“What did they tell you?”

Jay sat up at the question, causing her armor to clank loudly against itself. She winced at the sound in the otherwise deathly silent tent, but there was no one but Kerr and Ratosh to hear it. Neither opened their eyes at the noise, though their reasons were different.

“About what?” Jay asked softly.

She still had her hand on Kerr’s back, having kept physical contact up with her lover as much as possible. She had taken the time to remove her gauntlets and helmet a few hours earlier, but otherwise she had not moved. Jadis still had to maintain her wings to keep her Jay self from breaking through the tent’s floor, and she and Alex had nearly exhausted all of the potions that Amarantha had given them, but she refused to leave Kerr’s side. She wasn’t going to force Kerr to leave her father’s deathbed, either. Not until she was ready.

“About my mother,” Kerr said some uncountable time later. “Ksyusha.”

“Not much,” Jay replied. “Vidor said… they were ordered not to talk about her.”

Kerr let out a derisive snort.

“That doesn’t mean anything now, does it.”

“No, I guess not,” Jay agreed, her voice somber. “Do you… want to talk about her?”

“Not really,” Kerr shook her head. “But you should know, anyway.”

The archer let out a low sigh, more a release of old emotions than breath, and used the back of her left hand to rub her eyes. Shifting on the small stool she had sat on, she leaned her shoulder against Jay. Her long horns clinked against Jay’s armor, but other than their breath, there was no more noise in the room.

“She had the same color eyes as me. Green.”

Jay didn’t say anything, but she squeezed Kerr’s shoulder, encouraging her to go on as she struggled to find her words.

“Everyone always said that I looked just like her, but I don’t think we looked that much alike. She was way more beautiful than me. But that’s what everyone else said. The other wives, my brothers and sisters. My father. She only had one pup, but that pup was a perfect little copy of her.”

Jay couldn’t help but smile at the thought of a tiny Kerr and her mother. She had to have been adorable.

“I think that’s why I started learning other languages,” Kerr mused, lost in a memory. “She was always so proper. Demure. Wouldn’t let me curse or take the gods’ names in vain. So, I learned all the ways to say shit or fuck in every language I could get a teacher for. She hated it, but I think she let me do it anyway because it got me to study and read, and she wanted me to be educated.”

“She was an educated woman?” Jay asked after a few beats of silence.

“Very educated,” Kerr snorted again. “A complete bookworm. Would have gotten along well with Blue. Mom—my mother wasn’t from the Nox clan. She was from Clan Vera. They are, or were, from the northern shore. Lots of sea trade. Way more in touch with the other nations and races.”

“They were?”

The slip of past versus present tense had not passed by unnoticed. Jay frowned at the implication, but she didn’t want to jump to conclusions. She wanted to hear what Kerr had to say, first.

“Yes, they ‘were’ from the north,” her lover let out a raw huff of pained laughter. “Can’t say they are now. They aren’t anywhere, now. They’re all dead, thanks to this baran right here.”

Kerr snarled the last three words, but the anger wasn’t heated anymore. It was only old embers, stirred up for a brief flare, but fallen to ash soon after. She rubbed at her eyes with her left hand again, not yet ready to let her grasp go with her right.

“It was war. A stupid, ugly, pointless war. The Vera were on one side, and the Nox were on another. And my stupid, ugly father helped win that war, and all the Vera fucking died. All of the ones that mattered, anyway. My grandparents. My uncles, and aunts, and cousins—my mother’s whole fucking family. All dead.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” Kerr turned to look up at Jay with bloodshot eyes.

“Why… any of it? Why was there a war? Why did Nox side against Vera? Why… kill everyone?”

“Who fucking cares,” the archer looked away. “Does it matter? Land. Money. Honor. Whatever reason you want. There was a war, and people died. My mamochka—my mother, she pleaded with my father to stop the war. She begged him to help. To just… to just do something. But he didn’t, and all her family died. And she couldn’t live with the man who killed her family.”

Jay let out a shaky breath. She wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t feel equipped to respond. She wasn’t smart enough, or wise enough, or experienced enough to have any words to make Kerr feel better. She didn’t think those words existed. But she wanted to be there for the woman she loved. That was all that mattered. So, Jay put her arm around Kerr and held her close, cradling her gently against her side.

“Your armor’s cold.”

“Sorry,” Jay whispered.

“It’s fine,” Kerr murmured. “He—”

Kerr’s voice caught in her throat. It took a moment for her to clear it, but when she spoke again, her voice was stronger.

“He never admitted that he was wrong about what he had done,” she said as she stared down at Ratosh’s still form. “Not even after she… not even then. He did what he had to do ‘to protect the clan’ and that was the end of it. The clan mattered more than a single wife.”

“I don’t think I could ever think that way,” Jay squeezed Kerr’s shoulder a little more tightly. “Not ever.”

“Really?” her lover asked, still looking down. “You can’t ever see yourself having to make a choice? What if you had to choose between saving one of our lives, versus all the rest of us? Would you let Aila die to save Eir and Thea? What about Sorcha? Would you let her die to save Severina? Or would you let Severina die? What ratio is acceptable? One for two? Three for Eight?”

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Kerr leaned back, her green eyes meeting Jay’s violet gaze.

“Would you let me die to save Hope?”

Jay stared down at Kerr, her face drawn and weary. Still, when she spoke, it was with firm conviction.

“I wouldn’t accept a trade. I’d find a way to save everyone I love. No matter what.”

A small laugh brightened Kerr’s face for just a moment as she leaned more heavily against Jay.

“You would say that, wouldn’t you. And you know what? I believe you. You’d do it. No matter what. You would protect me, and you’d protect everyone we love. You’d find a way.”

Kerr’s smile fell as she looked away, her eyes drawn to her father once more.

“I thought he would. He should have. He was so strong. He could do anything. He could lift the world if he wanted to. But he didn’t find a way. He couldn’t. He—”

Kerr’s eyes shut before any tears could escape them. Yet, despite her best efforts, a heartbroken sob still left her when she spoke again.

“Why didn’t he save her?”

Jay rocked Kerr back and forth in her arms for a long time, long enough for the moon to travel far overhead. When her lover’s sobs had quieted into exhausted sleep, Jay delicately lifted Kerr up in her arms. Doing so, Ratosh’s cold hand slipped free of Kerr’s grasp, the man having passed away hours ago. Silently, Jay floated out of the room, careful not to wake her lover as she slipped out of the door.

Outside, Zifa and the rest of Kerr’s half-mothers waited. They let them pass in solemn silence, their expressions poorly hiding their grief at having lost their husband. As soon as Jay and Kerr were clear, they entered the room to do… well, Jadis wasn’t sure what. Make peace with their departed love? Prepare his body for whatever funeral rites were needed? She really couldn’t say, and she wasn’t sure that any of the women would know enough Imperial to answer her question, if she was of a mind to ask. So, Jay didn’t try. Instead, she just continued to carry her sleeping lover down the hall.

“Wait.”

The heavily accented word had been uttered by the old woman, Zifa, the first of Ratosh’s wives. Widow, now, Jadis supposed. The elderly therion walked down the hall to meet Jay, her wrinkled face so worn with exhaustion she looked like she might fall apart at any moment. And yet, Zifa held her head high and met Jay with a strong gaze.

“Below. Bed. Kerr sleep. Please.”

“Thank you,” Jay replied quietly.

With a nod, Zifa turned away and went to join the others beyond the simple doorway.

It took some searching, but Jay eventually found what she assumed was a spare bedroom of sorts. Once inside the sparsely furnished space, she set Kerr down in the bed, still armored, to let her sleep away her grief. Physically and mentally exhausted herself, Jay settled down onto the ground next to the bed and finally let her glowing wings wink out of existence, plunging them both into darkness. With a sigh, Jay closed her eyes and rested. She was lucky, after all. She could let one or two of her selves rest while the other continued on.

“Ratosh is dead,” Syd informed Vidor.

They were still outside the clan head’s tent, sitting together at the long table. Many of Kerr’s siblings who had joined her for supper had since left for their own families, and the few who had stayed were quietly talking among themselves. Raisa had fallen asleep at the table, her arms pillowed under her head as she lightly snored. Vidor, however, had stayed with Syd the entire time, without complaint.

“He was a good leader,” the old therion said in a reverent tone as he made a hand gesture in front of his chest. “And a good man. He will be missed by his pack, but he hunts with Villthyrial in His halls, now.”

“Was he?” Syd asked, her tone pointed. “A good man, I mean.”

Vidor peered at her for a moment, his expression unreadable.

“Kerr has spoken to you.”

“She has.”

“Such an unusual skill,” he murmured as he appraised Syd. “To be in three places at once. The things I might have been able to do in my own life if I had such an ability. Or Ratosh. Or any of us.”

“It has its advantages,” Syd agreed mildly.

“What did Kerr tell you?”

“Enough,” Syd said. Then, taking a breath, she continued. “But you promised your own explanation.”

Syd quickly recounted the gist of what Kerr had told her, what little there was to repeat. Vidor nodded along, as though he had already known everything Syd was going to say. Likely he had heard the same words before, from Kerr’s own lips, Jadis presumed. If he was as close a family member as he seemed to be, he had likely been deeply involved in what had happened. Or he had at least witnessed some of it, firsthand.

“Ratosh did the best that he could,” Vidor said after Syd had fallen silent.

“That doesn’t sound like nearly enough to me,” she frowned deeply at the response. “He killed his favorite wife’s entire clan. That’s… abhorrent on a scale I can’t really put into words.”

Vidor sighed, leaning back as he let his clawed hands fall onto the table in front of him.

“Clan politics are never easy to explain,” Vidor said some seconds later. “They are complicated even to those who have lived in the Verdant Sea since birth; how can an outsider hope to understand?”

Syd remained quiet, listening, as Vidor pecked his way through his thoughts.

“Our clan is strong. But the Nox are far from the strongest. There are many other clans that are larger. They have more influence, more resources, more allies. Nox va Ratosh was a powerful warrior, an exemplar among our kin. But he is—he was one man. One. He could not be in three places at once. He could not fly on magic wings. He had to make choices.

“As a leader, he had to choose who to ally himself with, and who to not ally with. And when one clan turned against another, he had to choose who to lend his bow to, and who to turn it against. Even if the answer was to do nothing, that was still action, which would be seen and felt by every other clan. As a leader of therions, one cannot show support to a clan without making an enemy of another. Do you understand?”

“I do,” Syd agreed begrudgingly. “I’ve dealt with my fair share of politics. I fucking hate politics.”

“Politics,” Vidor let out a puff of amusement. “For a priest like me, politics is a poison. For a warrior like Ratosh, politics were no less detestable. But unlike me, he did not have the luxury of ignoring them.”

“Are you trying to tell me Kerr’s mother died because of politics?”

Vidor sighed, letting his furry chin droop onto his chest.

“Ksyusha took her own life because the pain was too much to bear. I wish she had not felt so alone, but that was in part her own doing. She was never truly kin to the Nox. She stayed separate, by her own choice. But I am saying things I should not say about a woman who I have no right or will to judge.

“Clan Vera was allied to Clan Nox, but their head made enemies with other clans. Those clans had more allies than they did. Some of those allies were also allied to Clan Nox. In the end, it came down to a choice. Side with Clan Vera or remain neutral to avoid war with allies who were far larger and more powerful. Ratosh chose what was best for our clan. Not what was best for the woman he loved, not what I think he would have wanted for himself, but what saved the lives of his people.”

“You’re saying Clan Nox would have been destroyed, too?” Syd asked directly.

“Clan Vera was not the only clan to be scattered to the winds by Clan Sila and their allies. Would Clan Nox have made a difference?” Vidor shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps the war would have gone longer. Maybe more of the Sila would have died. Maybe the toll would have been too high, and the clans may have made peace. But I think it is also very likely the end would have been the same. What would have been is a mystery, but I cannot hate the man for making a decision that I know saved the lives of my family, even if it cost the lives of others.”

A long silence settled between them, broken only by the occasional whisper of movement that came from the therions who moved in the shadows. All seemed to be going to the clan head’s tent, their demeanors somber as they stopped to make signs with their hands before the door, then quietly moved away.

“His last words were ‘I missed you,’ to Kerr,” Syd said after a while.

“I am happy that he was able to see her, one last time,” the old therion smiled as he turned around on the bench to look up at the tent. “That has always been what I admired the most about Ratosh. He loved his children deeply. Even if she hated him, what father would not miss his beloved daughter?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep