I slapped the back of his head. It was the most physical contact I could bear, but it expressed my gratitude.
We walked back to the keep and resettled around the extinguished firepit. Marek dug through the ash for any surviving seeds. Sefa lay back on the ground, her feet propped on Marek’s leg. “Arin or Felix?”
I slumped on my bed and set to the tedious task of coaxing my curls out of their knotted disaster of a braid. The sesame-seed candies were nestled safely in my wardrobe. The timing of these gifts could not have been better. As soon as Sefa and Marek fell asleep, I would collect what I needed for my trip back to the woods.
“Are names of the Nizahl and Omal Heirs.”
“Sylvia,” Sefa wheedled, tossing a seed at my forehead. “You have been selected to attend the Victor’s Ball on the arm of an Heir. Arin or Felix?”
Marek groaned, throwing his elbow over his eyes. Soot smeared the corners of his mouth. Neither of us understood why Sefa loved dreaming up intrigues of far-flung courts. She claimed to enjoy the aesthetics of romance, even if she didn’t believe in it herself. She had wedded herself to adventure at a young age, when she realized the follies of lust and love did not hold sway over her.
I sighed, giving in to Sefa’s game. Felix of Omal would not recognize a hard day’s work if it knelt at his polished feet. I had listened to his address after a particularly unforgiving harvest. He brought his handspun clothes and gilded carriages, leaving behind words as empty as the space between his ears. Worse, he gave the Nizahl soldiers free rein, reserving his resistance to intrusion for Omalian society’s upper classes.
“Felix is incompetent, cowardly, and thinks the lower villages are full of brutes,” Marek scoffed, echoing my unspoken opinion. “I would hesitate to leave him in charge of boiling water. At least the other Heirs are clever, if still as despicable.”
At “despicable,” my thoughts swung to Arin of Nizahl, the only son of Supreme Rawain.
Silver-haired, ruthless, Heir and Commander of the unmatched Nizahl forces. He had been training soldiers twice his age since he was thirteen. I had always thought Supreme Rawain’s bloodthirst had no equal, since it wasn’t his kind heart responsible for murdering my family, burning Jasad to the ground, and sending every surviving Jasadi into hiding. But if the rumors about the Heir were true, I could only be glad Arin had been an adolescent during the siege. With the Nizahl Heir leading the march, I doubted a single Jasadi would have made it out alive.
The constant presence of Nizahl soldiers was common to all four kingdoms. An incurable symptom of Nizahl’s military supremacy. But the sight of their Heir outside his own lands spelled doom: it meant he had found a cluster of Jasadis or magic of great magnitude. I struggled to repress a shudder. If Arin of Nizahl ever came within a day’s riding distance from Mahair, I would be gone faster than liquor at a funeral.
“Sylvia?” Marek asked. Marek and Sefa wore a familiar frown of concern. Black strands had drifted into my lap while I unbraided my hair. I rolled them up and tossed the clump into the fire, where I watched it curdle into ash.
“Sorry,” I said. “I forgot the question.”
As it always did, the thought of Nizahl curved claws of hatred in my belly. I wasn’t capable of sending magic flying in fits of emotion anymore. All I had left was fantasy. I imagined meeting Supreme Rawain in the kingdom he’d laid waste to. I would drive his scepter through the softest part of his stomach, watch the cruelty drain from his blue eyes. Plant him on the steps of the fallen palace for the spirits of Jasad’s dead to feast upon.
“Ah, yes, an Heir.” I paused. “Sorn.”
“The Orban Heir?” Sefa lifted her brows. “Your tastes run toward the brutish? A thirst for danger, perhaps?”
I winked. “What danger is there in a brute?”
CHAPTER TWO
Long after decent people were asleep, I crept out of the keep.
I wrapped both arms around the basket’s middle as I sped down the hill. My hood hung low over my forehead. Loose curls gathered at the base of my neck, warming me against the wind. I hated leaving the keep without my hair in a braid. The curtain of curls was the perfect weapon for an enemy wishing to swing me around like a cattle hoop. Marek and Sefa’s impromptu visit had rushed my schedule.
Night had thickened over Mahair, and a dense fog hung over the shuttered shops. In three hours, Yuli would rouse the boys sleeping in the barn to muck the grounds and release the cows for their feeding. Children would line up outside the bakery, latticed wooden trays propped on their shoulders to carry breakfast back to their families. Mahair, like the rest of Omal, thrived best in the daylit hours.