"A favor, Captain," the shifter said to her.
Time. They did not have time--
"When I was seven, my older brother sired a bastard daughter off a poor woman in Rifthold.
Abandoned them both. It has been twenty years since then, and from when I was old enough to go to the city, to begin my trade, I looked for her. Found the mother after some years--on her deathbed. She could barely talk long enough to say she'd kicked the girl out.
She did not know where my niece was. Didn't care. She died before she could give me a name."
Nesryn's hands shook as she aimed the arrow toward the spider trying to edge past her burning sister. Sartaq warned, "Hurry."
Falkan said, "If she survived, if she is grown, she might have the shifter gift, too. But it doesn't matter if she does or does not. What matters ... She is my family. All I have left. And I have looked for her for a very long time."
Nesryn fired the third arrow. A spider screamed as it found its mark. The others fell back.
"Find her," Falkan said, taking a step toward the horrors churning below. "My fortune--all of it is for her. And I may have failed her in this life.
But not in my death."
Nesyn opened her mouth, not believing it, the words surging up--
But Falkan sprinted down the path. Leaped right in front of that burning line of spiders.
Falkan wept.
Put his head in his hands and wept when Nesyn told him what she suspected. She did not know much of Lysandra's personal history, but the ages, the location matched. Only the description did not. The mother had described a plain, brown-haired girl. Not a black-haired, green-eyed beauty.
But yes--yes, he would come. To war, and to find her. His niece. His last shred of family in the world, for whom he had never stopped looking.
