Chapter 14 Moab
Moab
The cold made itself a third presence in our cell, biting through the thin wool of my jacket and clawing up from the stones until Scarlette and I pressed so close that we seemed to merge at the shiver.
The iron bars of the cage divided the moonlight into a crosshatch of white and blue, painting us in stripes like animals bred for the torch.
Her hair had fallen loose hours ago and now stuck in sweat-tangled ropes to my neck, my cheek, the corner of my mouth where I tasted the smoke from distant, dying torches.
Scarlette’s foot was a fist of bruised blue, the flesh around her ankle angry and swollen.
I had done what I could, torn my own shirt for bandages, tried to keep her moving to stave off the numb, but by now the damage was setting like concrete.
If they planned to walk her to the pyre, I figured they’d get half a girl, the rest left in red streaks across the yard.
She pressed her forehead to the crook of my arm and whispered, “It’s almost midnight.” The words came out in bursts, each one hanging in the chill air before fading. “They said they would light the stake at sunrise. Three more dawns. Maybe less.”
I tried to keep my voice level. “We’re not dead yet.”
She barked a laugh against my skin. “That’s optimistic. You always like to lie to a dying girl?”
“Only when she wants to hear it.”
I felt her smile, the curve of her cheek flattening against my muscle. She looked up, eyes ringed in shadow, lips split where someone’s gauntlet had connected earlier. “They’re building it now, you know. The pyre. I can smell the pitch on the wind.”
She was right, the whole night reeked of resin and damp straw, the kind of preparation that took pride in its work.
“I should be afraid,” she said, her voice thinned by hunger and cold. “I thought, if the end came, I’d find a way to make it noble. But I’m not. I just want to run. I want to run, and take you with me, and never stop.”
She shivered so hard it rattled her teeth, and I pulled her closer, arms wrapped around the soft bone of her ribs. There was nothing left to do but hold on.
After a while, I said, “If we got out—if the world let us slip through—I could take you back. To my time. It’s not much, but they don’t burn women for speaking their mind.”
She turned her head, her cheek pressed flat against my shoulder. “Would they burn you? For what you are?”
I considered it. “They’d probably just shoot me. Or put me in a box. But I could keep you safe. At least, for a while.”
Scarlette’s fingers, cold as ice, trailed the inside of my wrist, tracing the blue of the veins, the callused grooves where I’d broken my hand too many times to count. She said, so soft I almost missed it, “I love you, Moab.”
I heard it like a punch, but softer, almost apologetic. I didn’t know if she meant it or if she just wanted something to say before we died. I wanted to return it, but the words tasted wrong in my mouth. I’d never been good at feelings; I always let my actions do the work.
So I lifted her chin with my thumb, forced her to meet my eyes in the patchy blue of the moon. “You mean it?” I asked, voice ragged. “Or are you just trying to make a nice story for the priests?”
She smiled, slow and sure. “I mean it.”
I pressed my forehead to hers, letting the heat of my breath mingle with hers in the cold. “I love you too, Scar,” I said, and it was the truest thing I’d spoken since I’d landed in this godforsaken century.
She melted into me, her lips dry and cracked but insistent, kissing me with the desperation of someone who knows the clock is ticking.
That was when I heard the scrape. Not boots, too light for that. Slippers, maybe, or bare feet. But someone was coming, and they wanted us to know.
I held up a hand, palm out, and Scarlette fell silent. The footsteps paused just outside the torchlight, shadow elongated against the stones.
The voice that came next was a ghost, cracked and old but unmistakable. “Scarlette.”
Scarlette’s head snapped up. She squinted, tried to peer through the dark, but the torch glare blinded her. “Mother?”
The shadow drifted closer, resolving into a woman shrouded in black. Her hair was hidden beneath a kerchief, and her hands were gloved in silk. She held a ring of keys that clattered against her palm with each trembling step.
Lady Elise of Ashburn was not the kind of woman who risked herself after midnight. Even in the half-light, I saw her eyes, clear, cold, the same color as Scarlette’s, rimmed in red.
She pressed herself to the bars, the keys rattling in her grip. “I cannot watch them burn you,” she said.
Scarlette reached through the bars, her fingers scrabbling for her mother’s. They met, knuckles white, shaking with the effort. “Mother, you shouldn’t be here,” Scarlette whispered, voice desperate. “If Aldric finds out—”
“I don’t care about Aldric.” Lady Elise’s breath steamed in the cold. “He’s a butcher and a fool, and your father is worse. I have failed you so many times. I won’t fail you now.”
She fumbled with the lock, her hands shaking so bad the keys jangled a warning into the night. I kept watch over her shoulder, expecting a guard to round the corner at any second.
When the first key missed, she cursed under her breath. The second jammed halfway in. The third finally turned, the lock giving with a wet, metallic groan that echoed off the stone.
I heard boots, then—a real threat, coming from the barracks at the far end of the yard. I grabbed Scarlette’s arm and hauled her upright, adrenaline burning away the pain for one brief second.
Lady Elise pulled open the cage, the hinges squealing like a pig at slaughter. “Go,” she hissed.
Scarlette nodded, but tears streamed down her cheeks. “Mother, come with us.”
“I can’t. If they see me gone, they’ll sound the bell. You have minutes, no more.”
I looked at Lady Elise, really looked at her, and saw her for the first time. The set of her jaw, the battered pride in her posture, the way her eyes flickered from Scarlette to me and back again, memorizing every detail. She had the look of a woman who’d decided, finally, to do what mattered.
I nodded to her, a soldier’s nod. She nodded back.
Scarlette clung to her for a heartbeat longer, then let go. I half-carried, half-dragged her out of the cage, down the row of empty cells, past the racks of old, splintered weapons. The air was thick with the smell of wet stone and mold and, underneath, the tang of fear.
Behind us, Lady Elise rattled the cage shut, then melted back into the darkness, her footsteps already erased by the pounding of our own.
Scarlette stumbled, her ankle buckling. I caught her, slung her arm over my shoulder.
The echo of pursuit was growing louder. I could hear voices—one, then two, then a full bellow from the night guard. “They’re gone! Cage is open! Raise the bell!”
We hid beneath a planked walkway. Above us, I heard boots, the clash of swords as they searched the yard.
We crawled, hands and knees, down the sloping tunnel beneath the walkway until the voices above faded. My knees bled, but I kept moving, dragging Scarlette with me until we hit a grate, rusted half-through. I kicked, once, twice, and it gave, dropping us into a ditch behind the manor wall.
We lay there, side by side, gasping for air. I could taste her blood in the dark, could feel her heart hammering against my chest.
I touched her face, wiped the mud from her cheek. “We made it,” I said.
She nodded, and this time, she did laugh.
Behind us, the bell finally rang, a single, desperate cry that was swallowed by the cold.
We ran blind, the only light coming from the torches behind us and the feverish gleam of the moon.
The world outside the cell was colder than I remembered, the wind straight off the ice, slicing through whatever courage I’d worked up in the dark.
Scarlette’s breathing grew ragged within a dozen yards.
The mud sucked at our boots. She stumbled, and I half-lifted her, arm banded across her ribs, feeling the tremor of each breath and the way she tried not to whimper.
Lady Elise suddenly appeared behind us, her silk slippers no match for the frost-slick stones. She kept pace through grit alone, lips pressed into a thin line. Every time we hit a patch of light, she hesitated, searching for eyes at every window.
We slipped along the wall of a large house, ducked through a broken gate, and found ourselves in the main courtyard. The ground here was chewed to mud, the air rank with the piss of livestock and fear. The pyre—Scarlette’s pyre—loomed on the far side, stacked so high it blocked out the stars.
Scarlette tensed at the sight. I squeezed her shoulder, then steered us left, where an old orchard edged the property, the trees all bone-white in winter. There was cover, but it was open enough to see the guards moving by the outer gate, three of them, spears at the ready, bored or drunk or both.
“Now,” I whispered, and we ran for it, the three of us a single, gasping animal.
The grass was slick with dew, the ground turning from stone to frozen turf. Lady Elise’s slippers lost purchase, and she nearly went down. Scarlette caught her hand, yanked her upright, and we kept going, hearts hammering in sync.
Halfway to the treeline, a shout split the air. The guards at the gate, finally seeing the shapes darting through moonlight. A man bellowed, “Halt!” in a voice too practiced to believe in mercy.
We ran harder. I could hear the snap of pikes, the crunch of boots in mud.
The orchard was close, so close I could smell the rot of last season’s apples and the old, slow-burning wood of the caretaker’s hut beyond.
My lungs ached, but the animal in me was wide awake, counting every stride, every heartbeat.
That was when I heard it. The low whine of a drawn bowstring. The cut of air as the arrow flew.