6. Killian

CHAPTER SIX

KILLIAN

I t was a relief to leave.

Not that Heron lands were anything less than beautiful. No, it was paradise. Sun and sandy beaches and palm trees with enormous green fronds swaying in the balmy breeze.

The Heron Clan was truly blessed.

But my people were home, in Crane lands. Fighting the south without me. Dying without me.

How much could a man be expected to lay back and enjoy himself when there was an endless war waiting for him, that might at that very moment be killing his friends and relatives?

I'd always joked that I would rest when the war was over, and well... Mother's way had been rather less happy.

I'll rest when I'm dead, birdie , she'd told me whenever I'd encouraged her to spend more time off the wall. I hoped if the soul extended beyond death, that wherever she was, it looked a lot like Heron lands.

I was still staring off into space at the beach, trying to imagine my mother lying in one of the Heron Clan's ubiquitous net hammocks, slung between thick palm trunks. It was impossible. I could only imagine her as she'd been. Not relaxing on a sandy beach, sipping fruity drinks and swaying her hand gently through the air to match time with the Heron sitting in the sand nearby playing some kind of musical instrument.

The Herons were incredible musicians.

But Mother? No. I could only picture her on the wall. In her armor, head held high, glaring down at the southerners. It was who she'd been, and who she'd always be. If the soul survived after death, there was no relaxing sunny break for the likes of us.

There was only the wall, forever.

Just like in life.

"Killian?" I'd have worried he was coming to give me more of a dressing down, but Paris's voice was hesitant. Concerned, even. "Are you okay? Maybe you should stay a while."

I turned to find him looking up at me, concern in his eyes. Concern for me? Nonsense. I was Crane. We were the eternal warriors of Nemeda. We were never for concern. Only fighting.

"I'm sorry about Otus convincing your brother he needs to come to the wall," I said, sighing, shaking my head. Because I didn't think I'd ever been sorrier for a thing. Hector was a sturdier, more sensibly built kind of person than Paris, sweet little artistic dreamer that he was, but neither of them belonged in a war.

Most people didn't. Though he'd spent five years on the wall, Brett certainly didn't. He could fight, but he wasn't a fighter. He was a farmer, and all the better for it. Orestes, too. He hadn't spent a decade on the wall because he excelled at killing, but because he had been searching for a place to belong. He'd known he didn't belong with his bloodthirsty, selfish kin, so when he'd been accepted without question among the Crane, for a time, he'd settled there. Felt at home. Since his family's destruction, he'd been living happily with Brett and the Hawk Clan, learning about spinning and weaving and farming, and was as happy as a bird on the wind. I wished him luck finding a less bloody place to belong than Crane Palace. He deserved it.

Everyone did, really.

No one but the southlands deserved an endless bloody war, and I only wished it on them because they damned well demanded it, throwing their youth at us in bloody crashing waves over and over, every year, without end.

That, then, was my beach. The only one I could spend time on, waves of southerners trying to crest the wall, as we beat them back again and again, for as long as we were able.

They were like the ocean, though, and water... water was persistent. Eventually, it would break through the sturdiest wall. Even ours.

"It's not your fault," Paris said, sighing, pressing his forehead into my arm. It was strange, how he didn't hesitate to touch me. I was Brett's, and that was enough for him. It meant that I, too, was family to him. "I just worry about him. He almost died. You know. You were there. He's not entirely healthy again yet. Maybe he won't ever be. He struggles to breathe sometimes. And I wonder... it feels like something in him is changed since then, too. There's something—something brittle in him. Maybe even broken."

Of course there was something broken in him. Someone Hector had trusted—not just with his own life, but with his entire country's wellbeing—had tried to kill him. A king was like the council as a whole. He was supposed to be knowing and loving and helpful—paternal and maternal at once. He wasn't supposed to try to kill you for no crime at all.

He wasn't supposed to be mad and selfish and hateful.

From what I'd gleaned, it sounded like Hector's own father hadn't much been a father to him. That it had been the opposite, in fact, Hector caring for the family while his father read Paris and Helena bedtime stories and played in the garden with them. So Hector was the father, and he was still filled with the need to protect his family. Especially after his own near-father figure had betrayed him entirely.

I turned to face Paris. "I promise you, I will do my best to protect him. I won't let him out on the wall until he's ready, and I'll make sure the others watch over him."

I didn't wince at the statement, but it was a close thing. The wall worked because all the fighters there could count on each other to watch out for them. Never before had I suggested that any of them watch over one man more than another. Could I do it even now, even having promised Paris that I would?

There was no question, really. I had promised.

More than that, I realized as I turned to where Orestes was showing Hector the saddlebags on the horse my people had given him to ride, I wanted to do it. I wanted to protect Hector, the way no one before me ever had. The way everyone before me had failed at.

He'd given so much, over and over, to everyone in his life. It was time that someone protected him.

It didn't hurt that he was beautiful to look at while I did it. Those dark curls of Paris's, but not on a youth, on a man full grown, with a square stubbled jaw and stubborn determination in his golden eyes. I looked back to Paris, smiling at him. "All I can do is my best, Paris, but I will give you that. Give him that."

He sniffled and nodded, but didn't say anything else, just left me to my thoughts, as I prepared to leave paradise and ride back into battle.

Back home.

"Can't leave someone be when they need guidance, can you?" I called to Orestes.

Orestes turned his great wide grin on me. "Might as well, if I'm riding with you, don't you think? Besides, our saddlebags are different from the ones in Urial."

Riding with us. It seemed I'd been wrong about Orestes making his escape from the wall. Damned place was like a whirlpool, inevitably dragging everyone in closer and closer, until they couldn't fight the pull any longer. Eventually, it would kill us all.