stick before lifting her gaze to his. “Then ran when we told her Koth’s prince came.”
Pain slashed through him, the hot agony of a gut wound. She had run from him. But Lizzan did not run from anything. She had stood her ground against wraiths and lies.
Yet she had run from him.
It was as if he’d stepped through a mist and into a hazy world that made no sense. As if in a fog, he looked to the others at the fire, the boy prince and the girl warrior. They watched him with such steady and sympathetic eyes that he did not know who they saw. Not a huntsman or even a feral prince, but a man utterly lost.
“Should we have detained her?” Riasa asked.
Like a criminal? His voice was a painful rasp when he told her, “Lizzan has done nothing wrong.”
Slowly the woman nodded. “She claimed that she was unwelcome at home because she did not die when she was supposed to.”
At the mere thought of her death, new agony wrenched through his heart and he shook his head. “She only spoke a truth that no one wanted to hear. She is Koth’s shining jewel and was tossed into the mud.”
“Now you are searching for her?” Riasa asked quietly.
“I doubt she would want me to.” He’d done the tossing. Yet he needed to know: “Was she well?”
“She seemed well. From what she said of her trade, I gathered that she often provides escort to travelers.”
Protecting them. Of course she would.
And she was well. Relief began to clear the fog that had smothered his mind, and he saw that Degg was on the approach.
“I thank you,” he told the captain and, with a nod to both the moonstone-eyed prince and his warrior companion, took his leave.
Heart heavy, he made his way to the Kothan camp. He had barely laid out his bedroll when a rustle through the nearby leaves told him Caeb returned from his foray into the jungle. The cat nudged Aerax’s shoulder before yawning, his curved fangs as long as Aerax’s forearm. Making room for the cat, he shifted aside—then frowned when Caeb began to bat at the small leather pouch that hung around Aerax’s neck with a paw as big as Aerax’s head.
Aerax pushed the paw aside. “It is time for sleeping.”
Caeb snarled.
Cursed cat. Throat tightening as it always did when he untied the knot closing the pouch, Aerax withdrew the braid that lay coiled inside. All who joined Kothan’s army shaved the sides of their heads, then made braids of the shorn locks to give to their loved ones. So Lizzan had given this to Aerax, that he might always have something of her while she attended to her duties. After all these years, none of Lizzan’s rosemary scent could he still detect on the black plait—but the cat must, because Caeb often made him take it out for him to sniff.
This time, Caeb’s mouth gently closed around Aerax’s entire hand and he tugged him forward.
The tightness in his throat became a raw burn. “We cannot go after her.”
Caeb released his hand and snarled again.
“She does not want me to go after her,” he said thickly. “She ran from me.”
As if the cat intended to leave him, too, Caeb turned his back to Aerax and lashed his face with his tail.
“Lie down, you fool,” Aerax told him, his chest aching, and the cat finally did—a white mountain made of fangs and fur at his side. Aerax tucked the braid away and lay back, scratching Caeb’s ruff. And the cat’s loud, rumbling purr concealed his next quiet words from all but Caeb. “Recall to me why we cannot abandon Koth and go after her?”
Yet the cat was not one to ask. He cared as little for Koth as Aerax did.
And it would be so easy to do as Caeb wanted. To follow Lizzan. Until she forgave him. Aerax had hurt her when he’d refused to leave Koth after her exile—and perhaps she hated him for it—but what he’d done might be forgiven.
What he soon must do could not be, because it would destroy everything Lizzan had fought so hard to protect.
So there was his reminder. The reason why he could not go after her. What he must do. One day, she would hear of it, and be grateful the world had gotten in the way of everything that she and Aerax might have been. So it was best that she ran away.