After their kiss a week ago, which had been interrupted by her brother, she hadn’t known if Camulos would return. After what he’d threatened, she hadn’t been sure if she wanted him to. But he wouldn’t actually kill her brother or her, right?
She couldn’t believe he would, so she’d returned to the clearing to see him, albeit with her hand on her bow and wariness in her step. Camulos drew her like a fly to honey, and she had a feeling that she did the same to him.
He was hot and cold with her, as if he wanted to be with her but knew he shouldn’t. Something dangerous that she didn’t understand was at play, but at least she was smart enough to know it hovered over them. He had an agenda she couldn’t quite figure out, and he wouldn’t speak of it, but it didn’t stop her from meeting him every day for long walks through the forest.
Continuing to see him was probably the stupidest thing she’d ever done, but the hope that he’d continue to smile at her and maybe even kiss her again kept her coming back for more.
But he hadn’t kissed her again. His desire was so strong it was palpable, but he resisted. As much as she wanted his kisses, his restraint made her trust him. Instead, they walked and talked. They’d shared their pasts and presents, their hopes and dreams. He’d been short on the hopes and dreams, but she’d had plenty to share.
He cared for her. She was certain of it. And she’d grown to care for him even as his statement that he’d been sent to earth to kill her lingered in her mind.
She truly was crazy. But no. He had no reason to kill her that she could see. Even if someone had sent him to do the terrible job, he’d obviously made them change their mind. And who would ever notice her, much less want to kill her?
“Andrasta! You’re late again!” Bradan’s voice broke through the fog of her thoughts and she realized that she was nearly home.
She looked up to see her second-youngest brother standing in front of the door of their round house, his broad shoulders draped in a brown cloak and his red hair dark in the dim light.
“I’m here, I’m here. The sun has not yet set.”
Bradan scowled at the sky. “Close enough.”
“I wish you’d trust me to take care of myself!” She could feel her face heating and her blood rushing with the familiar helpless anger that their overprotectiveness engendered in her. Why was it always like this?
“You endanger your own safety. And you’re never careful enough to see threats where they really lie.” He grabbed her as she tried to slip through the door and pulled her into a hug. Her heart warmed against her will.
“That’s not true.” Her words were muffled against his chest. But a niggling of doubt crept in. Was he right? She wasn’t being entirely smart about Camulos. As much as she cared for him, and sensed that he cared for her, there was something beneath it all that wasn’t quite right.
“It’s true,” Bradan said. “Isn’t it, fellows?”
His tone was almost joking—her brothers loved to pick on her—but there was censure beneath it. Six familiar faces in various phases of laughing agreement or annoyance looked up from where they sat on low benches surrounding the hearth in the middle of the room.
She scowled at them all. Each polished his weapon, the symbols of her exclusion. They all looked so similar—such a united front—that her heart pinged with the loneliness of not being included. Ever since their mother had died giving birth to her, it had been just Andrasta and the men in her family. There was no place for her except by their side. As children, they’d played together every day. Countless hours during which she’d been one of them. When their father had died six years ago, they had become an even more cohesive unit.
She’d had the constant companionship of at least one of her brothers until a few years ago, when she’d grown from girl to woman and they’d all grown from boys to warriors. And they’d decided it was too dangerous for her to train and fight with them. A decision made out of love, but one that cut her off from the family she so adored.
She’d never wanted anything like she wanted things to go back to the way they had been. When they’d been a team. The desire was a constant, aching companion that rode on her back as she practiced and practiced and practiced. But they refused to give her an opportunity to prove herself.
Other women were warriors. Why not she? It might be dangerous to fight alongside them, but didn’t they know she’d die for them?
She’d tried to get Camulos to show himself to her brothers so she could prove that she wasn’t a nobody, that she could shoot her bow as well as a god, but he’d shut her dow
n so quickly that she’d not asked again.
“You need to stop running off to the woods every day. It’s dangerous.” Bradan settled onto the bench closest to the door and withdrew his sword to polish it as his brothers were doing. “Find a husband. Start a family and give up this dangerous, stupid dream of being a warrior.”
A bubbling black tar of rage filled her chest up to her eyes, until her anger and pain blurred her vision.
She yanked one of the blue arrows from her quiver and thrust it toward them. She’d been hoarding it until now, but she could bear their dismissal no longer. “This belonged to Camulos.”
Caedmon, her eldest brother, frowned from where he sat in the great chair that their father had occupied before his death. Marrek, the youngest and the one to whom she was closest, eyed it suspiciously.
She stomped her foot and yelled, “I speak the truth. Look at the fletching. I’ve never seen feathers that blue. I couldn’t have made it.”
“Ah, come on, little sister. Calm down and have a seat. You’re turning red.” Caedmon stopped polishing his sword hilt just long enough to indicate a seat on the bench nearest him.
Andrasta almost growled, but she took the seat in front of the popping fire. Its glow illuminated the faces of her brothers, all of whom sat in a circle around the flames. Every night they sat here polishing their weapons before dinner. Every night she sat twirling an arrow. They laughed at the weapon. At her.
“Come now, where did you really find the arrow?” Caedmon’s voice was kind. He was kind. They all were, at their hearts, even though they were sometimes mean. They did it to protect her, but it was suffocating.