Chapter 58
Chapter
Fifty-Eight
ALLIE
T he heavy leather satchel bounced against my hip as I hurried from room to room.
Mrs. Thornbrew had given me all the concoctions, herbs, and gauze she had left in her medicinal pantry, before rushing through the fortress alongside me and the healers.
We’d been doing this dance all night, checking up on them and praying when we thought nobody was listening.
The warriors’ wounds might not have been deadly now, but that forsaken passage ash had gotten into them.
I’d seen too many people laugh one day, then keel over, brought down by infections, and I was not losing a single life today.
When we’d arrived last night, in a flurry of shots and barks, they’d all been taken into rooms near the entrance, carried by their Brothers and Sisters.
I insisted they be laid on beds with freshly washed sheets, of which Mrs. Thornbrew had a neverending supply.
Apparently, she always boiled a new batch of sheets each time more than a dozen warriors left the fortress, even if just to visit the local bar.
“Drink always has the curse of firing up spirits,” she’d told me as we’d raced through the halls, carrying trays of foul-smelling tinctures to the wounded. “All of them have sharp weapons and fists they’re too eager to use.”
All of them had survived the journey back and the first night. It gave me hope in a time when it was all I could cling to.
Ryker was probably halfway across the continent, alone.
Dax’s palaver book, which I kept in the satchel, was deathly silent. None of my cousins had heard a word from him and nobody knew where he was.
Worry ate at my stomach and mind. It had kept me standing and rushing through the night, at least.
I headed toward Geryll and Nadya’s room once more. It had been a full hour since I checked up on them.
I barged in.
Death didn’t bother to knock, so neither did I.
Relief washed over me as I saw Geryll sitting up in his bed in the early morning light, offering me a faint smile–but then I noticed Nadya’s empty bed.
My lip parted.
“She’s gone out to get some fresh air,” he said quickly, cutting off my gasp.
“That girl,” I muttered, even as I thanked the gods for the stubbornness. It had kept her alive and probably would for a very, very long time. “Trying to give me a heart attack.”
Even as I said it, I felt thirty years older, like some concerned hen fussing over her brood.
But I didn’t care. I was concerned for them.
I might not have raised Nadya and Geryll like Ryker, but they’d nestled next to my heart. Even if they hadn’t, once I joined Ryker on the throne, I could become the ruler of this realm, responsible for all the lives within it.
“How are you feeling?” My tone softened as I approached the bed. Geryll needed a soft hand, both in sickness and in health. It was plain as day why Ryker wanted him to explore other options apart from the warrior line.
“Better.” Even as he said it, a cough wracked his body. All that ash had seeped deep into his lungs. “A bit better.”
He looked more alive, at least. The pallor in his cheeks hadn’t vanished, but the milkiness in his eyes had cleared.
“Let me see your leg,” I instructed, voice leaving no room for arguing.
Reluctantly, he shoved the perfectly pressed duvet aside. The gauze wrapped around his wound was untainted.
Good.
It meant his body was trying to keep as much blood in him.
I carefully unwrapped it, with a patience that felt very unfamiliar, but not unnatural. The bandage was reddened, but no sign of the ash or that dreaded green poison.
The tightness in my chest eased a bit. Geryll would be up and running in two weeks, if that.
“Mrs. Thornbrew told me this stings.” I dabbed a bit of the juniper-scented ointment onto a fresh bandage and gently pressed it against his wound.
Geryll’s entire body seized on contact. But he stubbornly clenched his jaw against the pain, gaze darting to the ceiling.
“You know why I talk so much?” I asked, not looking at him. Geryll felt like the type to bloom when attention wasn’t on him.
He shook his head.
“Better out than in.” I shrugged. “Keeping too much inside only helps the dark thoughts fester.”
Silence fell upon us as I continued to patch up his wound. Ryker had sealed it, obvious from the pink around the edges, but that damn ash and the rickety journey back had opened it again.
“I shamed my family,” Geryll said so low, I almost didn’t hear him.
But there was no mistaking the tension in his body.
“Geryll,” I began to chastise.
“It’s true,” he said stubbornly. But this wasn’t the kind of stubbornness which helped one survive; it was the kind that could bring only misery. “I hid behind my shield and the Commander had to save me.”
“Nadya had to save me. You think I shamed my family because of it?”
He shook his head quickly. “It’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because it was an exception for you.” He blinked rapidly and I knew he was fighting back tears. “It’s the norm for me.”
I sat down on the bed, careful not to jostle him. “You didn’t shame anyone, get that thought out of your mind. Courage isn’t only found in steel and on the battlefield. You need to listen to your heart.”
“I don’t know how.”
“You can learn. You can find your own way, just like I did. I’m no warrior, not really. I prefer to battle with my wits, not my dagger and I love it. You don’t love fighting. It seems to be making you miserable.”
“It’s losing that’s making me miserable.”
“We all lose at one point. Several, actually. It’s unavoidable.
What matters is what battles we pick to fight.
” I patted his knee gently. I wasn’t good at this whole sage thing–that was one skill I didn’t inherit from my father, sadly–but I was trying.
Awkwardly, but still. “And you didn’t lose. You’re alive.”
He shrugged, unconvinced.
“Don’t listen to anybody else, not even me, just yourself. Think about what you want.” I offered him a smile. “And look at it this way–you didn’t want to fight in that passage, did you?”
He hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.
“But you still did. That takes courage. I’ve seen warriors with a thousand battles won taken over by fear. This was your first real fight and you survived it. That is triumph.”
He shrugged again. “I guess.”
“We all need help sometimes,” I went on. “Don’t think any less of yourself because of it. Be happy you weren’t too prideful to ask for it. Now that is rare. It’s a lesson I only learned after coming here.”
His eyes finally met mine. “Really?”
“Absolutely. I was terrified people would think I was weak if I asked for help. And guess what happened after I started accepting it?”
“What?”
I leaned closer to him. “Nothing. I’m still the same, only happier. It really helps that Mrs. Thornbrew makes sure that I eat.”
Finally, a corner of his mouth ticked up. “She wouldn’t have let you leave the fortress without at least one bite.”
“No, she wouldn’t have. She’ll also have my head if I don’t let you rest.” I patted his knee once more and rose. “And Geryll?”
“Yes?” he asked hopefully.
“Whenever you need someone to talk to, I’m here. I know it might not seem like it now, but you and I are much alike.”
He scoffed. “You’re The Huntress. I’ll never see the day when someone would call me something similar.”
“Maybe you’ll see the day when people will know your full name and revere it.” I winked at him. “Adriana Vegheara is known in all of Malhaven, centuries later. She wasn’t a warrior, either.”
Until Geryll didn’t give me a full smile, I didn’t leave his room, recounting endless stories of Dria Vegheara.
I understood his ache.
The questions of not belonging.
The want for something more.
But greatness needed time.
Patience .
A lesson I still struggled with myself.
His half-smile stayed with me as I rushed down the empty hallway, which smelled of tinctures and ointments and herbs, but couldn’t completely smother the frantic worry.
I needed to let this energy out before I exploded.
My bow still waited by the entrance, discarded last night in my haste. If I’d been more rested, I would have felt ashamed. No fighter worth their daggers ever left their weapons unattended. At least I still had the dagger on me.
With some borrowed arrows in tow, I rushed out of the fortress, nodding at the guards. This time, they didn’t look at me with that same standoffish stare.
I missed a step as they bowed their heads my way as they did for Ryker.
Word about the passage light must have gotten out.
But I couldn’t relish the moment, worry suffocating me.
Even as my steps pummeled the frozen ground on the way to the archery range, once I’d breached the shade of the pines, away from prying eyes, I couldn't help myself and reopened the palaver book.
It was a compulsion at this point, one which left me barren each time, like these stubborn pages that refused to show me Dax.
Until Ryker came back, I couldn’t leave the crater. The passage had been sealed for anyone else.
But once he returned, I had to find a way to get hold of Dax.
March onto Aquila if I had to.
“ Please ,” I whispered in the wind, fingers tracing the blank pages. “ Just answer me .”
The book remained silent.
I closed it with a violent thud, as if it was to blame.
The truth was that the fault was mine alone to carry.
If I hadn’t asked Dax to infiltrate the castle, then–
A glimmer caught my eye in the distance.
A purple glimmer.
My heart hammered with the memory of the light refusing to let my power go. Of the suffocating passage which had almost claimed so many lives. The echo of the masks hitting the ground.
Was the light stalking me now?
It pulsed at the edge of the forest, beckoning me closer.
Last time it had appeared, it revealed one of those masked figures hunting me.
I cocked an arrow and rushed forward. As soon as it sensed me following, the light flickered up ahead, faster than ever.
Perhaps it sensed how tired I was and wanted to punish me.
Still, I followed, all of my senses on alert.
My gaze dashed between the trees the further I delved inside the forest.
No cloaks, no masks, no scent of rotting flesh.
The light raced further, drawing me past the edge of the city. If someone attacked me now, nobody could hear me scream.
I should have alerted the guards.
I’d just told Geryll it was okay to ask for help, yet here I was, ignoring my own advice–
As I breached the clearing, a bone-chilling roar stopped me in my tracks.
I turned around, arrow raised, only to see a massive troll lumbering toward me.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
The troll roared once more, shaking the trees and swinging its menacing mace around.
It opened its mouth, sharp fangs coming straight at me.
I pulled the string tighter, ready to launch.
I didn’t want to kill it.
Maybe if I hit its forearm, it would get spooked and–
As my gaze raced on its body with the training of a hunter, I saw blood coating its fur on the right leg.
I couldn’t see the wound, but it was obvious it was hurt.
My arrow shook against the bow’s string.
It barreled closed, quaking the ground.
I needed to decide.
Fast.
Then a voice I had been craving to hear broke the chaos. “Over here, you beast!”