The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(109)

The heavy doors slammed behind her, leaving Lu and Nokhai alone in the cold silence.

Lu slumped down into her overturned cushion, dropping her head into her hands. She felt rather than heard Nok sit beside her. He didn’t touch her, but she could sense the heat of him. The hair on her arms prickled with it.

“Nasan’s afraid,” Nok said. “She thinks now that you have the Yunians you’ll abandon your deal with her.”

Lu sat up with a ragged, desperate breath, like surfacing from a too-deep dive. “I told her I wouldn’t,” she said, begging him, at least, to believe her. Believe in her.

“I know,” he said. “It’s just . . . well, you know.”

“How am I supposed to work with all these people if none of them are willing to trust me?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

She resisted the urge to cover her face again with her hands and settled instead for rubbing them up and down her arms. Her fingers caught over the scar from the crossbow bolt she’d taken the day they’d met in the forest. They’d left the stitches in too long according to Nokhai, and it had healed puckered and jagged. She worried the skin with her nails, and his eyes drifted down, drawn by the movement.

It struck her then, how long they’d been traveling together—long enough for the blood flowing from the wound to slow and clot, for the wet, open flesh to mend and gnarl and harden. So much had changed since then.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

He turned to her in surprise. “I . . .”

She smiled ruefully, casting her gaze back at the dying fire before them. Never one for lying.

“I trust . . . I trust your heart,” Nokhai said after a breath. “Nasan’s right. You can do a lot of harm without meaning to.”

“Isn’t that true of everyone?”

“I suppose.” He grimaced. “You just happen to have a lot of power.”

Your title, your station—your very existence—is built on the subjugation, on the suffering of others. The specter of Nasan’s words hung between them.

“What about you?” she blurted, sounding more accusatory than she intended. “You can change shape, Nokhai. You have a power—magic—that’s all but lost to the rest of the world.”

It wasn’t the same, and she knew it. He must have as well, but all he said was, “I know,” looking down into his lap. “I-I’m trying to figure out what to do with that.”

There was more. A weight in the gut, a pinch in his forehead, a taut wire pulling his shoulders in tight. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, had been too caught up in her own worries, but now she couldn’t see anything else. “What is it? What’s happened?”

The question caught him off guard. Perhaps that was the only reason he answered honestly. “Vrea—the Oracle. She wants me to stay here. Learn from her how to care for the beast gods. Become a Pactmaker.”

“What about Omair?”

He looked startled again, as though he hadn’t expected her to remember. “She says he can come, too. Once we free him.”

“That’s good,” Lu said. “That’s—incredible. That would mean . . . you could bring the Gift back to Nasan, to your people. Not just your people—all those Gifted, too. That’s—you could change everything.”

He sighed, looking somewhat less delighted by the notion than she did. “Yes, I know.”

She nodded slowly. “That’s a lot of responsibility.”

“It’s just . . .” He hesitated. “It just seems too big for one person—for me. I never asked, never wanted to be . . . this.”

“But it’s good, Nokhai. How could anything but good come from this?”

He shook his head, frustrated. “You don’t know that. I don’t know that. Why couldn’t it have been Nasan?” He laughed wryly. “The gods got it all wrong.”

Lu grabbed his hand. “No,” she said firmly. “Nokhai, you’re as clever and thoughtful and clearheaded as anyone. Much more so than most. That you take this power so seriously shows the gods chose correctly. Wisely.”

He was looking at their joined hands. “But I don’t know what to do.”

“You—you should do what you think is best. For you,” she told him. “Do what will make you happy.”

“Is that what you did? Did you choose what will make you happy?” There was a hint of venom in his voice. He didn’t let go of her hand, though.

“You deserve to be happy, Nokhai,” she said, not rising to the bait.

He met her gaze for a long moment before he slumped, the fight leaving him with a sigh. “Deserve?” He smiled sardonically. “That doesn’t mean anything. People don’t get what they deserve in this world. Things just happen, whether you earn them or not.”

“It doesn’t mean you have to punish yourself for every bad thing. It doesn’t mean you have to push away every good thing.”

“Is that what this is?” he asked, looking down at their linked hands. “A good thing?”

This time when she kissed him, he sank into it, like surrender, like it was a relief. His hands, tentative and gentle, found her face, brushed the hair from her neck. He let her push him back down into the cushion until she was on top of him. She put her hands on him, moved them over his shoulders, across his back, down to his waist. Felt him shift beneath his tunic, felt the heat of his skin beneath, felt the muscles contract beneath the skin—