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W
e were eating a late breakfast when the knock
came to the door. Magnus had a twinkle in his eyes as he pushed the chair back
from the table. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Curious, I watched him go, then realized I
hadn’t panicked. The unknown person knocking at the door should’ve sent me
fleeing out the back, but I remained seated. I took a sip of tea, wondering why
I no longer felt hunted. Perhaps the heart truly
does
know when it’s
home.

I tensed when I heard a man in the foyer, but
the voice was familiar. I turned my head to listen and then he was there,
standing before me with a warm and welcoming smile.

“Jarl Aldi?” I could scarcely believe my eyes.
I hadn’t thought of him in years.

He’d aged, but he’d done it well. Only a few
lines marred his flawless brown skin. His hair, once black as night, was
lightened a bit by splashes of silver. He was still as lean as a warhorse.

“The same.” Jarl opened his arms to me. “Kymber
Oryx. I am so very, very glad to see you, my dear.”

I ran into his embrace with my eyes shut tight,
my mind hurtling across the years that separated us. “And I’m glad to see you,
Jarl.”

He rubbed my shoulders. “Magnus said you have a
little problem with your sword hand.”

“If only it
were
little.” I turned to
Magnus. “So this is your physician friend. If I’d known you were talking about
Jarl, I would’ve been more agreeable.”

“I was afraid you’d refuse,” Magnus said.

I laughed. “Jarl and I worked out our
differences long ago.”

“We certainly did.” Jarl smiled. “Are you
finished eating? If so, I’d like to have a look at that hand.”

“We’ll go to my room.” Magnus waved an arm
toward the staircase. “For privacy.”

J
arl worked with my hand
for a long time, lifting each finger and massaging the palm. It ached when he
was done, but I thought he was pleased. His kept his expression neutral but his
eyes shone like stars. 

He kissed my hand then placed it in my lap.
“This terrible thing should never have happened to you. Especially at Tariq’s
hands. I wish you were not scarred. I wish I could look into your eyes and tell
you women had no business fighting alongside men just to watch you pull that
sword and lay waste to my office.”

Yes, Jarl and I had not seen eye to eye on a
woman’s place in the world, but I think I’d helped change his mind. In any
case, his heartfelt statement brought tears to my eyes.

“What do you think?” Magnus asked Jarl. “Can
you help her?”

Jarl sighed. “That must have been one horrific
wound.”

An understatement of the highest order. I
nodded. “Yes.”

“It’ll never be what it was.”

“I understand.” I truly did, but Magnus looked
as though he were going to be sick.

“That said, I think we can loosen it up enough
for you to grip a sword, but it may never be–”

Magnus interrupted him with a happy gasp. “I
knew it!”

Jarl gave him a look then trained his gaze on
me. “You will never have the same mobility you once had, but weren’t you
trained to compensate for weaknesses?”

“Yes.” Magnus and I said it in unison. 

“Then this is my professional opinion, Kymber,
and it’s as much for Magnus as it is for you. You are weak and unhealthy.
Emaciated. I will work with your hand, but I don’t want you to begin any type
of training with a weapon until you gain a little weight. I know this impatient
man beside you, and I know he’ll push, push, push until you drop from
exhaustion, but all I want you to do for the time being is eat and get strong.
Have Magnus take you for daily walks on the beach, but don’t try to do too
much. This is going to take time.” He moved a stern gaze to Magnus. “And I
don’t want to hear of either of you trying to force the grip of a sword into
that hand until I give my approval. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Magnus nodded.

Jarl rose from the bed. “Magnus, I want you to
bring her to my office daily for warm compresses and manipulation. Can you do
that?”

“Of course.” The joy in Magnus’s voice was
palpable.

Jarl went to the door, turning back to regard
me one last time. “I’m going to apologize to you right now.”

“For what?” I asked.

“This will be painful. If you aren’t calling me
the spawn of a whore and walking out on me at least twice a week, I’ll know I’m
doing something wrong. I promise you’ll see results if you stay with it, but
you have to commit to this treatment no matter how much it hurts.” His eyes
held a question.

“I can. I will.” At least I wanted to. That
would have to suffice for now.

 It was going to be hard enough to get myself
strong.

W
e started with the basics. Kymber needed to
gain weight before we could begin training. I instructed Mrs. Toolwin to stock
the kitchen with the most nutritious food she could get her hands on. She went
above and beyond in her search; my pantries were soon full to bursting with
beneficial grains and rare spices. Goodness filled every dish my kind-hearted
cook set upon the table.

I encouraged Kymber to eat every two or three
hours whether she wanted to or not. We stuffed ourselves for three weeks before
we began taking walks on the beach, in our bare feet, to build and strengthen
the thigh and calf muscles. 

The walks also gave us a chance to talk, as we
weren’t doing much of that up at the house. She was quiet and withdrawn much of
the time. Coward that I was, I simply couldn’t bring myself to ask what was
wrong.

I kept our conversations light and airy, as she
never initiated them on her own. Her replies rarely consisted of more than a
sentence or two, sometimes a single word given in a whisper. Something big was
lurking inside her, just below the surface.

I feared that something.

Jarl had warned me her recovery needed to be
mental as well as physical. The signs of brutality on her body had shocked him.

“Gods, Magnus, what did Garai do to her?” he’d asked
at a subsequent visit.

“She’s spoken of it a handful of times. In
truth, I’m afraid to know.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m afraid I’ll tear the world apart
with my bare hands if I hear the details. I wasn’t there to save her. I can
never fix this for her.”

“Well.” Jarl removed his glasses to clean them
on his tunic. “She’s holding on to a lot of anger. You’ll have to coax it out
of her before she begins to train. A warrior should never–”

“Fight with their emotions,” I finished. “I
know.”

Still, I wanted her to be the one to start the
dialogue. It didn’t quite work out that way.

Kymber and I walked twice a day for several
weeks before I asked the question that opened the door into her long nightmare.

“Are you happy, Kymber?”

I didn’t think she heard me at first so I
repeated the question. When she didn’t answer, I thought perhaps she was
ignoring me.

A harsh sigh finally punctuated her silence. “I
wonder if I’m even capable of happiness.”

“That’s a rather bleak statement. I’d hoped
living with me–”

She came to a halt in the sand and gave me a
look that chilled me to the bone. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to
physically belong to someone else?”

I stopped beside her. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s not a trick question, Tyrix. Do you know
what it’s like to belong to another person?”

“No.” I sensed something momentous was coming.

“Well, it’s no fun. There’s no ‘happy’ in it.”
She pressed a tense finger to the side of her head, her face flushed red. “I
was here, the whole time, but none of this was mine.” She gestured down her
body with an open hand. “From the neck down, I belonged to King Drakoe Garai of
Pentorus, and he did as he pleased with me. I couldn’t stop him. If I fought,
he hurt me twice as bad as he would have otherwise.” She clenched her fists. “I
shut down. I don’t feel
anything
anymore. Do you understand me? I can’t
be happy. I can’t be sad. I’m dead inside. He took it all away, and I’ll
never
get it back.”

I was tempted to say meaningless things:
“I’ll
help you put it behind you. Give yourself time. We’ll work through this
together.”
All of
those statements were entirely true, but the raw
pain in her words, on her face, stopped me from saying them aloud.

She’d put a name to her pain. I rubbed her back,
knowing this was another milestone for her. “You’re the proudest, most
independent woman I’ve ever known. I can’t imagine what you went through, but
rest assured, you will never face anything like that again. You’re safe here
with me. And I’m going to keep repeating it until you believe me.”

I
don’t know why that one question caused such a
violent reaction inside me. “Are you happy, Kymber?”

Happiness was something I was sure I’d never
feel again, an emotion as distant and foreign to me as the twin moons that
filled the night sky over Calari.

And suddenly, I knew. I had a sea of boiling
rage inside me. It had kept me alive, but now it was threatening to drown me. It
had become a barrier to the future.

Magnus had been in just as much pain as I was,
for different reasons. There were things I could never tell him, of course, but
he’d suffered too. Maybe we needed to talk about the past. Maybe we needed to
dig deep.

Where to start though? What was bothering me
the most?

It fell on me so suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
I’d had my humanity stripped away. I was still me, in my head, during the time
I’d spent in Pentorus, but I no longer had a say in my own life.

I ate only if someone cared enough to feed me. I
bathed only when Garai couldn’t stand the smell. Clothing was given or taken
away, a reward or a punishment.

 I was living in a body that didn’t belong to
me anymore. At that moment, the idea that one could be pulled from their life
for another’s amusement seemed so absurd, it nearly brought my heart to a stop.
And then it bubbled up from within, a trickle at first, ending in a flood.

To his credit, Magnus said nothing during my
outburst. In truth, there was nothing he could have said. I needed to
acknowledge my feelings.

I’d been nothing for eight years. Helpless. I’d
learned to survive under impossible circumstances. 

I was Kymber again. I mattered to someone. That
someone wondered if I was happy.

Gods, this was going to take some getting used
to.

I
t took her a while to settle. “Are you going to
be all right?” I asked, my arm firmly around her shoulders.

She took a deep breath after a long moment of
silence. “I think I know what’s wrong with me.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t have to wonder where my next meal is
coming from. I don’t have to be afraid that someone will pounce on me when I’m
half-asleep. I have clothing. I sleep in a warm bed at night, and not with one
eye open either. Real, restful sleep. I feel good in the morning. My feelings
and thoughts matter to you. Or at least they seem to.”

“They do. And that sounds like stability to me.”
I snuggled her against me. “Exactly what I’d hoped to give you.”

“Yes, but it feels like . . . like my feet are
shifting under me. I can’t seem to find balance. I’ve lived with rage and
hunger for so long, I don’t know how to make all this right in my head. I’m always
a hair’s breadth away from rage, fearing you and Jarl and living at Seacrest
will be a dream. That I’ll wake up and be back in my cage or the cave.” She shook
her head against my chest. “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t deserve this. Maybe I
don’t deserve
you
.”

Jarl had warned me about this. She was opening
up, and as much as it unnerved me, I had to allow it to happen. In fact, Jarl
had said I must
help
it happen.

“It’s the same for me,” I whispered in her ear.
“Do you know how many times I’ve stood outside your door at night, wanting to
throw it open just to look at you? I’m terrified you won’t be there. I can’t
lose you again, Kymber. I won’t survive a second time. I’ve been hollow since
the day Tariq told me you were dead. We’re both . . . we have so much to work
through. I love you. I don’t care if you can’t return that love, but you belong
here with me.” I peered down at her. “Do you understand that?”

“I do.” She turned her gaze up to me. “Give me
time. Just give me time.”