Kavya shivered and tightened her thighs. That was the problem with being among people whose emotions were so unguarded. She was subject to all the good, bad, shameful, proud, petty, and erotic. Only now did she have the experience to truly understand the latter.

“Serre,” Honnas said, with a warning in his voice. “It’s not the Giva’s fault the Pendray were so divided that we didn’t send our own kind to the Chasm to hear the Dragon’s choice. We were nearly as divided as the Indranan. It’s amazing we didn’t shatter into a hundred little factions, and scatter to the four winds like the Garnis, lost forever.”

“Now it’s different.” Feena seemed the most eager of the bunch. She appeared older than her years, and the silver tips of her hair weren’t as brilliant, but she carried herself with the regal bearing of a queen and the artlessness of a child. She loved lilacs and chocolate chips straight from the bag. “The Pendray are stronger than ever. That priest . . .” She shuddered. “Dragon be, what he’d been doing to our people. Creating division. Stoking petty disagreements. Abusing those who sought to give him their trust—unspeakable things.”

Tallis frowned. “What did he want?”

“The best we can tell,” Feena continued, “is money. His home was full to the rafters with priceless artifacts from Pendray families. He created arguments, then helped smooth them over. Grateful people gave him gifts. Then he became more prominent. Pendray didn’t rely on themselves or even basic civility, but on his guidance. That’s when the real fractures began—those who believed he was some sort of prophet, and those who saw him as a charlatan.” She smiled with the whole of her face. “Tallis, you did an amazing thing by exposing him in death.”

“No, I cleaved his head from his body and I ran.” He craned his neck to indicate what appeared to be one of the only inhabitable rooms in the castle. “I left you all to this.”

“And that was a hard time for us.” Rill’s smile was beatific, as if forgiving Tallis of every failing he’d ever heaped on himself. Kavya could only hope he took that offer of forgiveness. “Afterward, an investigation revealed that the priest was corrupt.”

Kavya chose that moment to join Tallis on the narrow settee where he held himself as rigidly as a fence post buried in frozen ground. She didn’t care if his siblings knew what . . . emotion had developed between them. He needed her, and she needed to hold his hand when he did.

“Then why do you still live this way?” he asked.

“Because the findings were kept secret.” Serre’s bitterness was unmistakable. Kavya flinched back from his mind, which was filled with hurt and a sense of having watched a treasured idol laid low. “The Leadership thought it better to unite everyone around their hatred of you, and it worked.”

“Serre, it’s been worth the sacrifice,” Rill said. “We could’ve revealed what we know, but then Tallis’s exile would’ve been for nothing.”

Serre kept his head ducked low and to one side. He nodded, then met Tallis’s gaze head-on. Kavya was surprised to find that a sheen of moisture brightened the young man’s blue eyes—eyes so much like his brother’s, the one he’d thought lost forever. His anger made sense now. It wasn’t the sacrifices of wealth or standing, but that Tallis’s deed had meant Serre grew up having thought two siblings were lost forever.

“It’s been too long, Tallis,” he said roughly.

Tallis made Kavya proud. First he kissed the back of her hand, proclaiming their affection to all of his siblings. Then when he stood. He walked to where Serre sat, back tense and shoulders hunched. Extending his hand, Tallis waited with equal tension—waiting for Serre to welcome him home, too. And maybe to forgive him.

The younger man’s tentative handshake turned fierce as soon as their palms met. Tallis pulled him up and into a ferocious masculine embrace. They were potent in strength, and equally potent in their shared affection. “Yes, brother. It’s been too long. And I’ll never be gone that long again.”

Kavya swallowed back tears, as the rest nodded their approval. By chance she caught Rill’s eye.

“It’s our right and privilege to do what we can for the Pendray,” the woman said. “Everything we do is to protect our clan, and particularly our family.” Rill wasn’t so unabashed in her acceptance of Kavya as she had been with Tallis, but she offered a small, promising smile. “No matter who makes the threat.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

Tallis turned on the single bedside table lamp in the room Rill had made up for him. The kiss he’d bestowed on Kavya’s hand put to rest any need to make up a separate room for her. Not that they had done much to hide their connection in any other way. The very nature of his return to Clannarah was linked with her—with his growing affection for her.

Deeper than affection. He didn’t dare go near what he feared were his true feelings.

He sloughed his pack and duffel on the floor, then removed his seaxes and slid them under the bed within easy reach. Exhausted to his bones, he didn’t realize he was undressing until Kavya began to assist him. She stood behind him while she eased his button-down shirt from his shoulders, petting his skin as she did. She kissed between his shoulder blades. Kissed his biceps. Kissed around until she faced him, touching moist lips to a dozen places across his chest. He inhaled deeply.

“Oh, I like that,” she said. “Do that again.”

Tallis couldn’t help but grin. “Do I impress you, goddess?”

“Yes. Now don’t keep fishing for compliments. Just do as I bid.”

“Bossy, bossy,” he said as a chant against her skin. “I’m my own man and I make my own decisions.”

She angled a secret, mysterious smile upward. Her eyes were hidden by thick lashes. “Then make your decision. Are you going to please me by showing off your gorgeous chest, or are you going to leave me disappointed and your masculine beauty unexploited?”

“I’m going to use that choice against you one day.”

“I’ll look forward to it. My response will likely be dependent on yours right now.”

With an effervescent feeling of relief—at least he could count on Kavya to make him feel better—he sucked in a lungful of air, as if pulling all the troubles of the world into his chest. She kissed him once, right over his heart, before whispering, “Now let it go, Tallis.”

He did. One long, gusting exhalation. It felt marvelous.

He wrapped her in his embrace. Their kisses were more familiar now, but that opened new avenues of intimacy. He knew more of what she liked, the depth, the speed, the leashed violence. She tasted of the mead Rill had brought out during the evening-long discussion. Kavya had sipped hers, her eyes all over the scene of family and uneasy welcomes home. Old tales. New revelations.

And forgiveness—that most unexpected wonder.

Kavya had been beside him the entire time.

Yes, he counted on her to make him feel better. When had that happened? And when had that assumption deepened, that it wasn’t just his physical comfort she attended?

Did it matter anymore? The timing, the circumstances, even the future . . . He wanted Kavya for the rest of his life. The realization should’ve stolen the strength from his knees, but he’d never felt more powerful.

“You’re a strange, remarkable woman, Kavya,” he whispered against her temple.

“I like remarkable. Strange, not so much.”

“Strange that you’re here with me.”

“We’ve already established that I find you inescapably handsome, especially your body.”

“Ah,” he said, beginning to undress her. “So it’s just my body. I understand how it is.”

She took hold of his wrists. “I don’t think I want to joke about this anymore.”