With muddied fingers, she drew back the black strands, revealing the scars that raked down the left side of her face.
“Though it looks similar, it is not Vela’s mark,” she said thickly. “I am not cursed.”
Of all people, this woman might know. If the Krimathean failed in her quest for Vela, she would bear that goddess’s mark—and be shunned by all. Driven from every village and city to live forsaken and alone. A woman to whom even a Nyrae warrior would not offer protection.
With the tip of her finger, the Krimathean drew a line down the outside of her cheek from hairline to jaw.
Relief lightened Lizzan’s heart. That line was where another scar would have been, had she borne Vela’s mark. So this woman must have seen it before. So many others had not. And Lizzan had often known the weight of the curse that she hadn’t earned.
She had been cursed. And shunned. But not by a goddess. Instead a bastard prince had been the one to steal everything from her. Her rank. Her honor. Her heart.
Oh, and now that she’d thought of him, everything chafed again, and her sword thirsted for blood. For not all thieves skulked in the forests. Some lived in crystal palaces.
But if bandits were to ambush her here . . . they would serve as a fine substitute.
* * *
* * *
The ambush came not from bandits, but from Lizzan’s fellow travelers when the caravan stopped for a midday rest.
In a clearing bordered by a stream, Lizzan laid out her belongings to dry, then sought shade beneath a giant fern. Her head ached madly. The sun in this realm was never as bright as during a northern winter, where Enam’s glare upon the ice and snow dazzled and blinded, but the god’s eye burned so cursedly hot here that shade brought scant relief. And although she’d filled her flask with rainwater, every swallow seemed to immediately spurt from her skin as rivers of sweat, and her thirst never eased.
So it was there beneath the fern, in her barefoot and vulnerable state, that they ganged up on her in a party of three—an elderly woman, a younger woman, and a still younger man who was hardly more than a boy.
Through slitted eyes, Lizzan watched them approach. No fear did they seem to have of the disagreeable scowl she wore—and no respect did they seem to have for the sheathed sword lying across her lap. Probably because they were all under the protection of a Krimathean warrior who could crush Lizzan’s skull between her bare hands.
In truth, it was only because of the Krimathean’s presence that Lizzan had allowed herself to be in such a vulnerable state. Now she prepared to be ousted from the caravan despite the law of the road. Many ways there were to make a person feel unwelcome, until leaving a place was not forced but the person’s own choice. Lizzan was familiar with most of those ways.
She sneered at most attempts to oust her. Unless her presence made these travelers feel unsafe.
Never could she stay if they did.
Under the bright sun, the older woman’s snow-white hair was hard to look upon—and too similar to everything that Lizzan had left behind, yet would not lie still and unremembered in her mind.
Instead Lizzan focused on the other woman, who resembled the elder so fiercely that a family connection could not be mistaken. Solidly built, she wore her brown hair plaited into a simple braid that draped over her shoulder, with sweat-dampened tendrils curling at the edges of a round face. Her pale green tunic and loose brocs appeared homespun, yet lighter and of finer quality than Lizzan’s linens—and though more of her brown skin was covered, the woman seemed less discomfited by the sweltering heat than Lizzan was.
She carried no weapons. Lizzan suspected she didn’t need them. When the procession had passed earlier, this woman had walked near the head, and she had the air of a leader who could rouse a village—or a caravan—to action with a few words.
Years past, that was the sort of woman Lizzan dreamed of becoming—though she would have led an army, not a village. But that dream was dead. As were her soldiers and any future she’d once imagined.
Now Lizzan silently returned the woman’s regard, chin lifted and her scars partially exposed, daring the woman to shun her for them. The Krimathean had already accepted Lizzan into the caravan. Only if