Page 31

“ Y ou’re the lord protector , Fortiss. You can’t just leave the First House without its leader.”

“I run the Protectorate, not this house. So, I can leave and I will.”

I exit Fortiss’s private chambers where he’s well into the third round of arguing this point with the patently panic-stricken councilors.

Following the faint whiff of smoke down the corridor towards the overlook, I finally step out into the cool night air, expecting to find Nazar comfortably enjoying his pipe, possibly with Caleb bouncing on his toes, eager for the adventure to begin.

Instead, Tennet’s bulky form blocks my view of the wide, moon-washed plain below.

We’ve barely got an hour before the sun will start its swift ascent toward daybreak, and tension rolls from his shoulders like an uneasy tide.

“Lady Talia,” he murmurs as I step out on the deck.

He turns and leans on the counter, watching me as I approach.

“I’ve spent the better part of the last day, when I wasn’t dealing with the councilors fussing over me, wondering how it is that you could suggest such a remarkable course of action with no true understanding of what it is we are going to encounter in the land of the Divhs.

I assume you’ve been there multiple times, and undoubtedly more than I have.

But have you really explored it beyond performing training exercises with your Divh? ”

I smile. Leave it to Tennet to get to the heart of the matter that no one else has dared ask me, even Nazar.

“I haven’t,” I admit. “Truth to tell, it never would have occurred to me to have any reason to travel into their plane without their invitation. Or even with their invitation, it never occurred to me that they would want us or have any need for us there. Then Dele asked me to help with her babies and?—”

“Dele?” He blinks at me, but his tension has already eased. That pleases me more than it should.

“The sandworm you saw up in the canyon. A very pregnant sandworm up until a short while ago. She was one of the Divhs who pledged herself to me and to my house, for all that it doesn’t yet exist. She recently gave birth to an entire kit of weevishes, and I didn’t realize how quickly those children would grow up.

There are ample spaces for them to enter our plane near the Third House, where the world is filled with sand and there are many natural predators that they can use to help them transition to their next stage. But here, there are fewer.”

“Which is why she wanted you to do battle with her own offspring?”

“To them it’s a game, a very healthy, practical game.

Unbanded Divhs can’t be killed in our plane, so if they come across a predator that stamps them out, they just return home.

But if they endure a challenge and battle long enough to molt, they move to their second stage of development.

It’s the perfect example of the natural balance between their plane and ours.

It’s just never one that I actually considered before this past month.

Then again, there’s a lot of things I didn’t consider before this past month. ”

“There’s no balance between our plane and the Divhs’.” Tennet humphs. “There doesn’t need to be.”

I blink up at him, struck by the difference in manner between him and Fortiss. With Fortiss, every interaction is an opportunity to explore, to balance, to learn from each other. With this warrior?—

“Is everything a fight with you?” I don’t mean to snap so harshly, but now that my rebuke lingers between us, I can’t take it back.

For his part, Tennet grins at me and settles one heavy arm on the railing of the overlook.

He’s not anywhere remotely close to angry, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous.

“It seems like every conversation you and I have becomes a fight. But then it would almost have to, wouldn’t it?

I want something that you don’t want, for all that it was arranged for both of us.

Never mind that you were originally willing to honor the contract made up by your father and mine.

Your priest here shared with me the details of your bridal attire when you set out for the Twelfth House, so clearly your intention started out as honorable. ”

I know he’s deliberately trying to bait me, and I’m not pleased that he’s so successful at it, but I can’t help myself.

“You mean the day that my brother died? Then, yes. Yes, I’ll admit that on that day, that morning, I had no other options, no other purpose than to ensure the safety of my house.

And in the hours and days after Merritt died in my arms, I still had no other purpose other than to ensure that safety.

But at that moment, my path changed, and it’s never going to change back, Lord Tennet.

I don’t care if your house wages war against mine, I don’t care if you go all the way to the Imperator, I’m never going to honor that contract. I’m never going to be your wife.”

His grin never wavers, but his brows drift up.

“I would say those two don’t need to be mutually connected sentences,” he counters.

“I knew the moment I realized who you actually were—especially given that you were covered in the gore and saliva of sandworm offspring—that your situation had markedly changed. I would never expect you to honor that original contract. You’re no longer that original woman.

But as to whether or not you’ll ever be my wife, well, it seems reasonable that you might reconsider that possibility.

Two houses joined together in the Protectorate isn’t a bad decision for the strength of all. ”

I bare my teeth at him. “You forget, I’m no longer tied to the Tenth House.”

“And you mistake me for giving a damn about the Tenth House. I speak of the Thirteenth, for all that you haven’t broken ground on it. The Twelfth and the Thirteenth bound together as one would present a mighty front against any foe. And it would serve you as well.”

“I don’t need your protection, Lord Tennet,” I remind him, but he shakes his head, cutting me off with a dismissive wave.

“I’m not one of these fools who think you cannot successfully run your own house alone, Lady Talia. I simply think— know —that you’re not going to want to.”

Once again, he’s taken me by surprise. I blink at him, my pulse pounding so hard it bangs around my skull, but he turns back forward, peering out over the moon-swept plain.

“No matter where a castle is built, the stones that serve as its foundation are part of the earth of that space, the power and the history and the personality. You and I are products of the mountains where we were born, just as Lord Protector Fortiss is a product of these wide plains. He is farseeing and expansive in his beliefs. He can gather in many opinions and perspectives and land on what is right. He can sacrifice the individual for the need of the whole.”

I shift uneasily beside him. He’s only known Fortiss for a few hours, yet his understanding of the man is keen. Worse than that, in his words I sense a warning that has nothing to do with battle plans and the management of houses.

But Tennet isn’t finished. “You and I are different. We are inheritors of the mountains, warriors who know that rocky paths can lead just as easily to open vistas as they can to deadly falls. We know the canyons can hide sparkling treasure or deadly predators that you’ll never see until they’re upon you.

We can’t see far, but we can see what’s right in front of us with perfect clarity and understand it for what it is.

And we know, sure as the Light, that we’ll never be able to waste time with ponderings about the wide world, if we don’t survive this moment. ”

“Uh huh.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Why do I get the feeling we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if I’d made it to the Twelfth House that first day, my hair coiled in a grand mass around my head and laden with trinkets and jewels?”

He shrugs and offers me a grin. “I guess we’ll never know.

Because that’s not where that particular mountain path took you.

It didn’t lead you deeper into the mountains but out onto these wide plains.

That said, such paths have a way of circling back on themselves.

So, like any good child of the mountains, you should keep a sharp eye out and assess both dangers and opportunities when they present themselves for what they are, and for nothing else. ”

I study him, well aware of Nazar still smoking his pipe deep in the shadows. Tennet knows it too. Does he simply not care? Or is he trying to convince both of us…and of what exactly?

“That’s fair advice,” I finally say, settling on the least offensive reply I can come up with. And then I ruin it, because, of course I do. “From what I’ve heard of your father, I’m surprised he spent so much time training you in the art of discourse.”

Tennet only chuckles. “Lord Orlof was never one to use words when his fists would do. But he also had a taste for the absolute best the world had to offer, even high up in his mountain stronghold. My mother was Imperium born.”

Because I know the man so well, I can hear the slight shift in Nazar’s body, the movement probably no more than the tilting of his chin and the narrowing of his eyes on Tennet.

This revelation is important to him. Why?

Does he regret now not carrying on to the Twelfth House to meet an Imperium comrade?

I remember the young Imperium woman in Lord Rihad’s court whose ways he knew so well.

Nazar has spent the last ten years and more in the Protectorate… does he miss his homeland?