[MaMa] [p] any other name

[Skoll Haskel]

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[/html] Skoll reasoned that he should feel more dread in this moment; certainly Nahyt (not Nahyt, he thought, her name is Harrow) felt enough dread for the both of them, a twisting anticipation of the worse things to come. Were his emotions numbed with this shock? Should he be pushing her away and tearing out his hair and asking her how she could lie to him all this time? His mind recoiled from that image.

Maybe this… Maybe this was faith—faith in God, who’d taken so much from him already, and faith in her, and faith in love. There was an acute, desperate tenderness in his eyes, but her lovely dark muzzle was pointed downward as the words scraped up out of her throat like thorns—like thistles.

The sun prince knew the stories as well as anyone—of the dark northern kingdom full of liesmiths and backstabbers. Some of the tales were embellished for absence of any concrete evidence of the goings-on of the secretive pack, but he wasn’t sure which was more deadly. The two kingdoms were like night and day; his home was a place of light and joy, of music and seasalt and cloth and horses. It was a place he had imagined, a hundred times over, Nahyt might be able to fit into once he could claim her as his.

Nahyt—but what about Harrow? He tried to stare at her, tried seeing two different people, the loner and the Salsolian. All he could see was the insecurities passing through the dark girl’s frame, the weakness of her injured arm, the little kink of hair around her ear. None of that had changed.

“Then are you a spy, Harrow of Salsola? Did you intend to make me drop my guard and tear my pack’s secrets out of me?”

They might have been words of accusation and anger had they been delivered straight, but there was an amused lilt to the boy’s voice, and his mouth quirked ever so faintly as he gave her arm a little tug as indication to look at him. He wanted to see her eyes, to see Harrow and Nahyt’s eyes. There was some childish certainty that he’d be able to tell if she was lying with her answer—even though she’d lied easily to him all this time.

But Skoll had faith.[html]

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