“Not yet,” he’d said in a voice thick with the recollection of ghosts. “Not yet.”
She hadn’t pushed, her offer to go spurred more by a sense of duty than by a macabre curiosity. Memories of Haradis being overrun by galla didn’t haunt her dreams. She'd been in Saggara when it happened. Still, there had been more than a few days when she’d awakened to find her own claws tearing through her blankets, the image of Brishen impaled on the ensorceled sword that would transform him into a Wraith king, the Beladine margrave his executioner.
The equally grotesque memory of Serovek’s resolute face and grim smile when he asked her to deal his own death blow to start his transformation destroyed her sleep just as often. Her reason told her such an act of violence had been necessary. Her guilt assured her none of it mattered and ate at her insides. This man had once saved her life and the life of her cousin. She'd repaid him by plunging a sword blade into his gut.
That thought worried at her like an angry hornet, and by the time the week was done and Lord Pangion scheduled to appear at Saggara, Anhuset was in a foul mood, wishing she’d never agreed to participate at supper or the meeting Brishen had scheduled afterwards.
She had just left the training arena, drenched in sweat and short-tempered despite a grueling practice session with other fighters, when a flurry of activity near the redoubt’s main gates caught her attention. The Kai clustered there either waved, bowed, or simply stared as Serovek and two of his retainers casually guided their mounts through the entrance and past their observers.
He was still as ugly as she recalled. A big man on a big horse, he sat in the saddle with the practiced ease of someone who probably spent more time there than on his own two feet. The flickering light from the torches set around the bailey gilded his dark hair where it trailed over his shoulders. The last time she’d seen him, he’d sported a beard that blunted the angles and hollows of his face. He was clean-shaven now, skin paler than she remembered, likely from more time spent inside during the harsh mountain winters.
In profile, his beardless features looked carved from stone, not with a sculptor’s chisel but a hunter’s skinning knife. If she looked upon him as just a construct of facial bones, she understood why Ildiko said he was handsome, but the awful human eyes and horse-toothed smile ruined his visage, just as it did every human Anhuset encountered. She bore no resentment toward humans who reacted in similar fashion to the Kai. They shared a mutual revulsion of each other’s appearances.
Still, there was something about this man that fascinated her, despite her disgust at the notion. Anhuset wouldn’t hesitate to admit or agree that Serovek Pangion was bold, courageous, and possessed a nobility of character that was often in short supply in both the Kai and human races. He had saved her and Ildiko from capture and death by raiders and their mage hounds, tended Anhuset’s wounds and participated in Brishen’s rescue. And he had volunteered to become a Wraith king and fight alongside the Khaskem against the galla.
And yet you dislike him, an inner voice admonished her.
Another added a mocking rebuttal. Because he’s dangerous. He makes you feel.
“Be quiet,” Anhuset muttered aloud, surprising a passing Kai soldier who gave her a puzzled look before darting away at her warning glare.
The small crowd of Kai paced alongside the visitors’ horses, some calling out greetings in Common tongue. The three Beladine responded in the same language, bending to clasp clawed hands with their gloved ones, smiling their square tooth smiles. Someone said something Anhuset was too far away to hear, and the margrave tilted his head back to laugh, the sound echoing through the bailey. He had always been comfortable around the Kai, unfazed by their more feral appearances.
And he had never made any secret of his attraction to the dour sha-Anhuset.
Anhuset scowled and purposefully maneuvered her way through the bailey so that she could observe without being seen by Saggara’s newly arrived guests. The last thing she wanted was Saggara's curious Kai watching as Serovek tried to charm her with his teasing smiles and frank admiration.
He motioned to his retainers and they all dismounted to stand amid the growing crowd. The retainers disappeared from her view, but Lord Pangion didn’t. The Kai were a tall, lithe people, taller than most humans, yet he stood taller than those surrounding him, his broad shoulders enhanced even more by the heavy clothing he wore to ward off the cold. For all his size, he moved with surprising grace, and that acknowledgment sent odd flutters through her ribcage. An irritated hiss whistled between her teeth. Handsome to others. Not to her.
A subtle change in both his expression and his stance made Anhuset instinctively slip into the narrow space between a tower of hay bales and one of the walls belonging to the redoubt’s cooperage. His eyes narrowed, their quick flickers from side to side as he scanned the yard making her shudder a little. A warrior well trained, he’d sensed he was being closely observed, regarded with an intensity far greater than those who stood much closer to him.
His gaze passed over the spot where she hid. . . gods’ bollocks, she was hiding from the Beladine Stallion! The realization made her lurch out of the concealing spot, her back snapping straight, chin up as she glared at the man who had neither seen her nor spoken to her, yet had already managed to practically set her hair on fire from annoyance.
Serovek didn’t pause in his reconnoitering of the bailey, but once more his manner changed, shoulders relaxing, eyes still narrowed but
