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I run my fingers through his wavy hair, grief and guilt twisting up my insides.

“I’m sorry,” I say softly, holding him close. “So sorry.”

I hadn’t meant to scare him, especially considering recent events. I simply hadn’t been thinking about him—or anyone else. I’d been so wrapped up in my own pain.

I stroke his skin.

“I killed them all,” he admits, his face still buried in my hair.

My hand stills.

“Killed who?” I finally ask.

I hear him swallow, his fingers pressing into my skin. “After I left you, I rode out with my men.” He sounds young and unsure of himself. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that vulnerable waver in his voice.

Memnon draws in a breath. “I knew I was never going to go into battle with them,” he quietly admits. “Once we spotted the band of Bastarnae, I forced my warriors to return to camp. Then…”

He swallows, growing quiet again. Across our bond, I can sense his unease. “I let my magic take control. It would’ve happened anyway, I was so angry, but…Iwantedmy power to take over.”

The admission does nothing to ease the toxic emotions churning within him, and now I feel my own rising nerves as I continue stroking his hair. What could possibly make a warlord who intimately knows violencethisuncomfortable?

“When I got to the army, I killed everyone but their leader. Him, I forced to watch as his fighters died…horribly.” His throat works, and it seems like it takes effort for him to force out the next words: “His son was among them.”

Bile rises at the thought. Having just lost a child, my horror is particularly sharp.

“Then, when it was all over, I killed him too,” Memnon says. “But by then, his death was a mercy.”

His expression is anguished as he lifts his head and looks at me. “Our people were ready to celebrate, but you weren’t there. I thought that perhaps you had heard of what I’d done and left…”

My eyes well. I shake my head, my fingers tightening in his hair. “Those deaths won’t bring our child back,” I say softly, tears slipping down my cheeks. “It’s just death upon death.” A ceaseless cycle of it. “But you will not lose me because of it,” I vow, and I hate myself only a little for that admission.

Memnon pulls me back into him and buries his face in the crook of my neck. And there he begins to cry—for our lost child, for me, for what power and circumstance have forced him to become.

We stay like that, locked in each other’s embrace, for a long time. And I feel grateful that at least if the world is falling apart around us, I still have him in all his painful, messy glory.

Always, he whispers across our bond.

Eventually, Memnon lowers his arms. His eyes are red, but any tears he cried are long gone. His gaze now flits over the room.

He clears his throat. “Now, my queen, I believe it’s your turn to share your story: why, andhow, did you come here?” he asks, forcing levity into the words.

Ah, yes, that.

I reach down and pet Ferox. “Um, well, it started when I got mad at a burial mound…”

I tell him the whole sordid story. About climbing the kurgan, then stepping onto the ley line, getting lost, then making some bargain that landed me here.

Memnon’s eyes are sad after he hears it all, and I can feel him ruminating on my pain.

Finally, he says, “Brave, foolish wife. Traversing a ley line without any idea how to navigate it.” He leans down to give my nose a kiss. “I didn’t know ley lines could be swayed with words.”

“You think it was the ley line itself that helped me?” I ask. “I thought it was a god.”

“Well, there is only one way to find out.”

The two of us stand inside the ley line, and I try not to get disoriented by the play of color and light along the tunnel walls.

So if this doesn’t work, you’ll get us off this thing, right?I ask.