He walked toward them, all tense jaw, burning eyes, and rigid spine. In all her time with Tor, she’d seen him annoyed, infuriated, exacerbated. She’d seen him red in the face and bellowing, livid in the aftermath of the desecration of Jasto’s body, but she’d never seen him like this.
Cold.
He didn’t even look at her. Just stared behind her at Sanger. “Step away from him.”
“Tor,” she started. “We c—”
“Step away from him, Klymeni.” Still, he didn’t look at her.
She swallowed thickly and turned to Sanger, wanting to thank him, but he didn’t look at her either. Just kept his eyes on Tor. “Risky game you’re playing, Regio.”
Tor’s dimple flickered.
“How long do you think you can keep it secret?”
“Now.”
Maybe she should have interjected, tried to defend Sanger, apologized more quickly, but something made her think that anything she said right at that moment would only make the situation so much worse.
So, perhaps for the first time in their association, she did exactly as Tor asked, and meekly stepped away from Sanger.
“Go,” Tor muttered.
If he’d only look at her, she could wrap her arms around him. She’d known he’d be furious, she’d expected him to bellow. And she’d planned to take Sanger’s advice and bellow back that he should have given her a comm. That he should check in sometimes instead of leaving her alone all the time. Every day, he woke at dawn and she barely saw him until dinner.
She’d had her whole argument planned out.
But he didn’t even look at her.
She started to dig her feet in, but that hurt too badly, so she limped over to the stairs as gracefully as she could manage on her filthy, bloody rag-shoes.
Whatever it was they said to one another, she didn’t hear. But after a terse moment, Sanger disappeared over the edge of the cliff, and Tor stalked back toward her. The wind pulled at his hair.
His face, highlighted by the cassia’s exterior lights. The way his clothes pulled at his muscles. He was back in his black trousers and shirt, all strapped up with knives and rezals. He looked... deadly.
“I’m sorr—”
“Not now.” He didn’t even touch her, just stalked up the steps and into the cassia.
31
I wish you’d bellow
THE ENTRY HALL of the cassia was crowded. Men stood in packs and leaned against walls, covered in armor, strapped with weapons, murmuring in deep conversation.
It was as if someone had died.
“What is happening?” Klym asked when he finally stopped at the bottom of the stairs that led to their private quarters. The starflies glittered in their columns.
Tor looked at her for the first time. Eyes narrowed. The muscles in his throat moved, and his jaw clenched. “The Selissa of Tamminia disappeared.” His words came out in such sharp bites that she flinched.
The muscle in his jaw bulged.
She was much more comfortable with his bellowing and blustering. Quiet, simmering Tor was far more terrifying than fiery, furious, bellicose Tor.
The space between them stretched. She wanted to cross it, touch him. “I didn’t think anyone would even miss me.”
One side of his mouth twisted, that dimple flashing as his cheek moved. Not a happy dimple. “I gave you two rules. What were they?”
She swallowed. “Don’t leave without you and don’t trust anyone.”
“And what did you do?”
She grimaced. “Both of those things.” She reached out to put her hand on his arm, hoping to reassure him, but he shifted out of her reach.
“The first time I summoned my men as the new regio, it was not to impress them with my ability to lead them.” His voice rose to an angry hiss. “It was to beg them to help me find my fucking wife. Only to have her come tripping up the cliffside with another man.”
She let her eyelids drift slowly shut, even as her chest tightened at the word wife. Usually, when alone, they spoke in Argenti, and he’d always used the Vestigi word selissa. She wasn’t even sure what the shift meant to him, but it sliced through her chest like a knife.
A vein on his forehead bulged. “A man,” he continued, “who has sworn vengeance on the whole of the Roq.”
Sanger had sworn vengeance? Why?
She glanced helplessly around the hall, at the groups of men pretending not to look at them. Had they been laughing at Tor? It was hard to imagine. And yet there was something about the way they looked at him with her.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He touched her for the first time, catching her chin between his finger and his thumb. “Women were attacked. There were fires. Two men were stabbed. Looting. We found a man with a handful of golden hair.”
“It will grow back.”
He drew in a long, slow breath, and his shoulders eased. “I thought you were dead.”
She forced a smile. “I’m not.”
“Were you hurt?”
“Not seriously.”
Finally, he took her chin in his hand, tilting her face back and forth in the light, studying her as if he expected to see her bruised and broken. “The man is dead. The one who took your hair.”
She tried to feel sad about that and failed. “Are the people angry about that?”
“Yes.” His mouth tightened. “But it would have been worse to let him live and have them think they can assault the selissa.”
She didn’t know what to say. She’d made a mess. A massive one. “I’m sorry.”
With a curse, he pulled her toward him. His hard body pressed against hers, and it felt good and warm and strong. Just as she knew it would. And he smelled so good it made her head spin and a stab of liquid heat build between her thighs, because whatever it was that made him smell that way, it made her whole
