The Ippos King (Wraith Kings #3) - Grace Draven Page 0,31

him, avoid more of the invisible grappling hooks he tossed at her every time they crossed paths that drew her inexorably to him, half step by half step no matter how hard she fought against it. She looked away from his sudden, intense scrutiny, sympathizing in that moment with Pluro Cermak's skittish wife and the desire to bolt for safety.

“I might have meant them at the time, but I shouldn’t have said those words either.” Her fingers throbbed from how tightly she’d laced them together, and her throat ached with the effort to speak. “You saved me and the hercegesé from Beladine raiders and their mage hounds, took care of my wound, gained the information we needed to find Brishen and his abductors, and risked yourself and your men to help me rescue him. Putting a sword through your belly was no way to clear such a debt. I owe you more than I can ever repay in this lifetime or a dozen more beyond it.”

Complaint or confession. If asked which it was, she’d have a hard time deciding, and it might well have been a little of both, but somehow she felt lighter by speaking aloud of this shame, no matter how ridiculous it might appear to others, that had weighed her down these many months.

Serovek snorted, mouth tight with disapproval. “You shoulder an anvil of your own making.” His lips softened with a hint of a smile at her surprise. “I asked you in particular to run me through because I knew you to be strong enough to see the deed done and not falter. I laid a terrible task at your feet, and you took up the gauntlet. Don’t think I’m unaware of what I asked of you.” His gaze flitted from her face to her hair, slowing to travel the length of her body before returning to her face. “If we were keeping a tally of who is in debt to whom, every breathing person on this side of the Ruhrin ocean would owe their lives to those of us who rode against the galla. If we were keeping tally. We aren’t. And you owe me nothing. There’s no debt between us. There never was.”

“I like strong women, soft or not.” He’d said that while they stood on the balcony of his study, overlooking the steep slopes of the mountainside. Ribbons and swords, she thought. So different yet both made admirable in his eyes by the hand that wielded them. He was a man like no other, Kai or human, she’d ever met before.

“What was your wife’s name?” she asked in a soft voice, a reverence she could offer for what she suspected was still a lingering grief.

He bowed his head a fraction in acknowledgment of her change of subject. “Glaurin. Our union was arranged, but we’d been childhood friends so were familiar with each other when we married. She bore me a daughter we named Deliza.”

A child. The idea tied her confused emotions into tighter knots. Somehow, Anhuset had no trouble imagining Serovek as a loving father. “What happened to them?”

A shadow of sorrow descended over his features. “Plague.”

He didn’t have to say more. Anhuset remembered the plague outbreak from fourteen years earlier. It had swept through the human kingdoms, killing thousands. The Kai, afflicted by their own sicknesses, had suffered no effects of the disease that ravaged their neighbors. Gauri and Beladine alike had fallen like chaff beneath a thresher’s flail.

She grazed his arm with her claw tips, the barest touch. “I’m sorry.”

He stared down at her hand for a moment before covering it with one of his, palm callused and warm. “So am I.” They were both quiet a moment before he spoke again. “And you? No spouse or children?”

She’d taken lovers. Sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week or a month. Most had been sparks of warmth to ease loneliness, or a few hours of entertainment with no emotional attachment, sometimes even hazy memories captured only in the foggy aftermath of a day spent drinking far too much Peleta's Kiss. None had ever incited a longing for something more profound or long-term. Occasionally she observed Brishen and Ildiko together and wondered at the depth of their bond. She envied it, but no one so far had moved her in such a way to make her actively search for something similar.

As for children, they were strange, puzzling creatures. Usually loud, demanding, and bordering on feral. She’d rather keep a scarpatine as a