Page 8 of Kissed By the Gods
“Fight with what, Seb? We have no army, no training, no resources. We don’t even have enough food to get us through tomorrow!”
He’s pacing back and forth now, animated. “We find the rebels,” he says.
I stare at him, feeling the weight of the shears in my lap, the absurdity of it all pressing against my ribs. “The rebels?” I repeat, because surely I must have heard wrong. “Seb, we said no before. You remember why.”
He stops pacing long enough to fix me with a look, sharp and aching all at once. “That was before.”
“Before,” I echo, hollow. “Before we had a death sentence hanging over us. Before—” My throat closes up, the words dying there.
Seb doesn’t push. He squats down, elbows braced on his knees, his voice softening. “Before we didn’t have anything else to lose, anywhere else to go.”
My mind rushes back to when Zyrenna Kastrel, the rebel commander, found us before the harvest, when the days were still long and golden. She’d come, on her own, to talk to us. Me, really, about the rebellion she was building out of what was left—widows and orphaned daughters, because the boys are all taken. Mother had twisted her hands in her apron and started to cry, and that had been the end of it.
Zyrenna had left us with a knowing look but hadn’t argued.
“Why would she take us now?” I ask. “After we already turned her down?”
His lips press together, and a fierceness comes over his expression that I’ve not seen before. “I think she’s used to it,” he says. “Her entire rebellion is built on the backs of women who’ve lost it all—husbands, fathers, sons, brothers.”
I look toward Leo, curled small and defenseless against a world that doesn’t care if he survives it.
“We’ll find Zyrenna. We’ll find the rebels, and then we’ll fight,” Seb says, with such conviction that I could cry.
And finally—after years of holding it in, holding it together—I do.
I bury my face in Seb’s worn shirt, right over his heart. He folds his arms around me, shuddering, and I let the tears fall. I clutch him tight, and our grief spills free—silent and unstoppable. I don’t know how long we stay like that, shedding sorrow that encompasses far more than the deaths of our parents.
As kids, we’d swim out to a boulder in the middle of the river behind our cottage, and it was big enough for all five of us to climb and play and lay in the sun. Levvi, Seb, Alden, and Irielle would climb to the top and jump back in over and over, trying to make bigger splashes or jump further out. But I preferred to sit at the bottom of that rock and watch the river move over its little cracks and crevices.
When it hadn’t rained in a while and the river was low, the drip, drip, drip of the tiny trickle over the bottom of the boulder would chip off bits and pieces of sediment and wash them into the river. And of course, after a big storm, I’d swim back to the boulder to find a whole new set of cracks and crevices for the water to wear down.
That’s been our life.
The drip, drip, drip of never having enough food or enough fuel—always being at least a little hungry or a little cold. Of not being allowed to leave your farm, marry without the overlord’spermission, ride a horse, wield a weapon, or read a book. And then come the storms to rip out chunks of yourself, of your family, until you don’t have an older brother anymore; until your mother is a bitter shrew; until your dreams of marrying for love die underneath a mountain.
When we pull apart, I’ve left tear stains on the linen of Seb’s shirt, and his face is red and blotchy from crying. His hand trembles when he brings it up to wipe the wetness away, but the tracks from his tears remain. I imagine my face looks much the same.
I squeeze his hand with mine. His eyes are awash with grief and something else, something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Seb’s wry grin turns into a smile, and a sudden lightness washes over his eyes, his face. “At least we’re together.”
“Yes,” I murmur. He’s alive, Leo is alive, and we’re together. Everything else we’ll have to handle in its own time.
We stay like that so long I doze. How I’m still tired when I just woke up from a two-day nap, I have no idea. But now that my mind is somewhat quiet, I practice opening the part of myself that hears, sees, feels, smells, and tastes everything more sharply. When I open to it on purpose, instead of gradually getting overwhelmed by sensations, I’ve found it hurts a little bit less. There’s even some wonder in it.
A river in the distance gently gurgles over smooth rocks. We must be following the River Eleris. A frog croaks and then jumps into the water. Leaves whistle in the wind, some of them breaking free from their branches and drifting to the ground, landing with a soft scrape. It’s dusk, and an owl is awake somewhere in the distance, starting to hoot. The crickets are waking up, playing each other a melody. Leo is softly snoring over in the wagon. Even with my eyes closed, I know the light is fading. A hint of the sun’s warmth still kisses my cheeks as the coolness of darkness seeps into my pores.
It’s so peaceful, until … there.
I smell another human—salt and cinnamon with an overlaying musk of fine leather.
I flare my eyes open wide, but otherwise I don’t move. Not yet. Unhurried, I withdraw my hand from Seb’s and casually raise my head to look around me. I don’t think Seb realizes I’m on alert. He releases his grip, steepling his hands together in his lap. His eyes are open, idly taking in the pretty pinks, blues, and purples of the sunset. I don’t alert him. I don’t want his reaction to give us away.
There’s a wisp of a creaking noise and then a whoosh.
My hand snaps out and snatches an arrow out of the air. A piece of Seb’s linen tunic snagged on the point, but I don’t see any blood despite the neat little hole in Seb’s shirt just over his heart.
I rise to my feet, the arrow in my right hand and my scythe in my left. I take a few steps forward to position myself in front of Leo. Seb runs toward the wagon behind me and grabs a sword.
