a brow to highlight her point.
I stepped towards her. It was already small in the voliki, made smaller by the presence of the bathing tub. I heard her breath quicken as I approached, until I was next to her bed and staring down at her. I could lift my hand and touch her cheek, we were that close.
“What do you think?” I whispered.
“You’ve taken it into your mind now,” she said, her eyes flickering back and forth between mine, realization spreading. “I told you I wouldn’t have you and now you’re determined to prove me wrong. You really haven’t changed at all, have you?”
“It was always in my mind,” I rasped out roughly. I let her process those vague words as she saw fit. Simply hearing them made her lips downturn. “And you are the same way, Maeva. You cannot deny that you are as stubborn as I am.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “If you want her to be my piki, then that is what she’ll be. But it will be you who will look like a fool once I leave after the frost. Not me. Not again.”
She hadn’t meant to say that.
Her expression became stricken at the last words—my own chest tightened until I couldn’t breathe—and I caught her chin, clasping her face gently when she began to turn from me. To hide?
“You are not a fool, Maeva,” I said, my tone bordering on savage, as angry as it was. “And you never were.”
For a moment—for the briefest and most wonderful of moments—her guard dropped. The walls melted away and I caught sight of the girl I’d loved a thousand different ways.
And then she was here.
Vulnerable and expressive and opening herself up to me in a way that humbled me. Showing me her hurt and her frustration and…our memories.
Right here.
My heart began to pound in my chest, so loudly that I thought she would be able to hear it. Those twin dark orbs staring back at me went a little glassy. She seemed to be holding her breath as my thumb stroked the softness of her cheek.
“Seffi,” I whispered, not trusting my own voice in that moment.
Then something flashed in her eyes. I felt her retreat as if it was a physical thing.
Then she slammed that wall back into place, cutting me off again, and it made me go cold.
I had promised to make her remember. Remember me. Remember the girl she’d once been. Remember everything.
But she didn’t want to. She refused to.
Because I’d hurt her and I’d done it knowingly. Purposefully. Cruelly.
Because she hated me.
Until that moment, however, until she showed me a glimmer of what we’d once had together, until she snatched it back away…until that moment, I hadn’t realized how deep that hatred ran.
She didn’t want anything to do with me.
Which is problematic, I mused, a deep, brooding scowl forming across my features.
Because I was beginning to suspect that she was mine…and that she always had been.
Chapter Nineteen
“Hinna,” I murmured quietly, so Essir wouldn’t overhear her given name.
My ‘piki’ turned her gaze to me, expectant and hopeful. It was obvious the poor female was bored out of her mind, sitting in the mokkira voliki with nothing to do, while Essir and I brewed a batch of uudun salve.
Essir, I’d found, had a great memory but at times, he could become easily distracted. Earlier, he’d memorized the recipe for uudun quite quickly, repeating all the necessary steps in perfect order, yet he’d caught sight of Hinna briefly and he’d added too many roots to the pot.
When I’d gently corrected him, he’d been mortified, almost plunging his hand under the boiling surface of the water to fetch the last root before I caught his wrist. He got flustered easily, which wouldn’t make him a great healer. But he was young too. Perhaps calm would come with time and with confidence.
Because the last mokkira hadn’t taught him nearly enough.
It was clear I had my work cut out for me.
“Lysi, mokkira?” Hinna asked, rising quickly from her spot on the floor cushion. She’d already washed all the surfaces in the voliki for the second time that morning. Everything was fresh and clean, not a speck of dust or blood or earth anywhere.
I bit my lip, looking down at the kioni I was mashing in my mortar. She came to my side, her form lingering in my periphery.
“Do you know where the Vorakkar is?” I asked.
“He usually trains in the morning. He might still be on the training grounds with the darukkars. Or