Character Collage | Cain

Cain is one of my very favorite characters to write in the Dominions series. He’s just…a really good guy. One who saves kids lost in the desert. One who dares to defy his powerful father. One who keeps his zariphate of Wanderers safe by providing them water thanks to his Hylorae power. One who is all things laughter and teasing and loyalty and at the same time is a serious, fierce warrior and leader. In many ways, Meren would be better off if she ended up with Cain. I’m sure he’d agree with me. 

Small Teaser: Cain will play an even bigger role in The Shadows Rule All!

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EXCERPT

“Let her go,” another familiar voice, deeper than the last time I saw him, commands from behind the well.

Cain.

He steps closer, the moonlight illuminating his face, and I blink. Lately, whenever I see him, I’m surprised. I can’t help it. I guess I keep expecting to find the same boy I saw every few months growing up—gangly and scrawny, with a head too big for his shoulders and coltish legs he hadn’t known what to do with.

But that’s not who he is anymore, and it hasn’t been for a year or two.

Laughing eyes, nearly onyx-colored in the night, are wide-set under a strong forehead. An even stronger jaw. Skin burnished by the sun to a rich, coppery-bronze, darker than his sister’s. His form has filled out, broadened, and no doubt hardened under the looser clothing of the wandering desert peoples.

Made of cloth the exact hue of this region—sand the color of oats—the clothes blend Cain’s silhouette into his surroundings. It’s difficult to see where one layer ends and another begins, but I know the outermost layer hides razor-thin armor strapped to his legs, torso, and shoulders.

The knife is removed from my neck, and the scout steps away. He pretends not to recognize me as he disappears into the desert, even though I know he does. Everyone in this zariphate knows me.

After all, as the zariph’s son, Cain is next in the line of succession. Kind of like me, but legitimate. Which means people tend to keep an eye on who he spends time with.

He winks, and I try not to laugh.
Pella’s expression, meanwhile, curls into a scowl. She really would be strikingly beautiful if she’d stop doing that with her face. I told her that once. She didn’t take it as a compliment—even a backhanded one.

I blow out a silent breath and turn my back to her. I used to understand her attitude. Wanderers are naturally wary of strangers. But after so many years of me hanging around, Pella should be over it.

“Why do you bother with her?” she asks Cain, then gives a little hiss of derision. “Caught like the ignorant city-dweller she is.”

If only she knew. In order to play the role I do in the palace, I’ve been educated the same as my sister. All the best tutors. Debates with philosophers and generals and government leaders. I’m the most educated waif in all of Aryd.

I wonder what the zariph would do if I knocked his precious only daughter off her horse with a rock?

“There’s only so much I can protect you from,” Cain murmurs as he steps nearer. Like he read my mind. “As much fun as your smart mouth is.”

Before I can answer, a tremor deep in the ground catches my attention. A good distance away, a tiny plume rises into the air. It could be a dust devil.

It’s not.

A zariphate of Wanderers, in number, is on the move and headed straight for the well. Still a league out at least.

Tracking my gaze, Pella suddenly sits straighter. “We’ll see what Father has to say about your sandrat,” she says to Cain.

“Sand snake, don’t you mean?” I glance pointedly at her.

Pella’s hand goes to the small, puckered scar on her lip that I can’t see but know is there. The last time she called me a sand snake, I’d cracked a whip at her. It was supposed to be a warning. It caught her in the face instead. I’m not all that great with whips. Can’t say I’m sorry about it.

Rather than pout, she grins at Cain. “Now that you’re to be—”

“Pella.” Cain practically growls the word.

His sister stares at him, all wide-eyed innocence, leaning forward to casually pat her horse’s silky neck. “If you’re going to be married, brother, I doubt your new heartmate will appreciate having her around.”

I’m instantly a confusing mess of emotions. But mostly, hurt rises to the top like curdled cream. He didn’t tell me.

“Go tell Father I’ve purified the well,” Cain says to his sister over my head.

“Yes,” I say. “Run on back to daddy, little girl.”

Hatred flashes through her eyes, but something else must pass between brother and sister because she huffs again, then turns away.

Leaving me alone with Cain.

I wait a beat before looking at him, searching his familiar face. The first time I ran away from the hovel, I was six years old, and Cain, not much older, found me parched and barely alive under a lone tree in the desert. His father managed to have me returned to Omma in Enora.

You’re lucky they didn’t force you into servitude, Omma had scolded me.

I wasn’t so sure “lucky” was the right word. Even at that age, being a servant who was wanted and useful sounded better than being what I was.

The second time I escaped—only a month later, thanks to the Hag turning a literal blind eye after I bribed her—Cain had been the one to find me again. That time, he’d taken responsibility for me, and his father hadn’t bothered to send me back. Cain promised to teach me to live and survive in the desert as long as I promised to only venture out when I could find him near this well, the one closest to the city.

I’ve worshiped the ground he walks on ever since. But if he got married? I would lose my friend. My only friend.

Cain studies me. “If I call you beautiful, will you cut out my tongue?”

I blink. He’s never said anything like that to me before. For the first time in my life, I’m tempted to put a hand up to check my hair, which only adds another layer of confusion to go with my dry-as-dust mouth and no doubt dirt- and sweat-covered face. I shift awkwardly. “Is it true?” I ask. “What Pella said, I mean.”

He grimaces. “She shouldn’t have told you that way.”

So, she wasn’t lying.

“You’re right.” I suddenly want to lash out at him. “You should have told me, Little Cainis.”

I regret it the second the words are out. Cain hates his full name, but even more, he hates the patronizing tag of “little” some add to it. His father, for whom he was named, is called Mighty Cainis and is the leader of the largest zariphate in Aryd.

Cain shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I was going to—” He cuts himself off and starts over. “Father wants me to make a political match with an authoritate.”

“Why?” My grandmother has been desperate to make an alliance with the Mighty Cainis for as long as I can remember, but the Wanderers have always spurned those who lived in cities.

“For access to resources,” Cain says grimly.

Resources? The zariphates are self-sufficient. “What could you possibly need?”

“The wells are starting to dry.”

Goddess, is that true? While the walls have kept out the Devourers, they’ve also kept in the intense heat of summer. The desert has been eating away at anything that had once been lush and green with a slow, unstoppable hunger, just as the decay has been taking over our cities.

Cain takes a deep breath. “Tomorrow we’ll travel to Oaesys to barter for my…bride.”

My mouth opens a few times without sound coming out. “You… You’re going to the palace?”

Where Tabra is. Tabra, who looks exactly like me. Don’t panic.

He steps closer, urgency in the tense motion of his body. “Yes. But it’s not what I want.”

I’m still stumbling over the whole palace thing. What if he gets a good look at my sister and puts it all together? Omma will kill me. Truly. Because if my secret is uncovered, my existence revealed, what’s the point of keeping me around?

Cain takes my hands in his. Touch in our dominion is important. Personal. All I can do is stare at our linked fingers. His are larger, stronger.

“Come with me,” he says.

I jerk my gaze up to eyes filled with a soft expression I’ve never seen before, not from him. Tenderness and a question I can’t possibly answer.

“Don’t go back to Enora,” he says. “Stay with the zariphate. And me.”

What is he asking? That I go to Oaesys with him? That won’t work on so many levels. I shake my head. “Pella’s right. If you marry, your heartmate won’t—”

“Meren.” He sort of laughs and groans at the same time. Then digs in the loose pockets of his clothes before holding out a bracelet. A cuff made of pure, gleaming gold with the symbol of a sand fox—Cain’s family sigil—etched into the center.

Oh.

Oh goddess.

“We could travel to the Sacred Tree, like we’ve always talked about…make our covenant there.”

I swallow. I’ve never even seen the Sacred Tree in Aryd, though Tabra got to for our sixteenth birthday as part of her entering the age of reason. But not me. It’s on the other side of the dominion and never stops burning. Cain and I have talked all our lives of visiting all six sacred trees of the dominions. Together.

But that’s not what he’s asking now.

My skin goes tight all over, like part of me wants to jump right out of it. This is Cain—my friend, my protector, my hero—who has taught me so much and always treated me with kindness. As an equal.

I know who and what I am, but he doesn’t. Even in the desert when I’m trying to escape my life, that knowing is there, under every move I make, every word out of my mouth. It has never once occurred to me that Cain could be more.

A different life. One where I’m not a secret, unwanted until I’m required to do my duty. One where I get to always be part of the desert that has felt more like home than the palace or the hovel ever did.

The life he’s offering is tempting, except for the odd, unsettled churning in my stomach. Even more unsettling is the sudden, sharp memory of turquoise eyes in the night.

I have to give him an answer. I have no idea what I’m going to say, but the hope in his eyes is tearing me up. “Cain—”

Shouts from the direction of the zariphate cut me off.

Cain jerks his head around.

The buzz of voices rises toward us like a swarm of locusts, followed quickly by the pounding of hooves over the hard sand nearer the wall. Pella appears out of the dark and reins sharply to a halt. “Cain!” she yells. “We are leaving. Now.”

He glances at me, then back to her. “Now? Before we’ve rested? Why?”

“The queen is dead.”

THE LIAR’S CROWN | THE STOLEN THRONE
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