Page 59 of Flamesworn

Kataida heard a sharp bark of laughter, and realized it was her. She clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified at herself, but Damian waved a hand, seemingly impatient with her contrition. “Don’t apologize. I understand. You didn’t pledge yourself to them, War? Didn’t call for them, invite them to come to you?”

“Not in the way you might think,” she answered after a moment. “And they’re not War, not anymore. It’s…justice. Vengeance. Let’s start a fire and I’ll do my best to explain, all right? They won’t be gone long, but something tells me my father will insist on riding a horse back here.”

Damian’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say anything. They set up a rudimentary camp, Kataida shared her water rations so they could try and clean off the blood enough to eat meager rations around a small fire, and they were silent as they did it. It wasn’t until she’d stripped her uniform jacket and was sitting by the fire in her stained undershirt, trying to discreetly see the new mark on her chest, that Damian spoke again.

“I was never willing. I don’t know what they told you.”

“I didn’t think you were.” Kataida leaned back on her hands, missing Ares, as the bright fire and smell of smoke made her wonder where they were, if her father had responded as she had been so certain he would. “Neither was I. I just wanted to find you, and he made it clear if I agreed to lead them, he’d take me to you.”

“He wasn’t going to let you lead,” Damian said, tearing pieces off a strip of jerky that he wasn’t eating, tossing them into the darkness beyond the fire. “It wasn’t even going to be you. They wanted your brother first.”

She laughed, the sound too bitter to be anything close to true amusement. “That would have been a disaster. Theron would rather die than be Strategos."

Damian didn’t say anything, but Kataida gave him time, not wanting to push. Eventually, he said, “Why did you go with him?”

“To find you,” she said. “You’re my uncle. My father’s never stopped–”

“Don’t,” Damian said, harshly, his dominance strong enough that even she felt it. “Just don’t.”

She nodded, once, and looked out toward the direction of Axon, willing her father to show up soon.

“Thank you,” he said, stilted, “for what you did. You could have let me die. It might have been kinder.”

She stared down at her bedroll. “I’ve never been known for being particularly kind.”

“Maybe no one really knows you.”

“They don’t.” She looked up again, met his eyes. “Well, Ares does. That’s what binds me to them, Uncle. It’s not bloodlust, which I will admit I have, or a desire for power, which I do not. But you’re welcome.”

Damian was quiet again. “I’ve spent thirty-one years dreaming of killing that man. Now, when I think about how I finally did it, I feel like itwasa dream.”

She probably wasn’t the best choice to lecturethe Beastabout battle-shock. Besides, this went far beyond that, didn’t it? But it felt rude not to say anything, even though this was harder for her than beheading a man. Sayingit’s probably better for you that wayseemed absurd. Who was she to tellhimthat?

It sounded like platitudes, which she’d never liked, but “I hope that goes away. You should be able to enjoy it. You waited long enough.”

That clearly wasn’t what he expected her to say, but neither was what he said next. “Your name.”

“It’s Kataida.”

“Yes,” he said, softly. “I know. Do you know what it means?”

“Thunderstorm, my father said. I was born during one.”

Damian wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t look particularly angry, either. “When we were children, it was your father’s favorite stuffed animal, a dragon. He named it that because he used to say it was all he ever wanted to see, a thunderstorm, since they’re rare. When he hugged his stuffed dragon, he said he was sending up a prayer to the storm to hurry up and get here.”

Kataida couldn’t breathe. She swallowed, once, twice, and the tears just wouldn’t stay away, this time. “Did he?” she whispered, blinking rapidly to try and stifle the flow. “He never–told me that. But my little brother, he loves stuffed animals and he’d–he’d do that, I bet.” She wiped at her tears, furious for breaking down in front of a man who had all the reasons in the world to sob and whose eyes were as dry as the desert that surrounded them.

Damian moved so that he was kneeling in front of her. “Don’t do that,” he said, and there was the family resemblance, wasn’t there, in how they clearly both hated being on either side of this sort of emotional exchange? “Don’t pretend you’re not crying. Trust me, niece. It’s a lot better to cry when you need to than the day you realize you need to and can’t.”

So she didn’t pretend. Kataida put her face in her hands and cried, and her uncle didn’t touch her, but he stayed there, a figure between her and the slowly fading fire, letting her.

A shield, just like an Akti.

When she could finally breathe again, she wiped her face with her bedroll, which despite being on the ground was cleaner than anything else she had around. “Thank you. I’m sorry, I don’t know why that–why that affected me like that.”

“We don’t always cry because we’re sad, Kataida.”

She nodded and tried to smile at him, but he turned away and stood up. She busied herself with discreetly blowing hernose and trying to make herself look, if not presentable, at least less like she’d just slaughtered half the rebellion’s soldiers.

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