“After the way I fought beside you…” Kahraman echoed Cullen’s words, trailing into silence. He shifted his weight back as Cullen approached, but did not give the golden male ground and retreat. Whatever openness had been in the skinny Teke’s face closed off somewhat, and in his voice, in his eyes, there was a wounded shade. No matter what Cullen believed, some of it was real. (When he realised this, later, Kahraman would be deeply irked – his time caring for the Arabian orphan had made him so much softer than he’d realised.) The trouble with falsehoods was, sometimes they were sold too well. Sometimes the weaver of such intricate webs got tangled up in his own telling. Sometimes, it wasn’t all lies after all.
Perhaps a heart could be so adept at deceiving that it deceived even itself.
“After the way I fought beside you,” the ghost-pale stallion repeated, his blue eyes never leaving Cullen’s face. “Do I not deserve a second chance?” The words were spoken softly, a gentle plea. “How many of your brothers joined you in the Forest? How many of them have come back to you?” Kahraman drew in a breath, felt the air trembling in his lungs. It was thin ice he was walking on, very thin indeed. He had to tread lightly, lightly upon this ground. “I will not patronise you by offering excuses, Cullen,” the words are uttered cautiously, and bites down on his tongue, denying the word brother to leave his lips, lest it only serve to stoke Cullen’s wrath.
“I did not know if you’d want to see me. That’s why I waited so long, why I laid the trail. I gave you the choice,” came the whisper, for Cullen was so close to him now, and the words were spoken like a secret between them. “And you came for me.” It was suddenly too much, and Kahraman dropped his gaze, fear blooming in his heart. But fear for what, exactly, he didn’t know. He’d faced death before undaunted. He’d been cut off and wholly rejected by the father he’d once idolised. But within the darkest depths of his fractured soul, he’d been lost since the day his father had wished him dead.
Perhaps he’d been foolish, been so desperate so as to see what was not there. But something in Cullen drew him, nonetheless.
But the question was, did Cullen feel the same? He’d called Kahraman ‘brother’, something that Kahraman had never been before. “Don’t you need me now?” The tremble in his lungs became evident with this exhalation, tremulous and tender. And, perhaps even more pressing a question; “Did you come to kill me, Cullen?” Like the mare in the dark grove of the Forest. There had been so much chaos then, so much noise. The meadow, in contrast, was so quiet. And to Kahraman, if the golden captain still had murder in his heart, the fog that shrouded them could swallow his body whole.
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