Starside novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: What He Carried

Dain's POV

She hit me until she had no strength left, and I let her.

Her fists landed on my chest and my jaw, and one caught the scar over my eyebrow and opened it.

I didn't lift a hand.

When she finally slid down, I went with her and held her on the black rock with the gorge wind at our backs.

"Ask me," I said.

"Why?" Her voice was a rag. "Why did you let me think it was her?"

"You woke up in my coat, in a farm cart on the salt road, and the first thing you said was 'Who did this?'"

She went still against my chest.

"I said the goddess," I told her. "You'd have walked into the salt if I'd said anything else."

"You don't know that."

"I knew your face. You had already started to look at your hands."

She shut her eyes.

I felt her shake.

"I was supposed to be there at nine," I said. "Maelis's summons came at eight."

"What summons?"

"The one I couldn't refuse. She wanted the Emberfold tithe counted in person, that night, at her Gate post. Two hours of nothing, with the cord of my oath around my throat, while she smiled at me."

I had done that arithmetic every night for five years.

"She knew," I said. "She had always known there was starfire in Emberfold. I'd spent the summer making sure she never found which house."

"Which house," Sorrel repeated.

"Yours. I saw you pick a red nail out of the forge fire in July with your bare hand. You laughed about it and put it in your pocket."

She made a small sound.

"I told myself it was a trick of the heat, and I knew it wasn't. I should have told you. I thought we had a long summer, and a winter, and a lifetime to talk about it."

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