goblet to reach my table.”
That made Maeva stiffen. Belatedly, I knew it was the wrong thing to say.
“Are you…are you mocking me?” she breathed, her eyes wide. In that moment, she couldn’t hide her hurt. I saw it, striking me like a blade in the chest, before she covered it with an expression of detachment.
Nik.
Detachment was the last thing I ever wanted to see on her face again. I would rather she be infuriated with me, her eyes glowing like hot embers, striking me in the chest with her fists and screaming at me, than see her vokking indifference.
I couldn’t bear it.
“Never,” I growled.
But of course, she would have never approached me. She’d approached me with her goblet once before. The night I left her standing on that windy cliff. The last time I ever saw her, with her wet eyes and slouched shoulders.
I’d humiliated her. Torn out her heart like the callous bastard I was and left her to pick up the pieces once I was gone.
Of course, she would never approach me again.
“Maeva,” I rasped, hearing the drums beat louder, sensing bodies shifting around us, dancing, though I felt their gazes too. “Seffi, let me—”
She tore out of my arms faster than I thought possible, pushing through the crowd of Dakkari that surrounded us.
With a clenched jaw, I watched her go until I lost sight of her at the edge of the feast. I would give her time.
But if she thought I would pull back, pull away from her again, she was mistaken.
I wouldn’t let her go this time.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I don’t know if I can do this, I thought, pushing through the crowd of Dakkari still gathered at the feast.
I tried to keep my expression neutral, knowing that the eyes of the horde were upon me. I waited until I reached the soothing edge of the darkness, between two voliki where the fire light from the feast didn’t reach, and then my face crumbled. Tears threatened to sting my eyes and I hadn’t cried since my mother died.
Why does he make me feel this way? Still? After all this time?
I didn’t want to go back to my voliki. I would go mad there, trapped in that confining place.
What I really wanted to do was go running across the plains. I wanted to feel Drukkar’s Sea mist on my face and breathe in that nourishing air.
But I was far from the sea here. Encased by land. On all sides. Trapped.
Longing for home hit me hard. For my pattar. For Laru. For Rasik. Even for Nevir. For nights together, riddled with laughter. For our evening meals that we cooked. For the way my father would watch us all, the quiet sadness in his gaze, because he wished Lomma could’ve met Rasik, could’ve seen what our family had become.
My throat was closing up so tightly, and I made for the gates of the horde, needing to see the stretch of the plains. I was confined by walls here. By protective gates that were built high. I needed to see something other than walls.
There were no guards at the gate entrance—everyone was at the feast—and I slipped past. The moment I was free, I bunched up my dress so it wouldn’t tangle around my ankles and I started to run.
I knew where I was going. The moonlight reflected off its surface, shimmering and silver. The lake that I’d spied on my first day stretched far to the northern mountain range. It almost seemed like the sea. It looked like it had no end.
My bare feet hit the earth hard. My breath began to come quicker, my lungs filling with crisp air that somehow seemed more wonderful now that I could see beyond the walls. My blood felt like it was throbbing, warm and alive, underneath my skin. It was in part because of the fermented brew I’d had at the feast and partly because I was running, free, Kakkari’s air nourishing me in a way I desperately missed.
When I reached the edge of the lake, I realized I was crying.
And somehow it felt like a betrayal.
I hadn’t cried since my mother’s burial. Because that had been the worst moment of my life. I had thought I’d cried enough in the days surrounding her death that I had simply depleted my store for the remainder of my days.
Yet here I was.
In a strange horde, away from home, away from my family.
Near Kiran.
Kiran, who could still make me feel too much.
It felt like a