by Kate L. Mary
I barely remembered that day, or at least I barely remembered what had transpired after my husband was put to death and I was whipped to within an inch of my life. What I did know was that Asa had felt the pain of my punishment more than a person not connected with the events should have. We barely knew one another, yet he had put his safety on the line for me over and over again. He had even continued to help Mira after I was gone, and had often asked about me. Though I could not comprehend where this man’s feelings for me came from, I was sure that not even all these months apart could have erased them.
After my punishment, Asa had met Mira and me with a horse and accompanied us through the borderland, even staying at my side for hours once he had gotten me home safely, waiting to make sure I was okay. Even now, my heart was raw from Bodhi’s loss, and a part of me doubted there would ever be room in it for love again, but I could not deny that Asa held a part of it now. He had watched over me the best he could, and he had kept Mira safe since then. I owed him a lot, which made no sense. He was a Fortis, and I was an Outlier. Our people did not mix. Except we had, and we had formed a bond some people might even call friendship.
I was in the kitchen when Asa saw me for the first time. He stepped into the room with a few other guards, and froze. His bronzed skin was darker than I remembered, which I attributed more to the heat from the summer’s sun than to my own memory. His black hair was as short as ever, cut close to the scalp so he almost appeared bald, and the strong facial features I remembered so well were softened by the expression in his brown eyes. They seemed to grab me from all the way across the room, holding me prisoner.
The emotion in his eyes told me that until this moment, he had been completely unaware of my return. The feeling in them was as intense as ever, as sharp and penetrating as the last time I saw him and it made the hair on my scalp prickle. It stripped me and left me naked and exposed.
It only took a second for him to start walking again, but he seemed unable to wipe the emotion from his expression. It remained as if carved on his face while he got his plate, while he ate at the table with the other Fortis guards—his eyes on me most of the time—and was still there after he had finished his lunch and brought his plate to me to wash.
When Asa stopped in front of me, the heat from his body wrapped around me, and as always, I found myself nearly overwhelmed by his size. The Fortis in general were large, but Asa seemed to tower over even the tallest of his people. The top of my head barely reached his shoulders, and I had to look up to meet his gaze. Again, his eyes were on me, dark and swimming with feeling, causing a flush to move up my cheeks.
Asa held his plate out, and when I took it, our fingers brushed. His skin was dark compared to mine, brown where mine was pale even after months of hunting in the forest. The warmth of his skin brought back the memory of my hand in his on my last day here, of the calluses that decorated his palms, and how comforting his touch had been when everything else in my life had seemed so hopeless.
We were unable to talk in the kitchen, surrounded by other guards and housemaids, and when he left with nothing more than a nod, it felt as if I had lost something important yet again. We would have time, I told myself. Later, I would find him and thank him for helping me, for helping Mira after I left. For being something I never knew could exist—a Fortis man who saw me not as a worthless Outlier, but as a human being.
After lunch ended and the kitchen had been cleaned up, I headed out in search of him, knowing he would not be hard to find. He would be waiting for me; I was sure of it. Like me, Asa would have things he wanted to say.
As usual, he did not disappoint, and when I stepped into the hall that led to the servants’ bathroom, he was already there, already waiting, and the emotion in his brown eyes wrapped me in comfort.
Asa took a step toward me but kept his distance. “You came back.”
“I did.”
His gaze moved over me, and I knew without him having to say anything that he was remembering how I had looked the last time he saw me. How broken and bruised I had been. How he had been certain I was on the brink of death.
“I am better,” I assured him.
Asa nodded, and I smiled, remembering his silence and how it used to unnerve me. It no longer did. Now it was as familiar and comfortable as his brown eyes on me.
“You have new markings,” he said after a moment.
Asa reached out like he was going to touch my face, but I pulled away before his fingers could find their mark. The thought of his touch sent conflicting emotions swirling through me. It was wrong because of who we both were and because my husband had only been gone six months, but it also warmed me, remembering how gentle Asa had been with me before, and knowing it would be the same now.
“They are passage markings. The ones on my cheeks are for the people I have lost.” My hand went to my face on its own, my fingers tracing the raised area. The marks for the birth parents I had never known, for my father, and the new ones. The ones that represented Bodhi. “For my husband.”
Asa’s gaze moved to the floor the way it usually did when I mentioned Bodhi. “I’m sorry about him.”
I believed him.
I knew Asa loved me, but I also believed he felt genuinely bad that I had lost the man I loved, and it made him even more endearing to me. Made me understand that he had the potential to take up even more of my heart than he already did, and that scared me. Scared me because it made no sense, a Fortis and an Outlier, and because I was not yet ready to think about anyone else being in my life the way Bodhi had. The wounds were healing, but it was going to take time. A long time.
I stepped back, putting more space between us, and Asa lifted his head.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I wanted to thank you for taking me back to my village, and for being so worried. My mother told me that you waited for hours. I am sorry I did not wake before you left. I would have liked to have been able to thank you.”
“There’s nothing to thank. If I had been here, it never would’ve happened.”
“No.” My hand jerked when I almost reached out to touch him, and instead I curled my fingers into a fist. “You cannot think that, Asa. What happened was not your fault. You tried.”
“I didn’t try hard enough.”
Suddenly, a memory came back to me. That day he had not shown up for work, which was what opened the door for Lysander’s attack. The next day, after Bodhi was in custody, Asa had been there to comfort me, but like me, he had been covered in bruises. As if he had been in a fight. How could I have forgotten that?
“What happened to you?” I asked. “When you came back to work, you were hurt.”
“Thorin.” Asa’s brown eyes clouded over at the mention of the Fortis man who had tormented me the day I dragged Ronan through his village. “He and his friends have seen me escort you from the city. They don’t like it. Fortis aren’t supposed to help Outliers. We’re enemies. He attacked me that morning before I went in to work, something he’d done before, but this time he brought friends. I fought back, but not hard enough. I woke in our healer’s house after hours of being unconscious. I was too hurt to go to work.” Asa shook his head, and his gaze moved to the floor like he could not bring himself to look at me. “I should’ve gone anyway. I should’ve crawled through the city to get to you.”
His words touched me more than anything he had ever said or done, but I could not help feeling bad that he carried so much guilt over what had happened. It was unfair. Asa was not responsible for me, and it was not his fault we lived in a world where so much evil existed.
Hesitantly, I took a step closer to him. “Asa. Look at me.”
He lifted his head, and when his brown eyes met mine, the intensity of his feelings nearly took my breath away.
I swallowed and whispered, “Stop blaming yourself. Please. I cannot be responsible for anyone else’s pain. I have enough of my own.”
His gaze held mine for a beat longer, and when he finally looke
d away, it seemed as if it was a very difficult thing for him to do. Like he was afraid that if he looked away, I would once again disappear.
“I’ll be waiting for you in the mudroom as usual,” he said, his brown eyes still focused on the floor.
I paused for a moment, studying him. Remembering how much he had scared me at first. How cold he had seemed. Now, looking him over, I saw something very different. He was Fortis, but he was not hard and angry like the rest of his people. Asa had a vulnerability to him, and a softness in his eyes that made his size less overpowering—and almost desirable.
The thought took me by surprise, but I could not deny the truth in it. I found Asa attractive. He was the opposite of Bodhi in every way, dark and silent while my husband had been blond and open, but they shared one very important trait. Kindness. Asa was kind, and that was what made him stand out among his people. He cared about other human beings, even a lowly Outlier like me.
I looked away from the man in front of me, from his strong jaw and dark skin and wide shoulders that suddenly interested me more than ever before, and whispered, “Thank you.”
Asa’s head bobbed once, and then he turned away. I did not move, watching him until he disappeared through the door at the end of the hall, the entire time thinking about what this man was to me. And what he could be.
I thought about Asa the rest of the day as I worked, about his feelings for me, about what it had led him to do—betray his people. It still seemed impossible, thinking about a Fortis helping an Outlier, but it was true. It defied all logic, but it was impossible to deny.
Even more troubling were the feelings swirling through me. I could not put names to them, or perhaps I simply did not want to, but they had the potential to grow into something big with time. I was unsure if I wanted that, or if it would be a betrayal to my dead husband when it did happen. In fact, there was very little about Asa that I was sure of.
I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor when footsteps entered the dining room behind me, and I looked up just as a group of Fortis guards stepped in. There were four of them, three men and the lone woman who worked in Saffron’s house, and Greer was among the men.
He had been there that day, had tried to force Mira and me to strip. Had he not stopped us, had we been allowed to leave the house without interference, perhaps Lysander would not have gotten what he wanted. Instead, Greer had cornered us, and then Saffron’s son had come in, demanding we allow him to search us. The sneer on his face as he looked Mira over had left little doubt what was about to happen, and in an instant my mind was made up. I had been at Lysander’s mercy before, but Mira had not, and even if it meant putting myself in danger, I would not allow Lysander to have his way with her.
At the sight of Greer, the memories came back in a rush, falling on me in a flood of emotions that nearly knocked me to the ground. If he saw me right now, the Fortis guard would not hesitate to torment me, and I wanted to slink back into the shadows of the room, wanted to avoid his notice for one more day. Before I had a chance, though, one of the men said something that caught my attention, and I found myself frozen in place, on my hands and knees, the rag in my hand forgotten as I listened to his words.
“Thane’s been missing for three days,” the man said. “Since the hunting party.”
“Something isn’t right.” The woman shook her head, and the twisted knots she tried to pass off as hair brushed her shoulders.
They were talking about me.
“It’s a predator,” Greer growled.
“What else can it be?” another man said as the group moved across the room, heading for the door that led into the kitchen.
Greer let out a deep laugh that echoed through the room. “Nothing. Nothing else could take out a Fortis. It’s probably a pack of cats. We’re not hunting them enough, and the population’s gotten too big again.”
“We should send a big group out to hunt the bastards down before they kill more of our people,” the woman said.
“It might be a good idea.”
They went by without looking down, too caught up in their conversation to notice me, which I was more than thankful for. A beat later, they had moved out of the room, and I was able to let out the breath I had been holding.
Over fifty Fortis hunters had died by my hands since Bodhi’s death. I had started going into the forest out of desperation, hoping to take my mind off my pain while at the same time providing meat for my family. Not once had I considered killing Fortis hunters until the moment I released that first arrow. When I did, when I saw the man fall, it had awoken something in me. It had given me strength even though I had always been told I was weak. I was nothing. A Winta woman. An Outlier. Useless. But that day, I learned the truth about myself.
I was strong.
Of course, I had known the deaths would not go unnoticed forever, but to hear the very men and women I was hunting talk about it still made my heart beat faster. But it was a good thing, too. It told me what they were thinking, and what they were going to do about the missing men and women. Sooner or later they were going to send a large party into the wilds to hunt, but it would not be me they were hunting. No, I was something they would never consider. They were Fortis and much too strong to be killed by anything other than a wild creature. Especially not an Outlier.
They were fools, but at that moment, I was thankful for it.
3
Returning to work helped my family, but it did not stop me from hunting in the evenings. Not only did my mother and sister need the meat, but with Bodhi gone, my people were struggling, and I felt compelled to do something about it. My husband had been the best hunter in the village, and the game he used to provide was missed.
There was more to it, though. Now that I was back in Saffron’s house, I found I longed for the peacefulness the forest provided, not to mention how close it made me feel to Bodhi. He had been the first one to take me into the forest, back when we were just children, and then after we were married. He had shown me how to hunt. Shown me how strong I could be. Going into the forest kept his memory alive. It made me feel closer to him.
I also could not bring myself to stop hunting the Fortis. Not even after overhearing the conversation in Saffron’s house. If anything, returning to the city made the need in me grow. I was able to see their abuse firsthand. I witnessed Outliers being stripped and taken advantage of on their way out of the city, heard the insults thrown at us as we made our way through the Fortis village. Every instance made me itch for a weapon so I could take the men and women down the way I did in the forest, but not only was I empty-handed, in the city I was outnumbered, and it made me feel useless.
Not in the wilds. Out there I knew where to go and what to do to take the Fortis by surprise. Out there I could show anyone I came across exactly how strong I was.
Returning to work meant my time in the forest was cut short, though, and I no longer had the luxury of spending hours searching for hunting parties. Not if I wanted to bring game in as well. Still, if I happened upon a small group while I was in the woods, I killed them without hesitation. Not only did they deserve to die for what they had done to my people for centuries, but I also needed their game. I usually only had a couple hours of good daylight left by the time I returned from the city, and winter was on its way. When it came, things would be even more difficult. Tracking an animal in the snow was easier, assuming one could be found, but many of the forest creatures slept during winter. Depending on the few short hours of sunlight I had at the end of each day meant I would come home with almost nothing, but the Fortis hunting parties I came upon in the wilds had usually been out for hours, and it was not uncommon to find their horses overflowing with game.
Just like the horses of the men in front of me right now.
The first one, a man with long gray hair and tan skin that reminded me of an animal’s hide, had four rodents and a string with at least a dozen rawlins dangling from it, their red feathers brilliant against the horse’s dark coa
t. The second man had just as many of the birds hanging from his own horse, as well as a rat big enough to feed two families.
Killing these men could result in the Fortis sending a search party out, but it was a risk I needed to take. More than a week had passed since I had stumbled upon a hunting party, and a month since I had returned to Saffron’s house. I knew from the gossip I overheard on a daily basis that the Fortis hunters had been out searching for whatever creature they thought was killing their people. They had found nothing, of course, but as the deaths became less and less frequent, they had begun to suspect they had at least succeeded in scaring the animal off. They had no way of knowing the drop in Fortis deaths was because I had returned to my job in Sovereign City. No one did.
I was hidden by a group of bushes when I released my arrow, but it found my target without issue. The man with the rat let out a grunt when the point sank into his neck, and the thump of his body hitting the forest floor seemed to echo through the air.
Before his friend had even hit the ground, the second man was on alert. He jumped from his horse, pulling his sword out at the same time, and looked around as if trying to figure out where the arrow had come from. The way his upper lip curled reminded me of the looks Greer shot me, and I had no qualms about notching a second arrow. Only, the man was moving too much for me to get a good shot off, and the horse was stomping around at his side, refusing to stay still and succeeding in blocking his master from view.
I shifted my position in hopes of getting a better angle, but between the horse and the bushes in front of me, it was impossible. If I wanted to take this man out—and I did—I was going to have to make myself known.
I got to my feet, my back straight and my arrow ready.
The man spotted me and let out an animalistic growl that made the hair on my arms stand up. “What do you think you’re doing, Outlier?”
