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38. Killian

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

KILLIAN

C arlyle had been a golden, shining example of humanity. He'd been one of the tallest men I ever met, almost as tall as Orestes, built with strength, if not the same massiveness of my friend. He'd always been clean-shaven, as was the habit of southern warriors, and his eyes had been a vivid green, like the sour apples the Hummingbird Clan grew. Everything about him had screamed of strength, from his muscled form to his wide, authoritative stance, and I, still something of a scrawny teenager, had been enamored almost instantly.

It was the pinnacle of southern manliness, which was important to them, because for some reason that couldn't quite penetrate my Nemedan simplicity, southerners thought women to be other, lesser creatures. Almost not human, definitely not people with minds of their own. Property. Like particularly impressive pieces of furniture or art that they intended to pass on to their children.

It was why Esmerelda had run away as a young woman—her father had intended to pass her on to be owned by a man she found repugnant, and no one had thought she deserved an opinion on that.

Carlyle had never cared much about my opinion of women as equals, though he'd clearly thought me silly when I'd told him I trusted a woman at my back as much as a man.

What he'd cared about had been making his father proud.

Like the man who had stabbed me, he'd spoken of bringing his father a trophy. A stone from the top of the wall, a Crane feather, a spear carried by one of our warriors. Trinkets, whose value I'd never been able to figure out.

I had found him while running patrols into the northern edges of the southland, trying to locate enemy camps and fortifications so that we could prepare for them.

I'd come across him separated from his camp, unarmed, bathing alone in the river.

My instinct, of course, had simply been to kill him.

Then I had realized that he presented a unique opportunity. So I had instead interrupted his bath and demanded that he speak to me. Give me answers about the incomprehensible southern need for aggression.

He'd reacted oddly helpfully, more than willing to speak of his people and their goals, as though it wasn't borderline treason to do so. If I'd shared so much about our people, my mother would have beaten me bloody. But Carlyle had never minded when I'd danced around subjects or refused to give him information in return. He hadn't asked for anything useful to begin with, like troop strength or weak points on the wall. He'd only absorbed everything I'd given him and listened avidly for more.

He had wanted to know everything. Wished, openly, for there to be no war, so that he could travel the lands freely and learn more about everyone.

We had met in secret for months, stolen hours that had felt like nothing so much as a courtship.

When my mother had learned of our meetings, she'd been furious with me. She'd questioned me for hours about every single thing I'd told him, and hadn't believed me when I explained it all. He must have been after something, she had insisted. She'd demanded to know if I'd offered to fuck him, to give him Avianitis. But I hadn't, and he hadn't asked for it.

I, a teenage boy with a bit of a crush on a dashing young man, had told her that he and I wanted to end the war.

She had laughed.

She'd been right, in the end.

Carlyle had led his father's men against the wall, and there had been no choice. I had killed him myself.

It had been thirty years since then, and I rarely spoke of him anymore, except when trying to explain to young warriors that we all made mistakes, even me. Or that no, there was no way to reason with the southerners. They could seem perfectly rational, and still, they would break their bodies on the wall as though propelled forward by an ocean wave.

But I told Hector, as we lay there in bed together, everything. My crush. How I'd been sorely tempted to offer him precisely what the southerners had claimed to be after for all those years, because I'd been so in love with the golden, shining man, that I'd have given him anything.

Anything except the military victory his father had required.

And Carlyle had never asked, because he hadn't expected me to betray my people any more than he would have betrayed his.

"The younger one reminded me of him," I whispered into his hair, like it was a shameful secret. "He wasn't, of course, but he was golden like Carlyle. And they all spoke of his father. It's important to them, the relationship between father and son."

I tried not to laugh at the concept, since Hector and I didn't have the best examples of father-son relationships. I didn't even know who my father was, and Hector had practically parented his own.

"He was here to attack the Hawk," he whispered back, squeezing me tight against him. It jostled my wound slightly, but I didn't so much as wince. I didn't want him to pull away from me, not ever. "Maybe he was just like Carlyle, because he didn't leave you a choice just the same way. There are children in the village, Killian. Old people. None of them are fighters unless it's because they spent a year on the wall, defending Nemeda from other people just like him."

He was right. It turned out that when I listened to him, Hector was almost always right. Oh sure, he was a Urial, with all their dramatic passion, and he overthought things as often as not. But he was one of the cleverest men I'd ever met, my Hector.

Like Carlyle.

Maybe I simply saw the long-dead man in everyone, but I didn't think that was the case. I thought I'd always been a fucking sucker for a beautiful, intelligent man.

For some reason, all the clever men I met always seemed determined to throw themselves away on behalf of others. Carlyle for his father, Hector for his siblings.

"I just don't understand," I sighed, burying my face in his neck and breathing in the scent of him. "They don't hate us. They just... attack. Forever. They don't want Nemeda. Hells, so many of them die thrown against the wall, they barely seem to have enough people to inhabit their own land any longer. Why won't they leave us alone?"

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