Page 55 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

But he knew his mate was only being careful, trying to show support and get some use of the many pairs of gloves he’d knitted after he’d learned how from Zora Star-Finder. Even Speedy had little booties for his paws that he’d allowed Victor to put on him once and only once, since Sava and Victor both had laughed until they cried at the sight of the snowcat sliding about and making a sound of pure feline displeasure, ears flat to his head in embarrassment.

“What about another scarf?” Victor said, emerging from the wooden trunk where he kept the winter things he’d knitted. His curls were long and hanging over his glasses, and he blew them away distractedly. “I’m being silly, aren’t I?”

“No, you are being a good mate. Caring.” Sava went over and held his hand out, helping Victor to his feet. “Dragan said when he took the trials, his mother made him enough jerky to feed all of Lukos.”

“It’s not that I don’t think you’ll be fine,” Victor said, pushing his glasses up his nose. They needed to be tightened again. “I know you will be.”

“You are taking care of me. I understand, little owl.” Sava tipped his face up and kissed him.

Victor kissed him back, then followed him around the house as Sava finished putting the supplies he was allowed to bring in his bag—a skein of water, jerky from a deer, and a little dried fruit. And a note from Victor, of course, which included a drawing of their home, Victor, and Speedy waving on the front porch.

“And remember, I want my mate back safe and sound. I don’t care if you end up the kuvar.”

Sava laughed softly. “I know that you don’t, but I will pass the trials, if only to prove my worth to you, my clever mate.”

Victor put his face in his hands and groaned. “It’s been six years and I still can’t handle it when you say that.”

Sava shook his head, but his smile was slightly wicked. “I know, and yet it is true. My mate, a scholar so renowned that people come here from far away just to ask questions and have your name signed in their copy of your book? Your mate must be a man of worth, to earn having you go to your knees. I will do that.”

“Sava, you’ve been doing that since the day you met me at the Kuvar’s fire, in wet boots with my whole world upended.” Victor shook his head. “I’m still a little sad that we’ll have to leave this house. I really love it.”

Sava did, too. He’d built it himself, and leaving it would be hard. “It is only wood, little owl. The important things will come with us.”

Speedy trotted over, rubbing his face against first Victor, then Sava, as if reminding them both, that’s me, I’m the important thing.

Sava gave the cat a scratch behind his ears, kissed his mate, and went to finish assembling his supplies. Victor pretended he wasn’t fretting, and Speedy went back to his spot in front of the fire, on a pillow full of down. Of all the things he would miss living in the Kuvar’s home, the comfortable, sunken pit of furs before the fire was at the top of the list. Perhaps he would have to construct a new one. Future kuvars would thank him for it.

Dragan had approached him almost four years ago now, about becoming kuvar after him, but Sava had always figured it would be years before he was required to take the trials. Dragan was as hale and hearty as he’d always been, but perhaps settling down with a mate and having grandchildren to visit across the sea was enough to hasten his decision to step down.

“In the days of my grandfather and his grandmother before him, kuvars both, it was a fight to the death that determined who would rule,” Dragan had said, when he’d first brought this idea to Sava. “You should be glad, eh, it’s only a trek now from the sea to the springs in the early winter snow.”

Sava had squinted at him. “I think that is not true about a fight, Wolf-Breaker.”

Dragan’s expression looked as fierce as ever, but there was a glint in his wolf-blue eyes that made Sava certain he was teasing. “No? You say that because you’re afraid to meet your kuvar in combat, sapling?”

“Sapling?” Sava huffed. “I have met you in combat before, Wolf-Breaker. We have wrestled a time or two in the summer.”

“That one time in mud, yes. Your Victor and my Zev liked that, eh?” He elbowed Sava, and then laughed, the sound eerily like the wolf for which he was named.

Sava had to smile, then. “Yes. They did.”

If the kuvars of old had fought to death over the honor of ruling the Lukoi, only they knew it. Victor had found some drawings in a cave near Micah Fire-Keeper’s old home, which had made him the most revered figure in all of Lukos that spring. They’d shown a figure walking alone in the snow, sleeping in a crude drawing of a tent, and hiking with two wolves guiding him to the sacred springs…where a figure waited with the old witch’s crown, holding it out in offering. Over the walking figure were a circle with rays and a crescent—the sun and the moon—repeated three times. On this journey, Sava would spend three days and three nights in the snow, making his way from the shores to the hot springs to replicate the same trip their ancestors took.

They knew more about Lukos now, thanks to Victor’s books and clever mind, and Dragan’s daughter, Elena, who had found the empire from where the Lukoi had come in Arktos. Two years ago, a man had arrived on Lukos, clad in black with long, white hair and a grim-faced man at his side who called himself Nyx. They had come to Victor and Sava’s cabin, though no one had seen them arrive, or spotted a ship on the horizon. They’d spoken the language of Lukos perfectly, though Nyx had a strange accent, a way of saying certain words that Sava had never heard before.

The other man, the one with the white hair, all in black, had smiled at Victor and said warmly, “Aleks said perhaps you would show us the cave. Nyx would like to see it.”

And so they had, and Sava and Victor had exchanged strange glances as they’d spoken in soft voices to each other in the caves, looking at the sacred drawings. They’d been reproduced in Victor’s books, and they weren’t the first visitors to ask to see them, but Nyx went to his knees before them and wept, one hand pressed to the wall, head bowed as if he were praying. It’s her, he’d murmured, to the man who stood quiet behind him. Azaiah, it’s her. Nadia.

Sava and Victor had quietly ducked out of the cave, waiting for them to return, but they’d never emerged. When Sava and Victor had eventually gone back to see what was happening, the cave was empty, and they’d never seen the men again.

Sava thought about this on his first night, after he’d bid his mate and their snow kitten farewell and headed to the shore. It was snowing, but it wasn’t yet full winter, only just the soft edges of it. The point of this, as Dragan had told him, was not to conquer Lukos, but to let it be his guide, as it had been for the first of the exiled.

That night, he slept in a shelter he’d spent the first day constructing out of driftwood and pine, sleeping easy on a bed of pine needles and wrapped up in the fur-lined coat. It was windy enough this close to the ocean that he decided to forgo the fire and instead ate his jerky and drank water, then lay back and thought about what it would mean to be kuvar. Most of what Dragan did was mitigate small disputes and delegate tasks, distribute resources and preside over festivals and mating bonds. But of course, there was the time he’d had to go after his mate, who’d been taken by a man from the compound who did not want to let him go.

Sava did not think he would have a problem with any of this. He was honored to be given a chance to pass the trials, but he did miss Victor, and it was strange to sleep without him. Sava burrowed into his coat, thinking how proud Victor would be when he came to the springs on the morning of the fourth day.

It would be worth it.

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