before supper, but which was deserted now. And, finally, to the place where he’d hidden himself earlier.
He sat there, cross-legged in the shadows, waiting to be caught with the incriminating bowl squarely in his lap.
“Why, Ru? Why?”
He hadn’t heard her coming, hadn’t expected her at all. The bowl bounced in the dusty dirt as he scrambled to his feet, looking right and left—as if he might run—before standing still, looking at his feet.
“Someone had to. He didn’t belong here. Never could, never would. I kept waiting. Every day I waited for Grandmother to say he wouldn’t be coming back, that the guardian and her grove had taken him—”
“So you decided you’d be the guardian instead?”
He didn’t answers, only twisted the hem of his tunic around his forefinger until the entire garment was tight across his chest and he looked a larger version of the boy Ghazala had abandoned years ago. But this time there could be no taking him in her arms or drying his tears.
“No one has the guardian’s rights. It’s murder, Ru. Pure, simple, and planned. Murder, not justice—”
“He was the real poison!” Ruari sputtered, barely in control of his rage and fear. “It was bad enough when Grandmother took him to her grove, every day. I thought… I thought maybe, maybe she was peeling his mind back, extracting his templar secrets before she put him in the ground. But today… Kashi, you took him to your grove. All day. Wind and fire, Kashi—a templar! I asked myself: what were you thinking—and I knew the answer: He’d poisoned Grandmother’s mind and yours. He was making you do foolish things—”
“You’re the fool, Ru.”
“Pyreen protect us if I’m the fool, Kashi.” Ruari’s voice was low and even. Rage had gotten the upper hand in his emotions, and despite herself, she took a step backward. “I saw you coming back today: all talking, all smiles, your hair all damp, your dress. I saw it, Kashi. The only thing I regret is that I waited a day too long to kill him!”
It came to her then, with the suddenness of lightning, that Ruari was jealous. He cared for her, not as she cared for him—a tag-along orphan, a temperamental younger brother who needed an older sister’s unquestioning affection until he learned the manners to return it—but in the way Telhami had feared she’d cared for Pavek.
If the air hadn’t been so charged with betrayal, she would have laughed. Even so, she couldn’t keep a smile from ghosting across her face as she reached for his arm. “Pavek hasn’t poisoned my mind, Ru. And there’s nothing—nothing at all—between us. He’s afraid of the water, afraid of the grass, can hardly smile or laugh. He’s just a man completely out of his element. Just—” She caught herself before she completed her thought, completed the comparison her mind had accidentally made between a hapless, sullen Pavek standing at the edge of her pool and Ruari himself not many years ago.
“Just what?” he demanded, an ugly sneer curling his lips. “Just another raping, murdering, yellow-robe templar! I’m glad he’s dead, hear me. I’ll swear an oath in Grandmother’s grove. I’m not afraid: I killed him and I’m glad. I’ll show the guardian what’s in my mind: the way he looks at me—’cause I’m wise to his templar games, the way he looked at you when we were in Urik, the way he looked at you today—”
“The way—” Akashia began to say The way he saved your life in the storm, but that would only feeding a futile argument. “Pavek’s not dead,” she said instead. “We saved him, Grandmother and I—”
Ruari lashed out with his fist, freeing himself from her hand and striking her across the chin in the same movement. She’d never been hit before, never in anger. The pain lasted an instant; the shock echoed in the depths of her being. Her hands flew to her face—all Yohan’s self-defense instructions forgotten.
“Why? Why, if he’s nothing to you?”
Ruari’s fist rose to shoulder level, but whether for another blow or mindlessly, as her own hands had risen, no one would ever know. A muscular shape surged between them: Yohan coming to her rescue. Yohan, who’d followed her as he followed Pavek, on Telhami’s orders. Yohan who had, undoubtedly, heard everything. He easily lifted the half-elf and hurled him against the nearest hut, where he slid to the ground and held still: eyes open, conscious, thinking, scared. The dwarf folded his massive arms over his barrel-ribbed chest, fairly