Page 79 of Mastering their Maiden

“How many men and women have you murdered?”

The last question came from Aria, who stood right in front of me, her shoulders rising and falling with each breath. I could feel her rage. It was palpable. But not one of us did anything to hold her back.

Elder Micah snarled a horde of curses and turned to face Aria. “You have no proof—”

“I saw the lot of you in the woods,” Aria snarled, stalking forward toward where Micah sat in the middle of the square. “You stood in front of Frayne’s house, talking to him about the attack you orchestrated on the village. I watched Hoval stab him. You murdered him.”

Micah’s expression remained hard, but I noticed the other remaining Elders’ faces going pale. Aria panted, and Micah opened his mouth to respond, but a strong yet soft voice from the side of the square spoke up.

“That wasn’t the first time you planned to murder someone, was it?”

Aria’s sister stood with her men, their baby curled against her chest, snuggled in a wrap. Esme held Lavan’s hand while she glared Micah down. Not for the first time, I noticed that when those two were angry, they looked so much alike.

“Our parents,” Esme said, her eyes darting to Aria when she flinched at the words. “Hoval orchestrated their murder during the last Skepna attack. They were in favor of working with the Kavari instead of against them.”

“They were planning on selling you to—”

“Like you did with Daya?” Esme said, and there was a collective murmur of agreement. “She was your daughter, and when she overheard you plotting with Hoval planning the attack, you sent her away. Though you probably saved her life in the end,” she continued. “What would have happened to her if she stayed, Micah? Would you have let Hoval or one of the others use her? Send her into the sept for them to play with?”

“Who are you to judge any decision I make when you’ve let yourself become a whore to—”

“You’ll watch your tongue if you want to keep it,” Quade growled. Micah quieted, though he looked mutinous when Esme laughed softly and let Quade slip his arm around her waist.

“You say that as though you haven’t tried to turn half the women in this village into your personal slaves. Like that wasn’t what Hoval would have done to me if Lavan hadn’t been here to stop him.”

A few of the women murmured their agreement, sneering about all the times the Elders tried to take them to their beds. Or force them into the sept.

“You act as though taking us to bed is vile!” Micah snarled, and he looked around the square at the surrounding Kavari soldiers. “You’d rather sully yourselves with these beasts than with men of your own kind!”

“The Kavari never murdered anyone,” Aria snapped. “They kept us safe from Skepna, and they kept us safe from you. The only reason Hoval didn’t drag me into that hellish sept was because of them!”

She pointed at Kaiden, then gestured to the rest of us while others in the group agreed.

“Kaze and Ellis stopped you from harassing me constantly,” Summer snapped at the Elder. “They made sure Lucan and I had enough food. And… and…”

Her voice cracked, and she looked over at her men. At Makan specifically. He reached down to squeeze her hand, bending to kiss her cheek and ruffle her son’s dark curly hair. “And if Makan hadn’t had the quick thinking to grab Lucan the day Hoval turned the king’s men on us, I don’t… I don’t know what would have happened.”

More murmurs of agreement, and I knew the other Elders had accepted their fate. They would lose this battle; they would lose control. And once this was done, they’d lose their place here in the village.

But Micah wasn’t quite ready to give up yet.

“You won’t last till the next full moon,” he snarled. “None of you know the first thing about leadership or governance! You’ll squander this whole area and it’ll be a wasteland within—”

“We managed supplies just fine behind your back,” Aria interrupted, looking around at her fellow villagers. “We’ll figure it out, and we’ll have help.”

She turned to look at me, and I squeezed her shoulder. Yes, we would help. We would do whatever we needed to help the villages thrive. What had started as conquest was now a mutual relationship, and for too long we’d let the Elders behavior go unchecked, trying to honor our original pact and not interfere with how they ran things.

No more. Now it was time to let the villagers who lived here decide how they would be ruled.

“We can form a council,” a villager suggested when Micah and the others accepted their fight was done. “A collective vote can be held on who will be in charge going forward.”

“Does anyone want to volunteer?” a woman asked, and as soon as the words were out, the gazes of everyone in the square—women, children, even the Elders and their wives—turned to Aria.

It made sense. She’d been the one to stand up for them for all this time. She was a leader to these people.

Our girl said nothing, and her silence made the air feel weighted even though we were outside. I glanced down to see her tensing up, her feet bouncing, and reached down to set my hand on her shoulder.

“I’m… not staying,” she said, and the rippling gasp that tore through the square made her flinch. A few villagers looked at each other, concern etched into their faces. Though a few spaces down from us, her friend Summer smiled.

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