DOOM CAUGHT TIWAZ by the elbow as the sun peeked over the mountains in the distance. “You are pushing yourself too hard, Ti,” he said, a touch of anger edging his tones. “We are stopping for a few hours. No argument this time!”

“Fine.” Letting one knee collapse, she dropped to the grass and sat. “We stop here.”

The gromek sighed, looking skywards in exasperation. “There is no shame in admitting to weakness! Especially to me. I have seen you at your worst! I have carried you in my arms to protect you.”

She looked up at him, eyes flashing in the light. “And I must be strong to protect you, but I am not as strong as I must be. We cannot stop or Alimar will find you.” She turned her face away, “Us. He will find us.”

Doom knelt in front of her, staring until she looked at him. “If he finds us, then we will face him together. Or we will one day find him. Either way, we need to be ready for that day. Pushing yourself too hard would let him win.” He tilted his head. “Why are you arguing with me about this?”

Grimacing, she looked away. “Because you won’t leave me.” She held up her hands, looking at the bandages that peeked out from under the bracers. “I am not. I will never be free. Never.”

He captured her hands in his, holding them tightly. “Don’t say that! We just have to find someone who can undo those spells, then—”

“They cannot be undone!” she exclaimed in despair. His expression fell as she clenched her fists and pulled away, shaking with emotion. “Runic magic is permanent. It is forbidden from being put on living things, because it kills them. But he did not care. He put them on me. He said nothing but a god could remove them.” A sob escaped her throat as she hid her face in her hands. “And gods don’t exist,” she rasped.

“Ti, you can’t believe anything Alimar told you,” Doom all but begged, unsure how to console her. “He is evil! We’ll get rid of these glyphs. Somehow.” He rested his hand on her shoulder. “You must have hope. Have faith!”

“Alimar is evil. I will never argue that. But the worst evil isn’t in lies. It’s in the truth.” She looked up, eyes red with despair. “He taught me that. The truth makes it all worse. Even if there are gods, they do not care about me. Why would they? I am nothing. I am a nameless, raceless nothing. I have no reason to hope anything for myself. All I have is you. Your life and your freedom. You have everything I will never have. You are everything I will never be.”

“What are you talking about?” He shifted to sit in front of her. “Ti, I have nothing more than you. I am no more than you are. Besides…” His voice drifted off as he held one of her hands in his, covering her wrist with his other one.

She pressed his hands to her cheek, closing her eyes. “You are strong and wise and intelligent. You don’t approve of my being a gladiator. You know how to do things. You can hunt and fight and cook and make things and heal and I…I know…nothing.”

“That is not true. I mean, sure, you aren’t as familiar with life outside the gladiatorial arena. But you are just as strong and wise and intelligent as you seem to think I am. No matter what weapon is put in your hands, you can use it. And you learn fast. Anything you put your mind to, you have learned. And you were right about going to Dramaden.”

He leaned closer, his voice a soft rumble. “But even for you, it takes time to learn something new. Cut yourself some slack, okay? Ever since we escaped Alimar, we’ve been running. And you’ve been busy just trying to heal and properly recover your strength.” He added in a quiet, unhappy voice, “Which you have not really had the chance to do.”

“You are…sad?” She looked up at the change in his voice. “Why…are you so sad? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, of course not.” He managed to smile wanly, touching her cheek with the back of his fingers. “You see so much in me, but I feel lacking and inept. I don’t know enough to take care of you. Not as much as you need me to. You were near death so long and so often when we first escaped. It was luck you are still alive, not because I knew how to keep you that way. I would have preferred to stay near that beach until you completely recovered, but you insisted we keep moving.” He bumped his fingers across her lips to stop her from speaking. “You were not wrong to insist. But I was afraid.”

He looked at their still clasped hands. “You insisted we go into Dramaden so you could fight. You were right about that, too. We were somewhere safe where we need not worry constantly someone or something would find us so we could finally rest. You could heal. And I learned more about healing from Master Harther, but I am afraid it will not be enough.” He shrugged. “It is not that I do not approve of you fighting. I am afraid of what might happen to you if I don’t have the knowledge to help you when you need me most.”

She let go of his hand and put her arms around his neck, embracing him fiercely. “I wish I could give you reason not to fear for my life, but will not promise what I cannot absolutely give you, my friend. But I will do whatever I must to keep you safe first.”

Doom returned the embrace, his quiet laugh filled with affection. He got to his feet and held his hands out. “Let’s at least go over there where it is more sheltered to rest. We have several hours of sunlight left. We should be able to get a few more miles in before we need to set up camp.”

Leaning on his support, Tiwaz looked up at him. “You are preoccupied by something else.” She waited with quiet patience in the lengthy silence while he led them to the thick cluster of bushes and trees, then for him to spread out a blanket, accepting his hand to avoid another jarring drop-in-place.

“I…didn’t tell you everything about our escape. Not because I didn’t want to. It was just…very confusing. And now I can’t help but think about it.” She watched him silently, her expression devoid of any emotion. Recognizing the look as her arena mask, he could not meet her eyes, unsure what she was thinking or feeling. He took out the pouch given to him by Juran, looking at the worn emblem on it. “The wagoner who got us out of Shurakh Arln gave this to me. He said it was a gift from those who help slaves escape, with apologies for not coming for us sooner.”

A slight frown touched Tiwaz’s features. She reached out a tentative hand to touch the supple leather. After a great deal of uncertainty, she rested her hand on it. “This is very, very old.” She closed her eyes. “It has magic.”

He blinked. “You can tell it has magic?” She nodded, eyes still shut, opening them at his heavy sigh. “I suppose after being around Alimar and his experimenting for so long—”

“No. I have always been able to sense magic. Magical energy is like the colors of the rainbow. A rainbow is all light, but when it is fractured, you can see the different parts of it. Magic is similar except to me, each is a mixture of colors and scents and sensations all at once.

“Alimar used me to verify the truth of those who sought to sell him things, and made examples of any who tried to deceive him.” Doom put his arm around her shoulders when she shuddered at the memories. She shook her head once in a sharp motion. “He had taught me to tell the difference between the many types, and sometimes the origin. The same type of magic from the Southern Wildlands feels a little different than from the Western Empire. They all feel or smell different.” She looked at the pouch. “But I have never sensed anything like this before.”

He considered the pouch. “I do not know if that makes me feel better or not,” he mused. He took his arm from around her to dump the pouch into his hand. The two coins with the small gemstones bearing the image of a dragon lay in his palm. He used his thumb to bump the diamond-eyed coin. “This was in the pouch, along with the map I have been using to navigate.”

“And this one?” she asked, picking up the emerald-eyed coin to examine it with a frown of scrutiny.

“I found it next to you after a…a dream I had.” He could sense her piercing gaze on him, but he could not bring himself to meet her eyes. “After Urbin left me in that hidden temple under Shurakh Arln, I cleaned and bound your wounds as best I could, then fell asleep next to you to keep you warm.”

“I remember…feeling…safe,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. Green eyes turned to meet his. “I never knew what to call that sensation until we were in Dramaden. When you mentioned it, I had words at last for the feeling that has haunted me. I felt safe. Protected. I had only ever glimpsed that when we were together, when you would hold me. Especially when I was afraid.”

He looked surprised. “You remember the temple?”

She waved her hand in irritation, wanting him to get on with his story and not focus on her. “I remember feeling something I never felt before and I had no words for. Tell me about the dream.”

The gromek nodded and took a deep breath. “A lot of what was in the dream also happened while the wagoner was getting us to the docks.” He hesitated a moment; she waited patiently. “There was a woman. She wasn’t human, but I have never seen anything like her. Her eyes were very green. Not quite like yours. Hers seemed to have a glow, but it might have been the light. She asked me why I didn’t pray to any gods for help. She looked at me strange when I told her there were no gods and she said there were.

“Then I told her gods would not care about people like us. She seemed to hint that they do care, but they are limited. Something about faith and belief and gardens of weeds…To be honest, she started talking a lot of gibberish and nothing made much sense, but…” He closed his eyes. “She knew my name. I must have been asleep. I would have dismissed it as delusion except for that coin. It was right beside you and I know—”

Tiwaz blinked, interrupting him. “Your name…? You told me you didn’t have a name. Like me.” She started to lean away from him. “You lied to me?”

He winced. “No! I would never lie to you. I gave up my name because Alimar took yours away with your memory.”

She put her hand over his heart, anguished. “But why? You have a name! I knew you were someone special. Special people have names. Tiwaz isn’t a name, it is a thing. I may as well be called Mud, there is no difference.”

“My Tiwaz, you do not need a name to be special. You were special to all of us in Shurakh Arln.” He covered her hand, squeezing when she looked away. “You gave us strength when Alimar tried to take it from us. No matter what he did to you, you stood strong. You suffered for all of us. When you could not stand, we stood for you. That is why we are here now.”

“I want to believe you,” she said in a hushed voice, leaning into him as he put his arm around her again. “I want to believe your words so much because you want me to believe. But I can’t. There is a hole inside me. An emptiness.” She closed her eyes turning her face against his chest. “The only way I can describe it is having no name. It hurts so much. More than the glyphs Alimar put on me. More than whatever in me that hurts during the full and new moons or anything he ever did to me. It has grown ever since I broke the gold shackles. But it does not hurt so much with you. Doom…” She paused. “Don’t be nameless anymore. Tell me. Please.” She whispered, “I want to know your real name. I want to know who you were before Alimar.”

“My name is Thrahx Vaug. I barely remember my father, but my mother was the ruler of my people.” He tightened his arm around her, his anguish harsh in his voice. “I don’t remember what she looks like anymore.”

She closed her hand around the coin and turned so she could put both her arms around his massive chest, holding him tightly. “Do you believe the woman in your dreams? That there are gods and they care?” He hesitated, then nodded. “Then go ahead and pray to them. Perhaps they will hear you because you have a name.”

He glanced down at her. “Will you pray also?” He winced in surprise when her arms squeezed tight and he could all but see her scowl despite how she hit her face against him. “Ti?”

“No, I will not pray to them. Not a single one. I will only talk to a god when I can look them in the eye and demand why they let you hurt like this for so long.” She added before he could ask, “I already know they don’t care about me. You are the only one that matters and they have to answer to me for their neglect of you, and convince me why I should give them any respect.” He started to open his mouth to argue, then shut it again, just holding her nearly as tight as she held him.