KINSMAN’S OATH By Susan Krinard

In his grief he reached for one mind, one heart. She did not hear him. He clambered to his feet.

“Come,” he said to the Darja warrior, baring his teeth. “Come, you and your brothers, and take me.”

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Chapter 26

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Cynara heard Ronan’s cry, first with her ears and then with her mind. His grief pounded her down, turning her bones to jelly, overwhelming any hope she had of rational thought.

The fight was over. Sihvaaro had lost. Ronan had lost. The maelstrom of his emotion held nothing of hope or even the determination to survive. He meant to die defending her, avenging his teacher.

And she could not reach him. He was cut off from her more surely than at any time since she had known him, even before he had recovered his memories and his telepathic skills. His absence gaped like an open wound.

She was alone—captive, paralyzed, outmatched. Inadequate. Fatally weak. Unable to devise a single worthy plan to get them out of this mess. A shaauri warrior held her in an iron grip, and a hundred more surrounded her.

But she wanted Ronan to live. Suddenly she loved life itself more fiercely than her family, her command, her freedom. No sacrifice would be too great if it was within her power to make.

What would you give, Cynara? a voice demanded.

Her lips moved to answer before she realized that the words came from within.

Not alone. Of course. Ronan had banished her, but she had another ally.

Tyr. Tyr, whose nerve and assurance she had admired all her life. Tyr, who never panicked or hesitated. Tyr, who always found a way.

She turned inward, ignoring the ve’laik’in’s grip, the howls of shaauri threat, the terror that blocked the breath in her throat.

I know you’re with me, Tyr, she began. Ever since I was a child, I wanted to be you. You gave me yourself, but I was always afraid to let you share this body. Afraid your strength would overwhelm me, prove I was nothing.

Now I set you free. I call on you to purge me of all weakness, all fear. Give me your courage, your confidence, your cool reason. Make me strong, and I’ll never restrain you again.

She waited in her private silence, light-headed with terror and a wild surge of hope. Her stomach heaved. A presence stirred in its place of exile, rising up in triumph.

Tyr had answered, like an ancient god of war presented with an offering of flesh. New strength flowed into Cynara’s chest and shoulders and legs. Her muscles seemed to expand, the flow of her blood increase. The remnants of fear vanished.

This was what it was to be truly superior, to be secure in one’s place in the scheme of things. Emotion and doubt no longer clouded her thoughts. Remarkable how very clear matters seemed, how obvious her priorities now that her sentimental frailties had been left behind.

This was what Tyr had tried to give her, what she’d so mistakenly refused out of womanly fear. She smiled Tyr’s smile and weighed the situation with cool detachment.

She hadn’t resisted Ronan’s warrior friend Mairva when the female had taken her into custody just before the fight; better a shaauri well-disposed toward humans than one of Lenko’s cronies. Then Sihvaaro had offered to fight in Ronan’s place. Even without the most rudimentary understanding of shaauri language, she had recognized Ronan’s protest, his grief, his ultimate surrender.

But the old shaauri was no match for his opponent. He’d died, and Darja had won. Driven to madness in his anguish, Ronan faced a hundred hostile shaauri in defiance of tradition and the leaders of his House. If the Darja warriors didn’t see to his death, Lenko would.

Ronan’s torment no longer influenced her, nor did she owe any loyalty to his friends. She turned her head slightly to observe her captor’s face. Mairva’s grip on her shoulders had loosened; she, like all the other shaauri, seemed mesmerized by what had occurred in the arena. Perhaps she wished to rush to Ronan’s defense, but shaauri custom restrained her.

The ve’laik’in would naturally assume that her human captive was incapable of resistance in the face of impossible odds. If shaauri were in any way susceptible to telepathic suggestion, such an assumption might be strengthened at just the right moment.