She was not sure which direction they rode in, did not ask, she just clung to the thick leather tunic of Daegar's back and kept her head down and her eyes closed and willed the distance between them and Prissia to grow. Beneath the horse, she'd felt the land tilt and turn, rise and flatten, before the sound of it changed from loud roughened stone to soft pillowed grass before finally the motion eased and slowed. Stopping. 

She must have dosed and some point because when she lifted her head and blinked open her eyes the sun was beginning to rise, pale and iced over from the cool air of the night. She had not felt the chill as they rode; the mare beneath her had been warm, as had Daegar, but now he slipped from the saddle and led the horse to a small bubbling rook just ahead and the early dawn frost nipped at her throat.

Dura rubbed the gritty sleep from her eyes and looked around. It was a thick forest, trees taller than any on Zybar, large fronds that hugged around their trunks and tried to reach up, the forest floor a soft velvety green.

While the horse drank, Daegar reached into the saddle bag and pulled out a canteen, twisting the cap off first before holding it out to her. He eyed her steadily, gaze gentle. She took it from him and sipped, the water was tepid but satisfying upon her dry throat. When she handed it back Daegar drank and then upturned it and moved to refill it in the stream. Dura slid from the saddle, groaning with relief as the feeling returned to her thighs and buttocks, hips and back aching from the countless hours in the same position. How many hours had it been since they'd left the sharp glass walls of Prissia behind? Daegar was beside her again, offering her some of the cool water he'd deposited in the canteen. She shook her head. He shoved it back into the saddle and pulled out the wrap of sweet bread and peeled open the fabric, tearing her a piece from the crisped corner. She shook her head again. Daegar glowered.

"You must eat," he said.

"I am not hungry."

"It matters not." His eyes were gentle, concern evident in them. Just as there had been when she'd found him last night. "You must eat."

She stared up at him. Exhaustion weighed over his eyes, the set of his full mouth, the wide brim of his shoulders. But he was concerned only with whether she ate. Drank.

"You should have said no," she said. Fear sliced through her, not for herself for she knew that Valdr could not hurt her, not really. What would he do? Kill her? No. Not a princess of Zybar, his taken wife. Zybar's honour would not suffer such an insult — and he could not afford to fight a war on three fronts, no king could. But Daegar was not important to Valdr. Her strong, silent, protective guard would be sent to the gods for what he had done. "Why didn't you refuse me?"

"I am your Khohn," he replied. 

"As you were the night on the beach. Yet how easily you refused me then."

Pain lanced across his golden eyes, guilt too. He held out the bread to her again. This time she took it, their fingers grazing as she did. As he went to pull away she gripped his sleeve, longer than he had worn in Zybar. There the dark markings that trailed like art over his skin were worn proudly. Here they peeked out of the high collar he wore and over the backs of his hands like a filthy secret.

She was not sure why she mentioned it, for she hated thinking of it. That night she'd begged for him like a whore. Except now she felt frayed thin and pulled tight and there was little keeping everything inside her from bursting out. Daegar kept his eyes lowered and said nothing. 

"Return," she said. "Tell them you found my chamber empty when you arrived last night, tell them you rode off to look but found no trace of me." It was a stupid idea. One Valdr would never believe. Likely he would have Daegar's head for misplacing her. Even though Daegar did not answer to Valdr, did not protect her on Valdr's order. His was a Zybar oath, written in blood: Dura's and his.

"I am your Khohn," he said again, a little more impatient this time. "My place is by your side." He roughly tore a chunk of the bread for himself before wrapping it up and sliding it back into the bag. He kept busy after that. Removing the saddle and laying it over the large rock near the shore. He groomed the mare and fed it something bright and crunchy before urging it to water once again. She wondered whether her disappearance had yet been discovered. Had Fara come to the passageway only to find her gone? Had she been the one to raise the alarm? Had this been her plan all along? To force Dura from Prissia? Then why ask her to flee with her? Why tell her she cared? Why befriend and draw her close like a confidant, a sister. Her heart wrenched painfully. Gods she was a pathetic fool. Blind too. For it had been right there all along. 

She closed her eyes as the assault of last night replayed across her mind. Lovers. The siblings of Calate were lovers. Valdr took his sister as one takes a wife. Except, no, he had not taken Dura like that had he? Fara had said she'd never wanted her to see it but had shown her anyway. Why? To cause this very outcome? To force Dura to flee from Prissia and the truths it held inside its glass confines. Nothing made sense. Her head hurt from thinking. Her stomach roiled from unease.

She was tired and sore and gods she missed...what did she miss? Home? No, for she had not been happy there either. Not since she was old enough to know things. Had she ever been happy? Safe? Content? There had always been some trouble in her mind, for as long as she could remember. She had thought that marrying Galyn would have made her happy once, but that was a child's notion. She tried to think of the last time she had been happy but could not. She had begun to feel like she could be happy at Prissia, could make a home there. What would make her happy now? It was inexplicably linked to what they did now she understood. Something she had not considered when she'd begged Daegar to flee with her. Did they even have coin? Could they take a boat back to Zybar, unrecognised? Unlikely. She hoped Daegar had thought of something while she lay pressed against his back with her eyes closed and her mind in chaos. She wondered when he had last been happy.

"If you were not my Khohn, where would you go?" She asked him. He stopped fussing with the horse and turned to look at her, looking as though he didn't understand her question. So she asked it again. "if your family were not bound to mine in blood, what would you have done with your life instead? A clan leader? A soldier? Horsemaster?" She gestured at the horse. Daegar's expression was blank and she understood then that he had never given it a thought. As though the fancies of imagination were nought but a waste of time.

"It matters not. For I am bound to your family in blood, and this is my duty."

It irritated her that he'd keep this from her and she could not explain why. Her voice was harsh when she spoke. "I command that you tell me. And did you must obey and protect me from all harm - is that not the oath you swore?"

"Not if that command should cause you harm, your grace."

"And how would you telling me what life you would have preferred for yourself over this one cause me harm, for Zybar's sake?!" she huffed.

He gave her a long weighted look. "That was not the command I spoke of, your grace."

Heat hit her cheeks and Daegar turned his head, smoothing the head of the beast gently. Large hand tender and slow. She remembered the night with sharp vividly then. An awful, twist of humiliation scraped at her insides. It had been the night her father had told her of her marriage to Valdr. She had finished almost a jug of Azurian wine and she had called Daegar inside where she had attempted some mortifying play of seduction. Inviting him to sit with her and converse with her about what they missed about their home. The scent, she'd said. The ale, he'd said, and then she had pretended to stumble into his lap as she reached for the wine. She had pressed her lips to his - dry and hot with the scratch of hair and the scent of sea air - and for a moment, a single moment, he had returned her kiss. Hot tongue tasting the seam. Before he'd pulled away, horrified and stridden for the exit. Then she had begged for it. As no princess or noblewoman or any woman of worth ever should.

"Please, do not go. Stay. I desire so much to know the touch of a man who has not been purchased for me.

"Lady Dura..."

On she went. Mouth a stream of need. "I should like to choose this one thing for myself. Just this once. No one shall ever know. I shall never speak of it to another soul, please."

He stared at her openly, dark eyes burning with something she did not have a name for. She could see the war in him. The battle raging under his skin. Then he shook his head.

"No. I will not."

"Then you too think me as ugly as they? That you cannot even force yourself to touch me though I command it of you."

She saw him tremble, violently. His fists bunching at his sides. "Your honour is mine to protect, princess. Only to protect."

"My honour!" She spat. "My honour is nought but a token for my father and a joke to those men out there. I have heard them. Their laughs and their chitters. I am nothing compared to the beauty of the princess of Calate and that is why he chose her. That is why they have to fight now. Because of what the gods did not deem to bless me with." Hot, bitter tears swam in her eyes and she loathed herself for it. Humiliation. "I cannot even command a man sworn to obey me to lie with me and yet I am expected to satisfy a king." She'd laughed, wiping at her flushed cheeks and turned her back to him. "What is such honour even worth?"

"It is worth everything," he growled. When she turned to him again he had such a look of pain on his face she was certain he had been injured in the moments she had looked away. "You are worth everything," He shifted slightly from one leg to the other and then he was kneeling. Kneeling before her like she was more than his charge. Like she was his queen. He kept his head down when he spoke. "I shall bear your fury today in the hope that it earns me your forgiveness tomorrow."

News had been brought to her father the next day that four soldiers were found dead in their tent as they slept. A fight had broken out, it was reported. Over spoils. They'd fought and died over some stolen coin. She'd lamented the waste of life until she stood next to those bloated grey bodies as her father had blessed their souls and set alight their pyres. For she recognised them. She'd heard each of them curse her name as she and Daegar had passed one day. They'd been emboldened that she walked alone on the beach with just her Khohn. Brazenly unafraid of her. She was hardly going to run tales of their insults back to her father, who had openly done the same during many of his drunken sermons to his war council.

She'd gazed at Daegar over the burning pyre, urging him to look at her. To confirm the suspicions running rampant inside her. But he kept his eyes down, fixed on the quiet hiss of burning flesh.

She watched him now. Surprisingly tender hands as they smoothed over the mare's muzzle and flank, whispering words too softly for her to hear.

"You have not asked me why," she said. The stream was loud and her voice always quiet and so she thought he had not heard. He patted the horse's nuzzle once more and then came towards her. "Why I commanded you to take me away from there." As though he did not know to what she referred.

"It is not my concern," he said, lowering his large body down onto the grass across from her. One leg he kept pulled up, bent at the knee. The other he stretched out. Leather stretched over his strong thigh. 

"It shall be your concern if Valdr hangs you for it." She did not know why his calmness pulled at her own so. It should settle her, surely. "Wouldn't you want to know why you are about to be hanged?"

Without moving his head, he levelled his gaze at her. "Did he harm you?" His stare was penetrating and his voice low. It caused something to flicker against the base of her spine.

"If he had? Would you take your blade to him as you did to those chittering soldiers in Azura? I am certain you could not make a king's death look like a drunken brawl gone awry."

It was the first she had ever alluded to it aloud. That she knew what he had done, for her. His reaction was only the smallest movement of the side of his mouth. "Oh, you would be surprised at the things I can do, your grace."

Her breath caught.

"He did not harm me," she said after a moment. Daegar did not react, searching her face as though he thought she might be lying. "But I could not remain there." She bit her tongue as she looked at him. It felt sinful even to speak it out loud. But gods, it was tormenting her to keep it inside. Sickening her. Poisoning her. Like a bleed. Daegar was sworn to protect her. Give his life for hers. It was foolish to think anything she told him could change that. Hadn't she already done the worst thing thinkable? Begging him to take her body? Have him refuse it. He remained by her side. His oath ensured it.

She did not think this could be worse than that. There were not many things worse than that she thought. "They are lovers," she said quickly.

Daegar frowned, not understanding.

"The king and the princess," she clarified. Daegar's reaction was the same as before. A small movement of his mouth, except this time it was accompanied by a flicker of something in his eyes. It was not surprise.

"You do not look shocked," she pointed out.

"I am never shocked where the behaviour of nobles is concerned. Royalty even less so. So no, I am not." He gave her a long look, appearing to consider something. "There were rumours of such a thing."

Her ears pricked, breath catching in her too dry throat. "Rumours? Of Fara and Valdr? Where?"

He kept his head down and his voice quiet. He looked uncomfortable, as though the very notion of gossip was distasteful to him. "In the soldier's quarters, between some of the king's lords."

"You are saying Valdr's lords know about this?"

He shook his head. "No one knows for certain, except perhaps the viper who lives by his side, but there are many who believe it to be true."

She was the last to know then. Of course, she was. A simpleton in every realm. "And what of me? What do they say about me?" An awful notion occurred to her then, stealing her breath. "They do not think that I...that we...that the three of us lay together?"

"No." Daegar shook his head, firmly. Then a sad look came over his eyes. "There is mainly pity for you. Among those who do not loathe our kind at least."

Pity. of course there was pity. There had rarely been anything else for her. Even Fara had looked at her with the same soft-eyed inclination. As though she were a child who knew nothing — which of course she hadn't.

Daegar was studying her closely, looking uncertain. "There are other rumours. Quiet whisperings. Muttered suspicions." He looked as though he did not want to share it, as though she had not already seen the worst thing possible.

"You know much for a Zybarian soldier forced to serve in a realm that loathes you. I cannot fathom many of Valdr's lords would entrust their secret opinions to you, either the enemy or the uneasy ally."

"These mutterings are from the grooms and footmen, the maidservants and chamber mistress those in the royal household. It is spoken quietly and only in the dark."

She looked at him with a raised brow. "Then how did you come to hear of it?"

He held her eye a moment, and then lowered his gaze again back down to his sword. "I am male, your grace. I shall leave it to you to think of a reason I may spend time in the dark with a chamber mistress or maidservant."

The stab of jealousy that burned through her was shocking and hot. It felt like a boil being lanced.

"And tell me, how are you to ensure I am safe and well if you are too occupied with some kitchen whore?" She spat, rage and jealousy hot on her tongue. She hated that word. Hated feeling so cornered that she would even use think to use it. Her father had used it, too oft to mention, not towards her but towards Fara, and she'd hated it then too. For if it represented the loose morals of women then there should be a similar word to describe the morality of men, too. But there was not. Not in Zybarian at least. Now, she imagined him growling and heaving as he thrust his body into some faceless female. But all at once, she did have a face, and it was the face of the pretty dark-skinned Elyse who swept her chamber and she felt her fists curl.

It surprised her for she was not aware she desired Daegar in such a way. The night of her humiliation she had put her attempts down to wine and fear and hopelessness. Perhaps she just longed for a male such as him to look at her and hold her and take her as a male takes a woman he desires. She knew now Valdr never would. Never had.

Some look made it into Daegar's dark eyes, something hot and angry, and then it was gone. "I will always keep you safe or I shall die in the attempt," he glowered, insulted. "That is my vow and I have never deviated from it."

She shifted under the glower on his face. Some moments later she realised she had not given him space to speak of this other rumour. "What do the maidservants and chamber mistresses say then?"

Daegar seemed to be weighing up the difference between his desire to speak and her desire to hear it. "They say he killed his father."

Dura could hear her pulse in her throat, her breath quick with it. The Calatian king's death was a slow thing, a weakening over many years. Poison? It happened. Many sons coveted their father's power, it was not so hard to believe that Valdr would too. "Why would he do that? The throne was to be his anyway? He need only have waited."

Daegar shrugged, still sharpening his blade against the stretch of worn leather as he spoke. "As the story is told, the old king discovered his children abed together and was not pleased. When the servants were questioned, they told the king that it was so and that it had been so for some time. Valdr was whipped, badly, and sent north to join the royal legion there with his brother. The princess was betrothed to Lord Dacian. The king's sickness began shortly after."

"Perhaps it was the shock of discovering his children like that which sickened him," she suggested. "It sounds like the gossip of servants to me, nothing more."

He glanced up and nodded. "Except they also say the sickness was the same as the younger princess in nature. A slow wasting of the body from the inside. No cure could be found for either."

She swallowed. "A coincidence then. A fatal familial trait."

"They say the king's attachment to his sister is...unhealthy. That it has ever been so." He watched her carefully as the words sank in. But it was the last that gripped Dura by the throat and refused to let go. "Many pity her."

She was the most beautiful creature that ever lived. I loved her beyond all measure and reason. She recalled something else then, something else he'd spoken to her in the chilled night inside the tent, eyes a green violent fire.

My sister had a great power within her. One that allowed her to command the hearts of princes and men alike. She did not see it herself, but I saw it. I learned to tame it. And she hated me for it.

She hated me for it.

She hated him. 

Her vision swam, and her thoughts tumbled forward, free falling. Men surround us on all sides, Dura, and not all of them look with kindness and favour upon the hearts of women.

She had tried to tell her over and over again. Warnings weaved around words. Then when that had failed, she'd shown her. Fara had begged her to leave Calate and come with her. To leave Valdr.

It has never been my desire for you to learn the truth this way. But now I see it is the only way...It is not safe for you here. Valdr cannot be the husband you want him to be.

She forced herself now to think of what she had seen through the chamber door. What she had really seen. Valdr's hand around her throat. The commands. The undercurrent of fear in Fara's voice as she'd stated her case. She recognised it now for what it was. How could she not? For she herself knew it well. It was not love or devotion.

It was survival.

You must trust what your heart tells you about those who offer a hand of friendship to you here if you mean to call it home. She'd once told her.

Gods, Prissia was a treacherous place, the cold sharp edges of blades hiding around every corner and behind every pretty splendour. But Fara had been there, beside her, guiding her. Fara had not needed to make a friend of her, did not need to spend days walking with her along the walls of the palace talking of nothing and everything. Valdr had her father's army, there was no need to draw her close. It was merely that...friendship. Something Dura had never had before. She sat up straight and then rose to her feet.

"We have to go back," she said. Daegar blinked, looking at her as though she had spoken another language. "I think...I think the princess is in danger." If Dura was wrong then she would be a bigger fool than she was now. She'd pay the price, Daegar would too. But if Fara was who she believed she was — hoped she was, then Dura would do all in her meagre power to help her.

"You wish to return? To Prissia?" Daegar pulled himself to his feet. "To protect the princess?" She could see the abject confusion in his eyes but she had no time to explain it now. On the way. She could explain it as they rode.

She nodded. "Mhm." She strode toward the trunk where Daegar had laid out the weighty saddle and began to lift it. Daegar was at her side in an instant. He could only stare at her as though she were some creature he had never encountered. When they were in the saddle he asked:

"Have you a notion of what we might tell them?"

"Perhaps you could leave me on the outskirts of town. I am sure you could find passage back through the Bay of Uzroth."

"Have you a notion of how the oath of a Khohn works?" He said, voice almost light.

"I could command it of you."

"And it would be another command I would refuse, your grace."

They rode in silence for a time, her clutching at him as the mare charged back through the path they had made in the night.

"Dura," she said. "I would have you call me Dura again."

She felt him tense beneath her fingers, then relax. "Very well, lady Dura."

She smiled as the wind pushed her hood back from her face. She felt strong. Stronger than she ever had. Decisive and strong. Fear still licked at her insides but she fought against it. She was important to Valdr, he could not harm her. And she would not allow him to hurt the protector by her side. Neither would she let him hurt Fara.

They had been riding in silence for a time when they slowed to cross a narrow river, the mare traipsing carefully over the pebbled banks.

"My family were Uketi," said Daegar. "I should have liked to hunt Mankla until my arms could no longer pull the bowstring and my back could no longer hold me atop the horse." Uketi were the famed hunting horsemen who could ride with their feet atop the saddle as they brought down a herd of the raging Mankla. She'd seen demonstrations of their skill at many feasts and festivals and they always drew the biggest cheers from the noisy crowd. She said nothing for a long time as her imagination conjured the sight of Daegar atop a racing steed as he shot arrows with fatal precision into the heart of one of Zybar's most deadly of wild beasts.