Sigvard.
His auburn-haired brother was trying to outgrow him. He wasn’t as tall as Magnus, but he’d be taller than most of the Dokiri when he was finally done.
“Brother,” Sigvard said.
Magnus’s brow wrinkled with exaggerated confusion as he looked Sigvard up and down. “I know why I’m carrying furs and leather, brother. What possessed you to do the same?” Magnus shifted his pack to the opposite shoulder. The Ebronian climate made wearing such things nearly unbearable. Magnus had traded his coat and chaps for the wool of his under-tunic. Sigvard, it seemed, had done the same. Magnus could see the fur from his chaps peeking out from under the flap of his own leather pack. “Planning a trip home?”
Sigvard shifted in his Dokiri garb. He rolled his shoulders back, then started in the direction Magnus had been walking.
Magnus moved with him. “Well?”
Sigvard stared at his feet as he walked. He bit his lower lip hard as though he were warring with something.
Glanshi. Whatever his younger brother was working up to, it was probably going to be good. Curiosity buzzed within Magnus.
“You’re going to claim that Ebronian woman. The fighter?”
Magnus smirked. “If she’ll have me.” Words he’d spoken to Lydia just moments before.
Sigvard stepped over a dried palm branch on the dusty street. “And what about you? Do you want to have her?”
Magnus snorted. Since coming to Ebron, he’d gotten an education in women. One his life in Bedmeg could never have provided. He’d taken away a few key lessons in that time. Firstly, women were not so difficult to win over as he’d formerly assumed. Secondly, the prior revelation had been a bigger letdown than he could ever have imagined.
The tanshi rite was all about a Na Dokiri winning his right to a legacy. He did that by conquering the woman. Not her flesh, but her heart. Though, according to the older Na Dokiri, the two often went hand-in-hand. Magnus hoped not. If so, he was currently the unwitting owner of many young Ebronian women’s hearts.
“Do you think I have a choice? She holds the Eye. We need it, so someone has to claim her.” Magnus picked up a bit of speed, thoughts of the Ebronian hellcat propelling him forward.
“I could claim her,” Sigvard said.
Magnus halted in his tracks.
Sigvard stopped just ahead of him and turned back. His expression was too determined to be sheepish, even as Magnus narrowed his eyes at the runt.
“You want to run that by me again?”
Sigvard extended his arm toward his older brother. “I know, I’m younger. I don’t mean any disrespect by it.” His shoulders relaxed. “That’s not what this is about.”
A twinge of something hot and unfamiliar burned in Magnus’s gut. His expression flattened. “What is it about?”
Possessiveness. That was what he was feeling. It seemed early for such things.
“It’s just that . . . ” Sigvard trailed off, finally looking uncomfortable.
Did his brother desire Nadine? If so, that was too bad for Sigvard. Magnus hid his growing temper with a bark of laughter. “She’d eat you alive, little brother.”
Sigvard grunted. “I don’t doubt it.”
Some of Magnus’s ire dissipated at the look of distress on his brother’s freckled face. He shrugged and shook his head. “What are you doing?”
Sigvard sighed and met his brother’s eyes. “Don’t claim her if you’re just doing it because someone has to. You deserve more than that.”
Magnus pursed his lips. “And you don’t?”
Magnus grew still at the confirming clench of Sigvard’s jaw. A sudden burst of empathy flushed out the last of Magnus’s anger, along with all humor. He crossed the distance between him and Sigvard in a single stride.
Sigvard swallowed and straightened, his eyes revealing that he was already bracing for a lecture. Good thing Magnus wasn’t the lecturing type. Even so, this guilt his brother had been carrying for so long was beginning to bow his broadening shoulders. It had to stop.
Sigvard hadn’t been the same since the day his boyish impulses had gotten their sister-in-law kidnapped, and lost their brother his eye. Perhaps worse, Sigvard had had to say goodbye to his mount the day after he’d mastered her. And it all could have been prevented, if not for his own youthful foolishness.
Magnus slapped his hands down on either of Sigvard’s shoulders. His brother didn’t sway the way others would have. Sigvard’s muscles were thick, evidence of countless hours spent sparring until he’d dropped, too tired to think the thoughts that undoubtedly plagued him day and night. Magnus exhaled deeply. “Listen, brother, I appreciate the offer. But the hellcat and I are suited for each other, I think. I’ve just got to convince her somehow.”
Sigvard looked distinctly relieved not to have been called out for the martyrdom behind his actions.
“And—” Magnus began.
“Kreesha,” Sigvard muttered under his breath. He tried to pull out of Magnus’s grip, but the effort was wasted.
Magnus dropped his head to look Sigvard directly in the eye. “You can’t keep shouldering this guilt, little brother. It will stunt your growth.”
It had already ravaged his spirit. The bright and impetuous boy Sigvard had been was gone. The man who was left put all his energy into growing as deadly as he was bitter.
Sigvard wasn’t looking at him. His unfocused gaze tried for all the world to make Magnus abandon his efforts.
Someone has to say it.
“Life continues on with or without you,” Magnus said. “Maybe it’s time for you to move on with it.”
Sigvard blinked, then his gaze wandered backward to Lydia’s house. He glanced at Magnus with a single brow raised.
Magnus frowned before the words were even out of his little brother’s mouth.
“You’re one to talk, Magnus.”
Magnus straightened and dropped his hands from Sigvard’s shoulders. His younger brother huffed and strode away, back toward the Majeer where the other unbonded Na Dokiri were staying. Magnus watched him go, then sniffed.
His younger brother thought he was wise, as though calling out hypocrisy was some terribly clever feat. But Sigvard wasn’t accounting for the difference between them.
Hollen and Joselyn were safe together. Nauseatingly happy, even. The gods knew where Arvid was. The house Magnus had just left contained a weeping hamma and a fatherless child.
Sigvard thought he ought to live his life? That he should try to be happy?
Magnus swallowed. Why should he, when Arvid could not?
4
Ebronian Wills
“Let me come with you to negotiate with him.” Samar’s brown eyes blazed with intensity.
“No,” Nadine said for the third time.
She walked with her friend toward the outer edge of the city. The blistering crimson sand spread beyond the enormous golden arch that marked Lapour’s city limits. The Red Sea. Hot wind blew over the rolling dunes, pulling dust along the tops of the hills like red foam over cresting waves. On and on the wilderness stretched in all directions with nothing but the distant mountains to break up the sudden blue horizon. That was where her fate lay.