CHAPTER 76

Vincent

The army marches, and Vincent with them, saving his horse’s strength. The act of putting one foot in front of another is all he can focus on, for he is pain both within and without. The burns on his face have settled into a low hum, like a gathering of ninpops under his skin. His knuckles are swollen, the skin cracked widely from where he hit Donil, yet it is only a low ache that swings at the end of his arm. It’s the pain inside that he cannot endure, overwhelming emotion that flows from his stomach and past his heart, filling his throat and threatening to send him retching, though he is not ill.

His friend lay with his wife. He still thinks of Khosa as such, though he knows that by Stillean tradition she is not. She is the wife of his heart if not his body, and that she does not feel the same for him on either count is a wound gone deep, to be reopened again and again, every time he looks at Donil.

Vincent has not spoken of it to him in the time since the army set out from Stille, for he has no words. Everything he would say was neatly encompassed when he struck Donil, the Indiri’s response in not fighting back the only one Vincent would accept. His wife and friend have done him wrong, and both know it. Speaking of it will only fire tempers when Dara should be first in everyone’s minds. So when Donil finds Vincent’s fire on the last night before they arrive in Pietra, Vincent turns his head from him.

“Vin, I would speak to you of it, though I know it is distasteful.”

“What is there to say?” he asks. “I am thrice duped—by my wife and my friend, but also myself, for I knew what lay between you and trusted you to act rightly.”

“You did trust us,” Donil says. “You thought better of us than we deserved.”

“Do you think I don’t know what it’s like to want?” Vincent spits, anger getting the best of him. “I lay by her, in my own marriage bed, night after night, burning with a need that is no less than yours, Donil. And yet I did not act on it—out of respect for her. The two of you could not do the same for me, though there be stone walls separating you and every speck of decency telling you not to.”

Donil stares at the ground, head hung low. “You are not wrong, brother.”

“But I have been wronged and cannot see past it,” Vincent says, tossing the rest of his drink into the fire and sending sparks into the air. “When we return to Stille, you and Khosa shall board one ship, I another. She will no longer be my wife and will be free to become yours.”

“Brother—” Donil chokes on his own words, eyes wet with tears.

“Once we discover land, you will find a place that suits you, and I will find one that suits Stille. May they not be near one another.”

“Vincent—” Donil tries again, only to be cut off.

“What more can you want from me?” Vincent asks. “I’ve given you my home, my friendship for all of our years, even my very wife and places on ships that sail to a new world, though I should rightfully burn you both to ash. What else would you have? My blessing?”

Donil shakes his head. “Forgiveness.”

“That I do not know I can give,” Vincent says, his own eyes bright. “Maybe in the future, when I have my own wife and our youthful hearts have settled. Maybe then our children can meet and start new friendships, while you and I mend an old one.”

Donil raises his cup. “To the future, then. May it come quickly.”