Page 28 of Sands of Atonement

“—good to see you again.” He patted a man on the shoulders. “I hope to see you more often.”

“As do I,” the tall, bald, middle-aged man responded with a large grin on his face.

I lowered my hood.

It was him.

I took one step, but then stopped. My heart squeezed. I left him… and here I was fighting the urge to run back to him, if only for a moment.

I let out a breath and entered the tavern.

“Salazar,” I said with a thick emotion I couldn’t recognize.

Salazar spun at the sound of my voice, and his face softened the moment he saw me. “Eshe.”

He hadn’t called me by my name since I was sixteen. He wrapped his arms around me, and I could feel a pressure rising in the back of my throat. His embrace was warm, and my hands grabbed onto his back, not wanting this to end.

“Salazar,” I repeated with incredulity. Pulling myself back to look at his unharmed but sunburnt face, I asked, “What are you doing here? Tell me you didn’t…” I swallowed the pressure down. He never came this far south. “Tell me you didn’t come here for me.”

Salazar turned for a moment and nodded at what looked to be his old friend before the man left us alone. His brows knitted at me. “When you left, I knew where you’d gone—what you were planning to do, and Eshe, I’m telling you⁠—”

“I won’t hear it,” I snapped, pulling myself from the safety of his arms.

“No, but you must!” Salazar insisted. “Come, sit with me. I’m tired. I’ve been traveling for too long to start arguing with you right now.”

We both walked through the quiet tavern and sat at one of the corner tables where no one could hear our squabble.

“How are you?” I asked, peering over the coffee that the innkeeper had brought over.

Salazar sighed. “Worried. Worried and tired.”

My lips twitched. “I didn’t ask you to follow me here. I knew there was a fifty-fifty chance, but how could you not go back to little Tarrie and Bea?”

“How could you leave me—us?” Salazar threw the question back at me.

My jaw tightened. “Because I needed to do this for my family.”

“Tarrie has Bea, unfortunately, she’s used to me not being around for work, you know that,” he said with a deep sigh. “What did I tell you about starting a new family? A family that loves and cares for you? Revenge is never the answer. I thought I taught you better than this. Learn from history. Learn from others. Don’t do whatever it is you’re thinking, Eshe.”

“Mara,” I corrected him, refraining from rolling my eyes at how petty I was being.

Salazar gave me a blank stare.

I gave him one back.

“What?”

“Did you hear what I said?” he asked.

“I did, and I will not listen to you. It’s my choice. I’m not doing any of this for myself, to make myself feel better or to feel like I’m righting my family—no. I’m doing this because it must be done. For them. Not for me. They deserve that.”

Salazar’s throat moved.

“Come on, Salazar. You couldn’t possibly have thought I would change my mind after all this time, did you?”

He shrugged and stared emptily at the table. “I hoped.”

“There is no hope for me. I signed my death with God eight years ago. When they died…I died.”