No answer.
"What do they call you where you are from?" he asked.
Her wide eyes were starting to tear up. He shook her gently to keep her focused.
"I don't want to tell you now," she whispered.
"Why?"
"Because this isn't possible!"
"What is your name, witch?" he hissed, patience thinning.
"Naia."
Startled, he almost laughed. "'Twas the name of a great queen long ago." Any doubt he had about her destiny being there disappeared. His anger settled, but he was unable to determine why the gods sent her to him without training her first.
Naia. His amusement faded. She bore the name of the last great warrior queen, the only battle-witch in the history of the realm to become a queen, whose immense secrets were passed through the generations. The warrior-queen foretold the arrival of another like her, bearing her name, appearing in Black Moon Draw in time to save his people from great disaster.
Darkly, he admitted that this same witch was the one to place the curse on his family that he sought to break.
His battle-witch's eyes were wide, and she was trembling once again.
"How can you be named after a great queen and claim this is not real? Nay, witch, your world is the one that is not real," he said firmly. "At least, not now. Maybe when you left it, it was. But you are here now, and this - I - am real."
She shook her head, dropping her gaze to his chest. "It can't be." Her protest was softer, scared.
He was unaccustomed to dealing with such vulnerability from women or men. As much as he did not want to admit the truth in the face of his conflict with Brown Sun Lake, his battle-witch was nowhere near being prepared for war. Denial was part of it, but her gentleness was more dangerous. She was a lamb lost among a field of wolves, a woman unlike any he had met in his travels. She was certainly not of his realm, where the fight for survival hardened the hearts of children before the age of ten. He began to believe she was telling the truth, however outlandish, about not being of his world. Her smooth golden skin had certainly never known the whip of the slave traders from the edge of the world, and the tears she shed for his enemies were too far out of place.
He did not have forever to wait for her to be ready for an enemy like Brown Sun Lake. Why did he feel more of a connection to a witch that was not a witch than he had shared with the other witches? What would it take for her magic to work consistently, and in a way that helped him, rather than slowed him down?