Page 90 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom
I lifted both my eyebrows. “You think I have good intentions?”
“You have a heart of gold, Meera,” Damon said with a smirk. “Bounty hunter/thief extraordinaire, you are, but anyone that spends time with you can figure out what kind of person resides beneath that. The fact you are a badass in your own right hasn’t escaped me, but bloodthirsty fighter, not so much.”
“Gods, you sound so much like my brothers.”
“Well, you’re my uncle’s mate. We’re practically family.”
I snorted. “Just don’t start calling me aunt.”
A wry smile tugged at his mouth as he leaned back against a tree. “Wouldn’t dream of it. All that aside, you need to take it easier. Your body isn’t getting a chance to recover while we’re out here, so we need to build in recovery time, and you need to not fight me on it,” he added when I opened my mouth to argue.
Red stained my chest and cheeks. “I don’t want to be the one slowing us down.”
“And I don’t want you to be so exhausted you collapse under a strong breeze. You’ve been pushing yourself to the max since we’ve been separated and if you’re right about the flowers changing direction, there’s no telling how long it’s going to actually take us to reach the Fold.”
“I might have imagined it,” I said. Damon didn’t comment, and he didn’t need to. We both knew I didn’t believe what I’d said. It was real, and we knew what it meant. “Like calls to like,” I repeated. “What does that even mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Damon answered. “I’ve been wondering that myself, but everything I’ve come up with is speculation at best.”
“I don’t understand how the Nameless saying that means anything about me. And they don’t normally speak, right?” He nodded in response. “Vareck said they’re soulless creatures that hunt in packs. I’m not sure what I could possibly have in common with them.”
“Vareck is incredibly biased,” Damon replied. “He blames them for his father becoming the mad king, and because of that, he doesn’twantto see anything other than faceless monsters.”
I pulled my legs up to sit crisscross on the stone. “Why does he blame them?”
“Because they’re the ones that attacked his parents and the reason his mother’s fury accidentally cursed his father.” My lips parted, but I didn’t speak. “He doesn’t know I know that, by the way. So when we see them again, I would appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”
I nodded. “Of course. I—I appreciate you telling me, but I also don’t know if you should have.”
Damon tilted his head. “I don’t see the point in keeping secrets. Besides, you’ll be queen soon enough.”
“You don’t know that.”
He snorted. “We’ll pretend I dignified that with a response.”
“Damon!”
“Meera,” he said, making me laugh. “You two have your issues you need to work out, there’s no doubt about it. I also don’t doubt that you will. Vareck, for all his faults, is a stubborn bastard. He wouldn’t give up on you so easily.”
I smiled softly. “I hope you’re right.”
“I am,” he replied in complete confidence. He stretched his legs out, shifting into a more comfortable position against the tree.
“You make it sound like the Nameless are more than what Vareck made them out to be.”
Damon sighed, not for the first time in our conversation. “No one knows what the Nameless really are. There are theories, though.”
I waited, the knot in my stomach tightening.
“Lots of people buy into the soulless monster concept, but there’s one in particular that doesn’t. I’ve always found it interesting. There was a woman scholar that went missing about twenty years ago. Her name was Jakarta Delarothe. In her recovered journal, she wrote that the Nameless aren’t just monsters,” Damon said. “They’re trapped. Bound to this realm. And they’re searching for something—or someone—to get them out.”
My mouth went dry. “Searching how?”
“No one really knows. One theory is that they can sense magic. Others think they follow blood. Or instinct, like animals that know when a storm’s coming. But Delarothe believed theNameless are looking for a way back to what they lost. Or maybe a way forward.”
I frowned. “Forward to what?”
“That’s the part no one can answer yet. Maybe it’s redemption. Maybe it’s revenge.”
