My heart twisted in my chest when I saw the drops of her tears roll down her face like translucent jewels.

“Aralye,” I breathed, going to her, sighing. I took her shoulders and then wiped away her tears with the pads of my thumbs. “It’s not your fault. Don’t ever think that. They made their choice.”

Coming from me, after what I’d experienced with Haden, I knew she understood what I was telling her. She knew it wasn’t her fault, that she couldn’t have prevented their falls. I’d been able to save one acolyte, but I knew she was thinking of the other.

“Don’t take on that guilt,” I ordered her. “Ever.”

“I’ll try not to,” she promised me. “But what do you recommend for the shame?”

I shoved down the urge to flinch at the words.

“I hear them talking about me. I feel their eyes,” she said, looking down at the ground. “You’re my husband, you’re their king. What does that make me?”

“My wife,” I growled. I cupped her face, lifting it so I could see her eyes. There was a lantern burning on the table, giving us a small glow of light. “The one I chose. The one I vowed myself to in Lishara’s temple.”

“And is that all I am to you?” she questioned softly, reaching up to place her hand over mine, though she didn’t remove it. “Is that my purpose here? To be your wife? To warm your bed and smile beside you? To support you, to agree with you?”

I scowled. “Of course not.”

“But that’s what they want, isn’t it?” she asked. “They won’t respect me now. Because even though I am your wife, I am not their equal.”

“You are their queen, and they will treat you as such,” I argued, hating the tone in her voice.

“Only if I give them reason to. And when I fell off Lygath, they cast their judgments on me,” she said. “This was my worst fear, Sarkin. This feeling.”

I softened again when I saw her tears. I pulled her into me, and her face pressed into my chest.

“Aralye,” I murmured, restlessness stirring in my chest because I didn’t know how to fix this. “I faced their fire too. Remember that.”

Her shoulders shuddered. There was something I needed to explain to her, something I’d been avoiding, something she’d likely heard about in passing but hadn’t asked me about. And it was something that would help her. That was all I wanted. To help her. To try to protect her heart and guard her against the horde.

“The Sarrothian’s fire is a trial in itself,” I continued. “But for me, it was doubly so.”

“Because of Haden?”

“No, because of my father.”

I felt her shoulders stiffen. She lifted her eyes until they met mine.

“Have you heard about him?”

“Briefly,” she admitted, her tone slightly sheepish. “Only that…his bonded Elthika rejected him after he stole Elthika eggs. That he was considered disgraced.”

My nostrils flared. “He was forever marked by that story. As was I.”

“Will you tell me about it?” she asked when my pause lingered too long, uncertain how, or even where, to begin.

“Come,” I said, leading her over to our bed of furs. She followed, our fingers intertwined, and only when we were comfortably situated did I continue with “There’s more to the story.”

“There usually is,” she said. “I didn’t want to hear about it from anyone else but you.”

I pressed my lips to the back of her hand, feeling the softness of her skin.

“I will say this first because it is the ugly, tragic truth. My father killed my mother,” I said, matter-of-factly, hearing Klara’s gasp, “and then he followed her in death. It is not an easy thing to understand, but believe me, it was a mercy. And he did it because he loved her.”

Her brow furrowed. I saw the edges of her horror but also the desire to understand.

“Everyone else believes a different story, however. One spread by Elysom. My aunt, my mother’s sister, who you met at our keep in Sarroth, was responsible for the lie. Her and the Karath who came before me.”

And I can never forgive them for it, I thought.

“I remember her,” she said quietly.

Where to begin? I wondered.

“This story begins long ago,” I warned her. “Tyzar was my father’s Elthika. And they bonded in a strange way because my father was not a rider. He never trained to be one—he was from a farming family on Sarroth’s outskirts, from a small rural village called Kaval. Where I grew up, in the same house he had.”

Klara blinked, processing the information. I’d never spoken of my childhood, of my family with her before, but I could see her hunger for it, her need to understand. To understand pieces of me I’d kept hidden.

“He found an egg in a Sarrothian forest when he was young, rejected by the mother. He saw her drop it, and he went to look for it. It was still warm,” I told her, thinking of the awe on my father’s features when he used to tell me this story. “He took the egg, and he tended to it, waking in the middle of the night, every night, for new coals to keep it warm, until it hatched. My father and Tyzar never felt the bonding pull, but they were bonded forever nevertheless by choice. Tyzar chose to remain in Kaval with my father instead of seeking out his own horde, his own ancestors. And that’s where they lived.”

I could see her confusion.

“My mother, on the other hand,” I said, “was from a wealthy family in Elysom. Stories of Tyzar and my father reached the capital. Many traveled to see them. It was an amusement for them, a poor farmer on the outskirts of Sarroth and his found hatchling. That’s how he met her. Their love was a quick thing…like Muron’s lightning, my father told me. He finally felt the bonding pull, but it wasn’t for Tyzar—it was for her,” I said quietly.

It was hard to reconcile the girl he’d fallen in love with and match her with my mother, who’d kept her emotions leashed tight, even toward me. It was my father who had shown me affection. Perhaps he’d been what she’d needed. Perhaps I was more like her than I realized, needing someone warm and open and loving. Someone like Klara to thaw me, to keep the frost away.

“I was meant to be a farmer too. Can you believe that?” I asked her.

A sharp huff left her. “No. Not at all.”

“I was not a blood born. I was actually of the earth. Like you, like a Dakkari—born with cool, steady, unyielding earth beneath my feet. But I was always looking toward the sky. I loved Tyzar. I grew up on his back. And that’s why I wanted to be a rider. That feeling when you fly, when you feel the whole world is open to you—that’s freedom.”

“It suits you,” she commented, her eyes glowing, a soft smile on her face. I was glad to see it. I would tell her this story over and over again if it distracted her from the horde beyond our dwelling. If it distracted her from Lygath’s rejection. If only for a brief reprieve. “You were meant for it, this life.”

This story grew bittersweet, though it needed to be said. So she would finally have a deeper understanding.

“My mother became deeply ill in Sarroth when I was a child,” I said. “The healers in Elysom called it the arasykin shy’rissa. The heartstone sleep. We don’t know why it happens. Some think it’s because Sarroth is the farthest away from the core of the Arsadia, the center of Karak. The Sarrothian claim that as a badge of pride almost, like outsiders can’t survive here, only the toughest of Karag can. But I don’t believe that.”

She frowned.

“One healer my father consulted believed she’d been born with it. A defect in her blood. Some are just unlucky, even in Elysom. The sickness began to shut down her body. It started slowly, her movements and strength becoming weaker,” I said, remembering finding her on the floor one day when my father had been out in the fields. “By the time I was ten, she couldn’t walk anymore. She stopped going into the village. She was so tired all the time. Then, a year later, she couldn’t move her arms. The year after that, it was her tongue.”