***
Kali
“What’s taking you so long to get home from the village every day?” Drina asked her.
Kali smiled. “I walk slowly.”
Drina’s face paled. “Don’t do anything stupid, Kali. He won’t stand for it.”
Kali waved away Drina’s concerns. She wasn’t afraid of her father. She was too valuable.
“Our clan only wants the pure,” Drina reminded her. “Nobody will remember you if you’re banished.”
“I haven’t done anything to deserve that,” Kali insisted. “I haven’t been touched.”
And she hadn’t. Andriy had never tried to touch her, no matter how much she wanted him to. Every cell in her body cried out for him, but he never made a move. He only ever spoke to her if she spoke first, which made him a good man, in her eyes. Knowing he couldn’t cross a line. The knowledge made her angry, angrier than… his wife. Always Kali’s thoughts returned to his wife. A loveless marriage and a paleness to his skin meant she couldn’t have him.
The clan might have accepted him, taken him in as an honorary member if he had brought some use with him. But his having a wife was a step too far, and her people would reject her if she took him for hers, even if there was no love between the couple. Her banishment would mean she didn’t exist to them anymore. But wasn’t that what she wished for all along?
She asked him questions, so many questions, and he spoke plainly to her in those few minutes they stole together every evening. He told her how his wife made him feel small, in his own home. He wasn’t welcome in her bed, and he had no bed of his own. He was needed to work the farm, while his wife embarrassed him by taking other men into her bed. Kali listened to his every word and told him her own stories. She was the next chovihani, and her destiny was linked to protecting her clan from the dead. Her children would be respected and revered because they would bear the curse of her birth.
And he listened. He didn’t seem to truly understand the things she said, but he didn’t laugh or run when she told him her story. He didn’t judge her clan’s beliefs or act like a coward when she talked about the rising dead who tormented her people or when she talked about the werewolves said to protect her people from the evil spirits they so greatly feared. He held her gaze and listened to her words and made her feel as though she might be worth more than the happenstance of her birth, and thus, deserving of a different destiny.
She fell for him quickly. Fell hard. She knew there was no going back. She saw the love in his eyes, returned it with her own, and they had an affair of the heart and of the mind, but not the body. Theirs was a sweet love that compelled her to keep stepping toward him, to keep waiting for him to cross the line. She had little idea of what might happen next, but she wanted more than anything to find out. She lived for the promise the future held.
The rumours started again, courtesy of Andriy’s wife, but Kali withstood them because she had him to rely on. They never touched—not even her fondness for him quelled her reluctance to cross her people’s marime taboos. He, in turn, was afraid of his wife’s wrath. Their moments together were fleeting.
Nobody could take away the memories they had created together. He had given her a peace of mind she didn’t know existed and made her feel valuable in a way that wasn’t bound to assets or riches. She saw the pure beauty in what they had together because they loved without taking, gave all of themselves except the physical part. She saw their souls entwined, and she knew they could be so much more together. He could cleanse her of the darkness within her, and she could help him stand up for the things he truly wanted.
Drina covered for her, although she didn’t approve. Her father didn’t care as long as she brought home the payment of the villagers, but the heady summer sun would change everything. Kali felt it in her bones.