terrible. She could not be offspring to such a monster. Guilt over this horrible place washed over her and she felt ill. No. It wasn’t true. None of it was true. Caleb wasn’t lying to her. He believed what he was saying was true. But he was wrong.
“Where did you get the twigs?” she asked, changing the topic. “I heard there were no more twigs in Predaria.”
“There aren’t,” he answered. “I traded much for twenty bunches.”
“Just to find my father.”
“Yes.”
“To make him pay for things you believe he did and cannot fix.”
“I don’t just believe it. He is guilty. And you don’t even know the fullness of the catastrophic effects of what your father’s dealings have produced. You live in Beldar with—”
“I am forced to live here for three months out of the year!” she challenged.
He looked quite shocked. “You poor, unfortunate thing,” he mocked then laughed softly. “You know nothing except what you are told.”
“I was told you were a barbarian.”
“Ah, finally some truth,” he said and pulled off his bandana, releasing strands of golden hair over his eyes.
She stared at him over the crackling flames that set the night aglow with hundreds of tiny, fiery embers. “I know what a hard, terrible place Predaria is, and I know the king can be a tyrant, but my father didn’t destroy an entire country.”
“He did,” Caleb insisted softly. Jonas agreed. Some of the other men did, as well.
The horror of their truth was too much for her. She remembered something she had once heard her father say. “The king believes you want to usurp him.”
He set his gaze on her. She wasn’t sure if it was the power in his eyes or the compassion in them toward her that made her want to smile at him. She didn’t.
“Is that what you believe?” he asked her.
She wanted to tell him yes. But she wasn’t so sure anymore. She shrugged her shoulders.
“If I wanted to usurp your father’s throne, or “kidnap” you, I had plenty of time to do it in the past. This is about the land and the people dying in it.”
“I heard there were still some places where rain falls and things grow, but I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true,” he told her with the softest trace of a smile. “I’ve seen it.”
She wanted to look away—or did she? She was sleepy. She couldn’t think clearly. “I would like to see it too.”
His gaze on her softened and warmed, “If the Lord wills it, maybe someday you will.
“Who is this lord of yours?” she asked with a yawn.
He told her of their Messiah Jesus, the Son of their God, the One True God, who had come to the earth as a man and died in their place to reconcile them to His Father. He sounded very kind and fair, but why would a god’s son, a prince, leave the glory of his kingdom and come here as a common carpenter? Why would he die as a criminal though he was innocent? It was too unbelievable, and she was too tired to try to figure it all out.
She caught him staring at her a few times while he spoke, taking in her profile, and even her lashes. Finally, his soulful gaze took in her unkempt braid. He lifted his fingers and plucked a tiny bug out of it.
She startled when he touched her and quickly began to fix her hair. She wasn’t used to men taking such liberties as touching her. She’d been touched more times and in more places in the last day than her entire life. There was nothing she could do about it. She was feeling things she had no idea how to handle and no one to ask.
“It looks nice tousled,” he said in a low voice.
She looked up at him, trying her best to keep in mind who he was, what he’d done, and that he wanted to kill her father. “You want me to look like a commoner, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question but more like a fact. Caleb grinned at her but was about to protest. “Well,” she cut him off before he had time to utter a word. “I am not a commoner. I am royalty and I won’t look less than that to please you.”
Caleb stared at her as if a horn had just popped out from between her eyes. “How can you sit there and think yourself so important?” It was almost a plea, but Willow could hear the tight