Page 86 of Obsidian Throne

Evander was unsurprisingly still awake, standing near the bedroll and pulling his shirt off and over his head. Neatly folding it, of course.

He looked up when I entered, pausing at whatever he saw in my features.

“Lemmikki?” He said the word in a quiet, concerned tone.

I think I surprised us both when I wordlessly crossed the distance between us and leaned my head against his chest. Though Evander had offered comfort a handful of times, I rarely sought it out.

But tonight…

His arms came around me as he pressed a kiss against the top of my head. We remained standing like that, unmoving, while I greedily soaked in the strength he always seemed to lend me.

“I’m just so tired of watching people die,” I finally said, letting out a shallow breath.

He heaved a long, slow sigh. “So am I, Lemmikki.”

And though there was nothing either of us could do about it, that shared moment of understanding was enough. It was more than enough.

CHAPTER FIFTY

EVANDER

Ithought that my father’s reign had taught me everything I needed to know about the brutality and unfairness of death and battle.

I was wrong.

This war was on another level, with men younger than I was dying in numbers I could hardly process. Every other day, I rode to the battlefront, watching the wounded men be carried away.

Then there was Rowan, holding their hands and tending their wounds and training the assistants for the healers.

Every night, she came back spattered in blood and exhausted. And every day, she woke early and went straight back to the healers.

They had long since stopped complaining about having women help them, partly because they realized how much help the women could give, but mostly because everyone was stretched to their limit and they had no other choice.

My only consolation was that this would be over soon. Crane and Lynx were finally mobilized on the other side, and Iiro’s forces were weakening surprisingly fast.

Almost too fast, truth be told. For a man who started a war, he wasn’t fighting it with the vigor I had been expecting.

Then again, he may not have been prepared for Lynx to step in as well as Crane. Something about that felt false, but I hadn’t been able to come up with a better explanation.

I should have trusted that instinct. I should have thought harder about it.

I should have done a lot of things, but I didn’t quite realize the magnitude of my mistakes until the day the messenger arrived.

* * *

I was surveying the camp, mentally tallying the supplies we would need to secure before the week’s end, when Pavel approached me.

“There’s a man outside the camp to see you,” he told me uncertainly.

“Send him in,” I ordered.

Pavel hesitated. “He says needs to speak with you in private.”

I glanced over to where Rowan was unflinchingly stitching a wound in a man’s chest, deciding it wasn’t the best time to interrupt her. Besides, this was...suspicious, to say the least.

Kirill was watching over her, as he always did without complaint, so I left her to find out who this man was and what he wanted.

I recognized him immediately as an Elk soldier. My fingers were already twitching toward my sabers when he raised his hands in front of him.