Honor-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book III ]

3

Mhera was kneeling next to Hastor's corpse, clutching his charred tunic. Her anguished sobs had subsided, and now she pressed her forehead against Hastor's shoulder, looking like a tortured supplicant to an unyielding goddess who did not even know her name.

"Mhera. My dearest heart, let him go." Matei was on his knees at her side. He'd been here during the storm of her grief, trying to comfort her, trying not to give free reign to his own pain and fear.

Mhera sat back on her heels. She drew a deep inhalation, pulling her hands away from Hastor, and she looked down at the dead man's face. Even in death, he wore an expression of horror.

"We've killed him," she said. She turned her tear-streaked face to Matei. "We've killed him."

"We've not killed him, Mhera. He was acting as duty demanded. He chose the life of a soldier, of a guard, and he—he defended the defenseless. That was his charge."

Mhera's eyes gleamed with tears. She shook her head, and then, pressing her knuckles to her lips, she looked back at Hastor's face. "Did he have a wife? Children?"

"We will care for what family he has."

"He died for our daughter and we do not even know if he had family of his own. He died for her, Matei, and if he has a daughter of his own—"

"Shh." Matei leaned forward, letting his hand come to rest on the small of Mhera's back. "My love, my love...Soon, we will come to know their names and their faces, and we will thank them for the service he gave to our family."

"He's died in vain. They took her anyway. Uarria..."

The sound of their daughter's name from Mhera's lips was an open wound. Matei's heart pounded in his chest, and there was an ache at the back of his skull, pulsing painfully with every beat of his heart. He must not let his panic overwhelm him. Eovin had commanded that Matei and Mhera stay where they were, lest Uarria, wandering and afraid, come back to her room. The lorekeeper was at this very moment organizing a search of the palace servants. Arris had gone to alert the patrol—and thereby, Matei realized, to alert Uachi.

A confusing blend of emotions rose in Matei's mind at the thought of his dearest friend.

Relief.

Anger.

As they knelt on the floor of their daughter's bedchamber, Matei took Mhera's face in his hands. He looked her in the eyes and said, "You and I have come through trials no man nor woman should have had to face. We have borne burdens together that might have crushed one of us alone. Is that not true?"

Mhera sniffled, making no verbal response, but she nodded her head.

"This is another. Another unbearable burden which we, together, will bear."

"She's so young, Matei, she's so small—" Mhera closed her eyes, breaking into a sob. She curled in to Matei's arms, letting her head come to rest against his shoulder. As her fists knotted tightly into the back of Matei's tunic, he folded his arms around her and held her close, rocking gently to the left and to the right.

"Shh. We will find her. We will find her, Mhera."

"The last time someone I loved was taken from me, they brought back his corpse." Her voice was nearly a moan. "Matei, I cannot bear this. I cannot."

Matei could still smell the scent of charred flesh emanating from Hastor's corpse. He could feel Mhera's sweat, her sticky tears, the heat of their emotional embrace. Her words, so raw and full of despair, might as well have been lashes, so sorely did they hurt him.

A flash of something uncomfortably like impatience flared in his heart for a few seconds. He suppressed it with an effort.

Mhera could not help but feel this grief. He only wished she would bend less easily to her despair. The burden of his own sorrow was great. Could he bear hers, too?

Matei smoothed his hand over Mhera's back, closing his eyes, and he swallowed against the rising wave of sickness—nausea, misery, grief. "Go to your chambers. If Uarria is in the palace, she might go there as easily as she would come here. I will stay—"

"No," Mhera said. She straightened, looking him in the eye. "I will not leave you alone."

"Mhera." Matei took her by the shoulders. "Please. Let me see to Hastor. Let me shield you from that much, at least."

Mhera looked down again with an expression of such pain that Matei's heart turned over. Then, she got to her feet. He rose and walked with her toward the door, holding her by the arm. When they reached the threshold, she turned to face him, her expression solemn, as solemn as it had been on their wedding day, as solemn as it had been when she had come to him in the rebel encampment of Hanpe and told him that the end was nigh.

"We have borne burdens together that might have crushed us alone," she said softly, echoing his words back to him. "Promise me, Matei, that you will not bear this alone. We will find her together or we will..." Mhera's breath caught in her throat. She closed her eyes.

Tears were burning in Matei's throat, but he would not break. Not yet. "We'll find her. Do not imagine the worst."

"Just promise me."

Matei pulled Mhera toward him. He locked his arms around her in a firm embrace, and she yielded to that embrace, melting into his arms. For a moment, Matei reflected on his fear that he could not bear Mhera's grief along with his own and he hated himself for his own selfishness, his own weakness.

He should want to suffer this for her.

Let him organize the searches, the patrols.

Let him turn over every stone in the realm in search of their daughter.

Let him feel the keenest edge of this brutal sword.

But Mhera was not a woman who could sit idle even in times of peace and joy. To languish in her rooms, waiting for news, would undo her. And so, Matei whispered against her hair, "I swear it to you."

Mhera drew back from him and met his gaze. She lifted her hand and rested it against his cheek for a second, her thumb tracing the line of his lower lip, a tender gesture that in other circumstances might easily have become passionate but here, in this chamber that felt as silent and hollow as a tomb, was solemn indeed.

She looked like she would say something else...

...but she seemed to change her mind and, lowering her head, she turned away and left Uarria's room, heading to her own private apartments at the other end of the hall.