“I don’t suppose you’ve got an extra pair of stout boots and a nice pair of soft socks in your pocket.”
He gave her a look over his shoulder. “Fresh out.”
When they arrived at the bottom of a cliff, Klym nearly sighed with relief. He hadn’t been lying after all. She recognized this spot from the ride with Staria earlier. “You can leave me here.”
“No.” He gestured at an old staircase that had been carved into the rock, weathered over the years so that the steps were deeply slanted and concave in the center. So many feet had climbed those steps. “Go first. If you fall, you’ll hit me before you hit the ground.”
She tilted her head back, and back, and back, and back. It really was quite a high cliff. She imagined losing her footing and falling all the way down.
Not a pleasant prospect at all. The trail zigzagged its way upward. An unlucky tumble could lead to falling quite a long way. It was all too easy to picture her body bumping its way down the cliff’s face.
Best not to dwell on it, then. Or Tor’s response when she got to the top. He didn’t truly intend to do the deed right where they stood, would he? He was certainly comfortable touching her, kissing her, throwing her over his shoulder in front of the entire cassia, but that didn’t extend to public fornication, did it?
“Very well, then.” She took hold of a thick vine and began the ascent, replaying his words and wondering about her strange rescuer. “You know Tor.”
A stream of hovers left the Roq above them, fanning out and spreading across the city.
“We trained in the same unit,” he said after so long she thought he’d forgotten about her question. “We were bloodied together.”
There was something in his voice, and she paused to glance back at him. “You care for him?”
He smiled grimly. “You might say we were close as brothers.”
“You respect him too.”
“No one could see him fight and not respect him. He is the fiercest fighter I have ever known.”
They’d climbed higher up now, and a breeze tugged at her hair, cooling the sweat on her chest. “That sounds like caring.”
“Depends on your definition of caring.”
He didn’t comment. For a long time, they climbed in silence. Klym had to bite her lip to keep from wincing when stones began to tear through the soles of her shoes. She slipped once, and he steadied her with a hand on her back.
“I just realized, I don’t even know your name.”
“Sanger.”
Klym turned briefly to glance at him.
He raised a brow.
She knew that name. She’d heard it when they’d first arrived.
They kept on walking until the sun sank low behind them and the lights in the city flickered on. Night-flying insects came. Her feet hurt so badly she couldn’t even think straight.
When Sanger spoke, she nearly jumped. “Why hasn’t he fucked you yet?”
“It’s hardly any of your business,” she said. What was the point of the bloody mark if it fooled precisely no one? When he didn’t respond to that, she blew out a breath. “We are enemies, for one thing.”
“Bullshit.”
“He abducted me.”
“In the past.”
“He shouts all the time.” She yanked on a vine and nearly lost her footing when it pulled loose.
“Shout back.”
She scrambled for a new vine to pull herself up a sharp rise. The sky darkened to a deep gray. “He spanked me.”
That got a laugh. “You liked it.”
“He’s scary. H—”
“He’s not scary. Not to you. Scary means a threat, and Tor would never hurt his wife.”
Klym was silent in the night, trudging up a set of rickety steps. No one could see her face, and there was freedom in that. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “What if I’m not what he needs? What if I disappoint him? What if, after everything, he sends me away again?” She’d never have asked that question of someone she’d have to see face to face. Not in a million years.
“What do you think he needs?”
“Don’t Primes need felanas?”
“No,” he said simply. “If he needed felanas, he’d hardly send them away.”
She bit her lip. She hadn’t been enough for her father to overcome his grief. She hadn’t been enough to instill any loyalty in Agammo. What if she unveiled the last hidden part of herself to Tor, and it just… “What if I’m not enough? What if he doesn’t really want me?”
“I’ve known him my whole life.” His voice was soft, barely more than a whisper. “Tor does what he wants, when he wants it. If he took you, it’s because he wanted to take you. He wants you, and you’re enough.”
The first stars winked. Darkness brought cooler air, but made it harder to see the vines that had been so helpful, and even harder to see the stairs.
They didn’t speak after that for a long time. There was nothing to say.
She was so busy squinting at the stairs that she didn’t even see that it was the last step until she looked around, surprised, and saw that there were no steps left, because she’d reached the top.
Eyes burning with relief, she staggered awkwardly and would have lost her balance, but Sanger was there behind her with a strong hand on her forearm.
For a moment, no one saw them. The cassia was bathed in moonlight. At the center of one cluster of men stood Tor, Gaspart by his side. Tor was shouting, and even though his back was to her, she’d recognize that bellow.
She smiled, seeing the familiar broad expanse of his shoulders, the tilt of his head. He shouted something else, and a pair of soldiers turned and raced away toward a cluster of hovers.
He stilled.
Something must have told him she’d come back—maybe a note of her scent on the wind. The breeze ruffled the hair on the back of his neck. She barely dared to breathe as she met his eyes. His gaze roamed up her body and down.
She swallowed, gripping
