Chapter 13 - Glory
Glory
XIII
Alone in my tent, listening to the fire crackling outside and Cammon moving around as he got ready for bed, I searched through my pack for my flask. My terror while I’d dangled over that spike pit had drained me, and I needed a pick-me-up to prepare for tomorrow. That had been too close.
What had Mage Tersey been thinking, creating a trap like that? What would be left of the glade? How many other unsuspecting travellers would take an unexpected tumble, unless it closed in on itself after a while?
I made a note to flag the problem to King Evaniel the next time we were in contact, but I’d have to wait for him to check in.
He’d been clear about the two occasions to message him: when I found the amulet or if I discovered it didn’t exist. My priority had to be finding the next landmark.
For so many more reasons than I’d let myself believe when we’d started out.
Cammon’s questions about my mage status had reinforced how much I stood to gain by succeeding.
Not only to keep my vampiric half hidden, but also to keep my magical workings to myself.
The demon was correct, of course. The king had hinted more than once that in the case of war, I would be expected to stand at his side.
But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wasn’t a fighter, especially not when tapping into the depth of one half of my power left me open to revealing the other half.
Even if I believed His Majesty’s spymaster—and maybe His Majesty—already knew my secret, King Evaniel wouldn’t be able to dismiss the truth if it came to light.
He would need to get rid of me to prevent causing a panic or setting a precedent.
Yet more reasons to keep my secrets around this demon.
The rush of today had pushed me to be a little more lax with my answers than I otherwise might have been, but I couldn’t continue like that.
Cammon was more dangerous than I’d realized.
His show of indifference—his seeming lack of interest in me or my life—had made it easy to be honest with him when he’d asked about my magic.
A return of openness after he’d shared something about himself by revealing his wings.
A secret for a secret. Now we could go back to not talking about ourselves.
And yet I couldn’t stop thinking about those wings, so strong and so beautiful, and the way the black feathers had caught the sunset, flashing gold and red with every beat.
I’d read about some demons having wings—and horns and tails and scales and all kinds of things—but I’d never seen anything like the swaths of darkness that had sprung from his back.
It made me wonder what other secrets he was keeping.
My skin flushed, and I rubbed my sternum to assuage some of the heat.
This demon was everything my parents, Ashara, and society had warned me about.
He was fire, luring me in to touch the flame, and I’d underestimated the effort it would take to keep my distance.
I had to remember what he was: a demon, a rogue. He was not to be trusted.
I wouldn’t give in.
But maybe I could allow myself to admire the view.
Dangerous waters, but today had taught me that out here we were walking through dangers anyway—I had to be ready to confront them.
I slept through the night for the first time in three nights, waking up with the rising sun.
Cammon was already awake, of course. I was starting to suspect the demon never slept.
He’d already found a river to bathe in and gather some water, but this morning he’d brought enough back for the both of us, his thoughtfulness more than a little surprising.
Packing up my tent was a much less arduous affair today, and the sun was just streaming around the thick tree trunks by the time we sat around the fire. A small pot of tea sat steeping, and we readied a light breakfast while we argued over the next clue.
“I still think this reference to ‘rapid ruins’ points to Fadley Falls,” I said.
“And I still say that interpretation ignores this reference to the collapsed church bells, which clearly points to the old Timpany Chapel over here.”
My finger and Cammon’s were divided by a good stretch of map, with no overlap in route. I silently cursed and read through the clue again. The wording was too vague to be useful. There had to be some subtext we were missing.
Across the rapid ruins lies the fourth remind
See the collapsed church bells and there the clue unwind.
Cammon was right—the forced rhymes were a hindrance. If we were dealing with earth-opening pits filled with spikes, I would have much preferred more clarity in Tersey’s words of guidance.
“‘The fourth remind,’” I quoted with bitterness. “Do you think he had to try to sound so pretentious, or did it come naturally to him?”
Cammon laughed, the sound so genuine and deep it vibrated across my skin, and my nipples hardened. Traitorous nipples.
“I thought you liked this guy,” he said.
“I respect him. I admire him. But at the moment, I wish I could throttle him. Remind is a verb not a noun. It’s like he wasn’t even—” The word trying faded on my lips as my eye fell on the notation for an old mine on the map.
I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was reading it correctly, then buried my face in my hands. “We’re doing this wrong, and he’s a bastard.”
“Explain?”
I looked up with a sigh and dropped my finger to a spot between the locations Cammon and I had flagged. “We were both right, but if we’d chosen one or the other, we would have gone well off course.”
Cammon followed my finger. “The Dryna Mine?”
“Re-mined,” I said slowly, showing him the play on words.
“I never would have picked up on it if I hadn’t read his private journal.
It was an abandoned mine back in his day, so I can only imagine the state of it now, but he was fascinated with it.
The ore they dug out of there had magical properties, and he relied on it for his potions until the country overmined it.
” I looked at Cammon and found him staring at me. “What?”
He blinked and gave his head a shake. “Nothing. You were saying? About the mine?”
He redirected his attention to the map.
Something in the way he hadn’t said what had caught his attention made my stomach flutter.
I tucked some hair that had fallen free of my bun behind my ear.
“Just that if we look at where the mine is on the map, it’s almost dead centre between the river and the chapel.
In fact, we’ll be travelling parallel to the river until we get there.
I wonder if the mention of the bells is a clue about where we should be looking around the mine.
Maybe there’s a view of the chapel?” I chewed on my lip.
“If I’m wrong, at least we’ll be equidistant between our other options. ”
Cammon drew his finger along the route we’d have to take. “We won’t make it there today. Sometime tomorrow if we keep a good pace and get far enough tonight.”
After such quick success finding the first three signposts, the stretch was disappointing, but it also reassured me we were going in the right direction.
Blue Harbour was a few weeks away. If we ran out of clues too early, we’d be lost finding the last ones.
Better if they were spaced out, even if it meant we had to stare down some empty days.
“Well, then,” I said, rising to my feet and brushing off the back of my skirt. “We might as well get started.”
Cammon raised an eyebrow and pointed at the fire where our tea and food were still warming up.
I cleared my throat and dropped back down. “After breakfast.”
I’d fully intended on walking apart from Cammon as I’d done yesterday.
Anything to discourage more soul baring.
We were only four days into our journey.
If I couldn’t last longer than that before his demonic influence pushed me to be comfortable with him, I would stand no chance for the remaining twenty-five or so.
Yet by midday, I found myself walking almost by his side, attempting to match my stride to his as motivation to keep my tired legs in motion.
“This road is better maintained than I thought it would be,” I said to myself as we rounded a corner and took in the neatly trimmed grass on either side of the road.
“Evaniel takes great care with his country,” Cammon said.
“I’ll give him credit for that. It benefits him, of course.
It’s not like the man is altruistic. But this is the fastest route to Blue Harbour, so it’s popular with merchants and tradesmen.
Which is why I’m hoping we’ll be lucky and manage to swing another night at an inn somewhere along the way. We can restock at the same time.”
I cast him a narrowed side-eye. “Why are you so familiar with the inside workings of my country?”
Cammon laughed. That sound again, like fire wrapped in honey.
It dripped through me, pooled within me, and my body longed to respond to it.
I had no idea what was wrong with me. Just because he was more attractive than any man I’d met before and had the passion of an academic did not erase the fact that he was an emotion-devouring, charming, vice-ridden demon. I needed to regain control of myself.
“Don’t worry, Buttons, I’m no spy. There’s no Karhasian scout waiting for me to report back. I know because I pay attention. I take these roads for my own purposes, and I like to know who or what I might meet out here.”
I peered over the field to my right and the trees to my left.
His reminder about the possible threats in these woods sent a chill through me despite the warm afternoon.
“What sorts of creatures have you encountered? Anything that should keep me awake at night?” I did my best to hide my nervousness, though there was no point.
The emotion eater would taste it anyway.
He looked at me with a grin, his white teeth wolfish.
“I won’t let anything sneak up on you in your tent, don’t worry.
” His eyes flashed with satisfaction when I scowled, then his flirtatiousness disappeared.
“I’m sure there isn’t much out here you don’t know about.
We’re skirting shifter territory right now, but in my experience, as long as we leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone.
Do you have any experience with shifters? ”
Mostly what I’d read, but I didn’t tell him that.
“I’ve dealt with their representatives a few times when they came to the palace, but they keep to themselves for the most part.
Communities spread throughout their territory.
” Like demons and pretty much any species other than vampires, they were tolerated in the city, even though they were notoriously temperamental and in moments of extreme emotion were likely to display traits of whatever their animal happened to be.
I tried not to let the hypocrisy bother me.
The only group of shifters not welcome were mutts—shifters stuck mid-shift.
Most of them leaned towards their animal forms but either by hereditary quirk or some physical or psychological trauma, they were trapped in between, with all the worst aspects of their animal instincts on display, like an exposed nerve.
I’d never encountered one in person, but from everything I’d read, they were nightmares made flesh.
“Not unlike the vampire furies out here,” Cammon said, and cold fingers brushed the back of my neck.
“Vampires?” I asked, trying to keep my tone professional. “They’re outlawed in Golthwaine.”
Cammon sneered. “Of course they are. The monarchy couldn’t risk having too many dangerous species walking the streets—why not pick one at random to ban?”
I blinked, surprised by his response but not fooled into opening up to him. “It wasn’t random. There was a rise in vampire-related crimes. They couldn’t be controlled.”
The look he gave me was scathing. “You really are the king’s woman if you believe that.
We watched it from Karhasan. There was too much fear about humans being outnumbered by the other species, and Evaniel’s grandfather closed his eyes and pointed a finger at his options to make a point and keep the rest in line.
” He shook his head. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter.
The odds of us coming across a remote fury along our planned route are slim.
As for where we are, the shifters keep the area clear of pretty much everything else.
If we’re unlucky, we might bump into a giant or two, but at least they’re huge.
We’re not likely to miss them and can make a tactical retreat without having to engage. ”
He was right that none of this information was completely new to me. Still, the thought of sighting a giant was enough to make me surreptitiously check over my shoulder.
We walked a while longer, and with every step, I swore I found evidence of danger hiding in the shadows: eyes peering from among the trees, the piercing shriek of a bird of prey, a creeping vine snaking across the path.
There was a smell in the air that tickled my nose, something that reminded me of wet animal.
If this was how the outdoors usually smelled, I didn’t feel I’d been missing much.
“Why are you here anyway?” I asked, mostly to take my mind off the possible enemies lurking out of sight but also because something he’d said had caught my interest. Damn demon.
“You say you don’t have any demons waiting for you back home, yet you don’t seem to have much love for our king.
And if the rumours about you are true, you don’t spend a lot of time at your estate, usually off seeking one treasure or another, so it’s not like you fell madly in love with Golth. So why are you here?”
At the faint stiffening of his shoulders and the tightening of his jaw, I regretted asking.
“None of my business,” I said. “You don’t owe me answers, and frankly, I don’t want to hear them. As you’ve pointed out many times, you’re here to help me and that’s the extent of it.”
I pressed my lips together to cut off my babbling, but after a few beats of silence, Cammon’s shoulders dropped.
“It’s fine. I’m used to people knowing so figured you’d already heard the story. After all, how could I keep it a secret that I tried to kill the demon king?”