Blood Warrior

Thank you, my love.

—

Kavya stared up at Tallis. They were both grim creatures, as if they’d spent the last two hours butchering cows.

His eyes were wide, his mouth slack. Smiling a little crooked.

“What was that?” he asked.

“I said, ‘Thank you, my love.’?”

“No, you didn’t say it.”

Frowning, Kavya tested gently, so gently, all the while watching Tallis for clues. I love you.

“I love you, too.”

With a joyful cry, she heaved herself off the ground and into his arms. They collided in body as they had in life. Unexpected souls brought together, bound together.

“You can hear me now?” She used a swatch of fabric from her ceremonial sari to wipe blood from his mouth. He returned the favor, although the attempt was makeshift at best. “You heard what I said to you?”

“Yes.” He hesitated, hiding it behind the act of tucking her wickedly ruined hair behind her ears. “And you? Can you . . . Can you read my mind?”

She hesitated, too. After a quick, hard kiss, she said, “Now isn’t the time.”

She grabbed her family’s Dragon-forged sword and strode toward where Serre still clashed with one of the Guardsmen. “Stop. Now.”

Both men seemed startled by her authoritative tone. Their eyes went wide—Serre’s bright blue, and the Indranan’s dark brown.

“The fight is over. Pashkah is dead.” Turning her words on the Guardsman, she pointed the sword toward his neck. “If you want to continue breathing, consider returning to your family in the Punjab. Take the rest with you. When I see you next—and I will—you’ll be happily married in a peaceful pod, or we’ll conclude this moment in a much messier fashion.”

The man dropped his sword and held up his hands. Serre lunged, but Tallis was there to stop him. “Peace, brother. Believe it or not, there is a time for it. No matter what he’s done, he’s laid down arms. This is for the Indranan to decide now.”

“Pashkah was not the Indranan,” Kavya called to the other Guardsmen. “Neither am I. We have a long way to go before we learn who we are as a clan. But this . . .” She gestured to those who lay dead and mangled. “This isn’t it. We’re better than this. We’ll fix this chasm and become stronger for it.”

The Chasm isn’t fixed.

She whirled on Tallis. She’d heard those words as clearly as if he’d shouted them across the clearing.

“What did you just . . . ?”

“The Chasm isn’t fixed.” He shook his head. “I thought she was gone. Your . . . Dragon-damned sister.”

“That wasn’t Baile’s voice,” Kavya said. “That’s been part of you forever, not from some outside place.”

Anger shook out from Tallis’s limbs. He sheathed his weapons and grabbed Kavya’s upper arms. His dear, dark blue eyes were clouded by confusion and fury. “I wanted this done. That I saved you, too—I had no idea. It was the revenge I didn’t know I’d find here. But I wanted the past to stay in the past, without pieces left to echo through me forever.”

“I’ve heard it, too,” came a soft voice.

Kavya found Olla, Honnas’s wife, standing beside them. She was as battle-tousled as anyone else in the clearing, despite her fey, ethereal appearance. Fey and beautiful. Her banshee screams must’ve been effective, because she was unscathed after having fought with a Guardsman twice her size.

“I’ve heard it, too. The Chasm isn’t fixed. It’s not just you. What that . . .” Olla glanced toward Pashkah’s fallen, headless body. “Whatever that person did to you, Tallis, had nothing to do with those words. As familiar as my name, ever since childhood.”

“As familiar as your name,” Tallis said, his voice oddly relieved. “Yes. Exactly that.”

“Do you dream of the Dragon? I dream he’s coming back to us.” She shook her head and smiled, appearing embarrassed. “But what’s in a dream?”

Tallis frowned deeply. “Too much. Sometimes far too much.”

My love?

Kavya reached up to remove his hands from her upper arms, to hold them in hers. “So Pashkah—or, Dragon help me, Baile—was responsible for the block the entire time. Keeping you off-balance. Extending your belief in her and your determination to exact her commands.”

“All the while fostering the idea that you were the one to blame,” he said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have acted as I had that afternoon in the valley. I wouldn’t have done a lot of things.”

Needing his warmth, his body, Kavya wrapped herself in Tallis’s vital embrace. He fed her heart with his strength. “They never wanted to kill me at all. They wanted to use me. She would’ve sacrificed him as just another body to get what she wanted.”

“Your influence,” Tallis said against her temple. “She would’ve poisoned it, changing you, maybe even convincing the Indranan to unite through a civil war of mass murder.”

Rill sheathed her weapon and slapped Tallis on the back. “No longer. Not by this lunatic’s hand, anyway.”

Chandrani joined them. She had a limp and cuts up and down her forearms, some so deep they’d scar. Her face was a mass of bruises.

Kavya hugged her dear friend. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. Please, forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive,” Chandrani said with her assurance that sank into Kavya’s soul. “I owed you a debt. Long ago.”

“I never asked you to repay it, but I’m forever grateful that you did. Thank you, my friend.”

Chandrani grinned. “Maybe now I’ll get to go home.”

“Unless . . .” Kavya looked from Chandrani to her husband. “Unless you want to come back with me. Our people need a lot of reassuring, and new hope. I’d like to think I won’t be alone in that.”

Shaking hands with Tallis, who nodded respectfully, Chandrani said, “I’ll go back with you, Kavya, but not because you’ll be alone. I’ll do it for the same reason I always have. I believe in what you stand for. Never more so than now.”

“But first, back to the castle?” Honnas called. He was already halfway across the clearing, hands cupped around his mouth and his wife at his side. “I stink and would dearly like breakfast.”

“You go on,” Tallis replied with a strong voice. “We’ll be right along. Chandrani, you, too. My sisters will tend your wounds.”

Kavya watched her tall, imposing friend walk with the Pendray as if they’d been comrades all her life. That idea warmed her heart and gave her another shot of hope. Maybe this could be done. Maybe she could start again.

So much depended on Tallis.

“India again, eh?”

She blinked. He held her hands between them, their knuckles lined up like the mountains where she’d grown into a woman. “But you’ve only just returned to Scotland. What about your family?”

“I didn’t mean right away. A month’s sleep and a lot of lovemaking have an appeal not even you can deny, goddess. And I’d like to make my peace here. Repair Clannarah. Stand before the Leadership of the Pendray to clear my name. No loose ends before we go.” He kissed the backs of her hands. “Then the real work begins. The Indranan deserve peace, and . . . the Chasm isn’t fixed. It’s bigger than me. What Olla said is a relief beyond description.”

“You really want to come with me?”

“We committed last night.” He offered a crooked smile. “Unless you’re bored of me already.”

“Bored? That word will never make sense when applied to you.”

He kissed her lips. Kavya tasted blood, but it didn’t matter. They were both alive. She would never need to look over her shoulder again.

But she did need something.