that kept tickling their nose. A soldier then you were, as you went after the enemy fly until it was flattened.”
“I have no memory of this at all,” Lizzan said, and her mother laughed.
“Why would you? For you to stop and help someone is as unremarkable as the sun rising every morning.”
“To someone who suffers the cold or fears the dark,” Aerax said, “the rising sun is a remarkable thing.”
“So it is.” Yuna gave to him a quick smile, but then her gaze returned to Lizzan and her breath shuddered, as if in remembered fear. “Then the old traveler asked you to scratch an itch that the fly had left on their nose, for they could not. That was when your father saw that the traveler’s hands were tied behind their back. He knew who they were then—and they were wearing their old and withered face, so if you touched them, you would be diseased. He shouted for you to turn away, that it wasn’t safe . . . but you scratched the traveler’s nose.”
“Nemek,” Lizzan breathed. Still bound by the hair Varrin had knotted around their wrists.
How many thousands of generations had they wandered in that way?
Her heart hurt at the very thought as her mother continued, “Your father was in terror. So he made the offering of a coin and put it into their bound hands, hoping that they would immediately heal whatever disease they had given to you, but they instead pinched the coin flat and plucked out strands of their silvery hair, for it reached in a tangle down their back.”
Regrown, after Varrin had scalped them. But of course Nemek’s scalp would heal, Lizzan realized. Easily they would heal themselves.
“From the hair and the coin, they made that necklace for you—and said to you that any soldier with such a soft heart would need a hard skin.”
And so the necklace had saved her on the King’s Walk. But it was not the medallion that had done it.
It was the chain. Lizzan nearly laughed. The chain that had almost choked her to death when it had caught on the woodstalker’s talons and had not broken.
“But he did not give the necklace to Lizzan then?” Aerax asked.
Yuna shook her head. “He feared it was also diseased, for they had made it with their old and withered hands. But he knew better than to refuse a gift from a god, so he wore the necklace himself rather than give it to Lizzan, and always fearing the disease would come—though it didn’t, not even when the red fever took my parents.” Her voice thickened. “And never did we tell you, Lizzan, because we knew that you would take that diseased gift upon yourself.”
“It was no disease,” Lizzan told her. “Nemek’s old face is the healer.”
“But . . .” Her mother blinked. “That is not right.”
“It is true. I met a woman who saw Nemek’s birthplace. The beauty is the disease, the withered the healer.”
Shaking her head, Yuna said, “It cannot be. Even in Varrin’s story, he sees their withered face and knows he was betrayed.”
“It was the healer who came to him in good faith. It was Varrin who betrayed them.” At the sound of approaching horses, Lizzan caught her mother’s hands. “And there is so much more I would tell you. But we have friends who come to discuss how we will destroy Goranik. Will you give to them a place here?”
“Always. Always, Lizzan.” Fingers squeezing Lizzan’s, Yuna looked to Aerax. “After her father and I spent so much time trying to separate you from Lizzan, you may not believe me when I say now that your marriage is the finest news I have had of late, and I am full glad that you found each other again.”
“Always we would have,” Aerax said, his dark gaze catching Lizzan’s. “And I will allow nothing to separate us again.”
Though he left the remainder unspoken, Lizzan heard what he truly meant. Not even death.
Lizzan full well agreed. Because she had no intention of dying.
And whatever battle lay ahead, it would be the demon who lay dead at the end.
* * *
* * *
With all the southern alliance party, the Kothan councilors, Saxen, Lizzan, Aerax, Lizzan’s mother, and Caeb stuffed into the tent, they nearly stretched the sides at the seams. Which was how Lizzan felt, too, as she listened to the others share what they’d seen and heard. No more room was there inside her but a need to destroy Goranik, to