“They will be.” Pain swelled in her chest. He had no more sense than a horse. “Please, Kavik. I could not bear being the one responsible for the hurt this will bring you. How can you not understand this? To protect your people from Barin, you haven’t allowed them to help you.”
“If I choose to stay, then I am the one responsible for any hurt this brings me. Not you.” His voice roughened. “You once helped me despite my warnings. You called the sweetest touch torture. I would torture you the same way, if you believe it would save me from Vela’s wrath.”
With his fingers sliding beneath her belt. With his hands gripping her ass. Then telling her how much he wanted to taste her.
She stared ahead without answering. A heavy cloud passed in front of the moon and the moors darkened. Kavik was only a shadow beside her.
“Now she won’t see me walking with you and know to punish me,” he said. “You could touch me without fear.”
“I don’t wish to touch you.”
“Then why do you care what Vela will do? Already I suffer punishment beyond bearing.”
Her breath hitched. “Why have you come? It is still not my moon night—and there are many sheaths in the city.”
“But I do not love any of the women who possess them,” he said gruffly. “I only love you.”
“And what of it?” Teeth clenched, she looked into the sky, at the silver-laced clouds with the moon lit behind. Why could she not breathe again? “You think I am so desperate for your heart that I would let you stab mine?”
“What I did wasn’t meant to hurt you. I was a stubborn fool.”
Just as she had already told him. So she said nothing.
“I dreamed of you,” he said. “For so many years. Every night, Vela sent me visions. I didn’t know your name, but I knew who you were. My little dragon, the High Daughter in a hauberk of green scales. I was earning coin to build my army, and fought amongst giants, yet I measured every warrior I met against you because I loved you even then. And I wanted to come for you. But how could you love a man who’d abandoned his people in favor of his heart? So I built my army, and planned to go to you after I killed Barin. But Vela sent you to me first.”
To tame him. Mala could not halt her laugh. “She can be cruel.”
“I believed it was cruelty, too. When I pissed in her offering bowl, she told me that I had to wait for the woman in red. That when that woman came, I would be on my knees, and it would be the end.”
Mala’s heart clenched. She stopped walking and her gaze flew to his face, but the darkness hid him from her. “Your end?”
“It must be mine” was his bleak reply. “At the labyrinth, when I saw your red cloak at a distance, I knew it must be coming. I didn’t know the woman in red would be my dragon. I had not dreamed of you since your mother’s death.”
Shards of remembered pain pierced her chest. “That was when I took up my quest.”
“Then that is why my dreams ended. I would have seen you wearing the red. I would have been prepared. Instead I learned when I met you that the woman I love would be my end.”
Mala wouldn’t be his end. But it might not be her choice. “Perhaps because you walk with me when I am forsaken, warrior. She will be cruel.”
“Not in this.” His response sounded raw and thick, as if he’d choked down sand. “She sent you here. I had you, even if only a short time. She is more generous than I knew. If simply walking beside you is all that I will ever have, I will thank her for every moment, no matter how painful it might become, and no matter how it might hasten my death.”
Mala glanced into the sky. Not so very long ago, she’d thanked Vela for the same. But it was too late. “I would not have you beside me.”
“I vow on my life that I would never hurt you again.”
“How could I trust that?”
“I’m not asking you to have faith in me. I’m not a god, but sometimes a foolish man, and you’ll be able to trust me because I’ll prove that you can trust me. Every day, I will prove it. Every breath. Not a single word or touch will ever be made with the intention of giving you pain.”
Tears burning in her eyes, she looked to the sky again. Where was Vela and her guidance now? There was none.
And she wanted to believe in him. Wanted to believe so much.
But it was impossible. “Even if I did trust, it cannot be. You can’t abandon your people. I can’t abandon mine—even if I can no longer live among them.”
“Then we will use Stranik’s passageway. It is only a week’s distance between Blackmoor and Krimathe through the tunnel. If ever your people needed help, you could quickly go to them.”
Mala knew of the passageway. It was said that during the creation of the earth, the snake god had fallen asleep, and the pounding of Temra’s fist had built the Flaming Mountains of Astal around him. When Stranik had finally woken and slithered on, the tunnel in the shape of his body remained. “That is only legend, warrior.”