. “I’m well, please feel free to retire.”
“I am here by choice.”
What in all the hells did that mean? “That is kind of you.”
A secretive smile flitted across her face. “I am pleased you will fully recover.”
“Thank you.”
“Thane’s injuries are more severe than yours.”
Terror jerked her upright. “Has Marlus seen him? What’s his prognosis?”
“His injuries are not physical.”
“We have mindhealers on N’yota—”
“Child, you are not hearing me.”
Ilexa swallowed the questions that sprang to her lips.
“Thane struggles with the guilt of the pain the Msaka family caused you.”
“He’s not responsible—”
“He feels responsible.” The Malkia said softly. “It will color his actions for the rest of his life, one way or another. Can you handle that?”
The Malkia’s quiet wisdom struck Ilexa. Some things fundamentally struck a person’s psyche so deep they never escaped it—no matter how much therapy they had. Ilexa had no doubt that decapitating one’s father fell into that category.
“I can handle it,” Ilexa replied with quiet sincerity. “But I fear seeing me only causes him more pain.”
“You are wrong. Seeing you will always soothe his soul.”
“How can you know that?” Ilexa asked, anguished.
“There is more to being a Malkia than the tribe knows. The Deity whispers to me of Thane’s heart and mind.”
Blasted tears made their way down Ilexa cheeks. “You’re sure?”
“The Deity is never wrong. The only question is whether you can live with Thane.”
“He’s my waume,” she replied in an almost reverent tone.
The Malkia inclined her head solemnly, but Ilexa saw the satisfaction in the elderly woman’s eyes.
“So be it,” the Malkia pronounced, rising.
***
Though Tristan and Marlus supported most of her weight. Ilexa managed to walk into the great hall for breakfast.
“There is no need for this,” Marlus complained. “Breakfast can be brought to you. You were always my most stubborn student.”
As Marlus continued to rant, Tristan gave her waist a supportive squeeze. She lifted her head—only to nearly fall on her face when her dour brother gave a conspiratorial wink.
“What in the name of all that is holy is she doing out of bed?”
She snapped her head forward to meet Thane’s furious—and incredulous—expression.
“She has come to join her waume for breakfast.” To Ilexa’s satisfaction, her voice carried through the great hall.
Thane paled a moment before he scooped her up, wrenching her away from her brother and Marlus. She felt the fury vibrating within him as he carried her back to her room.
He dumped her unceremoniously onto the bed. “Have you lost your damned mind? The entire tribe heard that!”
“As did my brother and Marlus.”
Her observation failed to calm him. “You just bound yourself to a man with no name and no honor.”
“I’ve bound myself to the most honorable man I know.”
“Ilexa…” He scrubbed his hands over his face as he paced the confines of her room. “You don’t understand what you’ve done.”
She swallowed, nervous in the face of the despair radiating from him. “I know exactly what I’ve done.”
“I said I wouldn’t marry you.” Bewilderment twined around the despair in his voice.
“I remember.” And she always would. The pain those words had caused still burned in her heart.
“Then why?”
“Because I love you. I’ve loved you since you were just a little girl’s fancy.”
“Lex—”
“No!” She tried to stand, staggered, and settled for leaning against the bed. “Nearly dying made me see how foolish I have been. It doesn’t matter that you don’t love me. I love you and you are my waume—regardless of your family affiliation.”
It was a testament to her determination that she didn’t pitch face first to the rug before she finished. Thane caught her and settled her back on the bed a little more carefully than before.
“What am I going to do with you?”
She shook her head, feeling sad. “There’s nothing for you to do. I’m not trying to trap you or guilt you. And if you insist, I’ll break my IMEP contract and
return to N’yota with Tristan.”
Indecision crawled across Thane’s face and her heart shattered.
Before he could utter a response—or even format one—she said, “But right now, I’d like to get some more rest…and maybe some food.”
Thane nodded and, to her disgust, looked relieved. “I’ll have breakfast delivered.”
He escaped with a grateful air that both hurt and made her angry. Staring at the closed door, she told herself she’d done the right thing.
Now, she just had to convince herself.
***
He avoided Ilexa for the next three days. Though avoid was probably too strong a word, given all he had to do was not visit her room.
Trying to drown his misery in work, he took to the arena. No longer responsible for overseeing the training, he lost himself in the physical exertion of battling other tribe members.
Though he didn’t speak to anyone, nothing stopped him from hearing the questions and speculation floating around him. And he couldn’t completely drown out the little voice in his head urging him to go to Ilexa.
When the clang of weapons stilled, Thane watched the other warriors file out of the arena, sharing casual conversation and laughter. Exhausted, he cleaned the sword, returning it to the proper stand.
He watched the cleanup crew wheel the weapons away with narrowed eyes. He would have to choose a family soon so he could resume his role as Knife of the Hakimu—if for no other reason than to determine who had failed to properly store the blaster he’d taken to rescue Ilexa. Such negligence could have resulted in her death.
“Thane?”
He jolted back to himself. Rhys stood before him. Inclining his head respectfully, he said, “Sword of the Hakimu.”
Rhys shook his head. “Son, you are my right arm. Addressing me so formally is ridiculous.”
“A nameless man—”
“Enough.” Rhys didn’t have to raise his voice to have it whip through the arena with authority.
So mired in his own misery, it took Thane a moment to process the older man’s anger. Of course Rhys was angry. He and the Malkia had lost their granddaughter. Worse, they’d lost the woman they believed their granddaughter to be. He couldn’t understand how they could stand there radiating concern for him. The man who’d exposed Karia’s lack of honor. The man who had caused her banishment. Feeling confused, he wisely held his tongue.