Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
“ W here have you been? ” Luther thundered.
I didn’t answer at first, too winded from running for my life and scaling the steep dunes with an overloaded rucksack.
“Getting dinner,” I wheezed out, strolling down the village road to where Alixe and Taran stood beside an absolutely apoplectic-looking Luther. My nose wrinkled as I looked up at the pinkish-purple sky. “More like breakfast now.”
I set down my pack and a fish-laden spear, then unlaced the rabbit carcasses I’d hung around my neck.
Luther took the rabbits and glared at them like he might raise them from the dead just to have something to kill. “Where did you get these?”
I leaned forward to rest my hands on my knees and panted to catch my breath. “I went hunting.”
“Where?”
I didn’t answer.
His voice went low and soft. “Diem, tell me you did not go back to Arboros alone.”
“I didn’t go alone.” I straightened and laid a hand over my heart. “Blessed Mother Lumnos was right here with me the entire time.”
Taran edged away from Luther. Alixe sighed and rubbed her temples.
“What were you thinking?” Veins throbbed along Luther’s arms, his eyes simmering. “We’ve been looking everywhere. We thought you’d been captured—or worse.”
“I left a note.”
Taran waved the scrap of paper I’d left folded on my pillow. “Believe it or not, ‘ If I’m not back by dawn, go to Umbros without me ’ didn’t ease a lot of concerns.”
“And you took the compass,” Luther snapped.
“If I hadn’t, you would have come running across the border after me.”
“ You’re fucking right I would have! ”
Alixe eyed him with a frown, then looked at me. “How did you get there without being seen?”
“I figured they’d only have a man or two on watch at this hour, and they’d likely be focused on the dunes, so I went to the coast and swam in by sea.” I shrugged. “They never even knew I was there.”
The tiniest little lie. Insignificant, really. A fib too trivial to even be worth correcting.
“Why didn’t you take one of us with you?” she asked. “We could have helped.”
“You were on watch. Taran can’t get in the seawater or it will infect his wounds.” I tipped my head toward Luther. “And he would have said no.”
“ I should have been the one to go,” he growled. “Alone.”
I leaned over and grabbed my pack to hide my rolling eyes, then brushed past them as I strode toward one of the larger houses. “I needed some hard-to-find items,” I called out over my shoulder. “It would have been too difficult to explain.”
They followed me in and crowded behind me, watching as I dumped the contents of my bag onto a table and began sorting the food from the herbs.
“Besides, I work faster and quieter in the forest on my own.” I flashed what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “Trust me, I was safer going alone.”
“You shouldn’t have gone at all.” He slammed his fist into the table with such force it split a crack up the center of the wood. “ It should have been me. ”
I jumped at his outburst. His body was quivering, his shoulders high and tight. His features could have sliced bone with how sharply their edges were honed.
I’d known Luther would be upset, but this—this was something more than anger. This was something primal, something desolate. The darkness shadowing his face was unlike anything I’d ever seen in him.
Judging from the apprehensive looks on Taran and Alixe, neither had they.
I took a step back. He flinched, regret peppering his features.
He leaned his palms on the table and closed his eyes, hanging his head low. His shoulders rose up and down in a slowing pace until he spoke again, his voice quieter. “I’m sorry. I’m not angry—not with you. But you should not put yourself in danger like that. You are the Queen.”
“Yes, Luther, I am the Queen,” I clipped. “If I want to risk my life, that’s my decision to make. I’m sick of being treated like a flower to be fenced off from any stomping feet. That’s not who I am, and it’s not the kind of Queen I want to be. I’m not planning to sit on a throne and look pretty, I’m planning to fight. I thought you of all people understood that. I thought...” I swallowed. “I thought you believed in me.”
“I do,” he said, almost inaudibly. “I always will.” He took a slow, trembling breath, still refusing to meet my gaze. “I was supposed to be around to protect you.”
I grabbed a mortar and pestle from the kitchen. “Things are only going to get more dangerous for me, and it won’t stop when we’re back in Lumnos. The Guardians want me dead, the Twenty Houses want me dead. Maybe even the Crowns, too. Every day will be a new threat to my life. You can’t shield me from that, Luther. You won’t always be there to — ”
Luther shoved off the table and pushed past Alixe and Taran, throwing the door open and disappearing into the street.
The three of us stood in silence and stared after him, the swinging door still creaking on its hinges.
Taran scratched his neck. “I’ll go talk to him.”
“No,” I said firmly. Our narrowed eyes locked in a battle of wills. I pointed at a chair by the table. “Sit. Queen’s orders.”
He grumbled and slumped into the chair.
“Alixe, do you mind cooking the meat?” I asked. “We don’t have much time before we need to leave.”
“As you wish, Your Majesty.”
The cold formality in her tone wounded me, though I couldn’t fault her for it. Concealing my plans from her had been a show of distrust. It would take time to earn back the inroads we’d made as friends.
I’d known my choice would have consequences with all of them. I just hoped the payoff was worth it.
Alixe left, and I busied myself grinding the herbs I’d collected and mashing them into a paste.
“Tunic off,” I ordered to Taran.
He huffed and ripped his shirt over his head, stuffing it into a ball and flinging it across the room.
“Now remove your bandages. Gently .”
As he pulled away the bindings, I walked to a closet and grabbed a clean linen robe, then laid it out on the table and began cutting it into strips.
I shot him a glance. “I said gently, Taran, or you’ll make them wor— shit .” I sucked in a breath as my blade slipped and sliced through my palm. Bits of crimson blood dripped into my bowl.
“Wonderful,” I muttered. I hadn’t gathered enough of the herbs to waste them remaking the batch. I knotted a strip of linen around my cut, then did my best to scoop out the blood-tainted sections.
“This might hurt,” I warned as I pulled up a chair in front of Taran and began to spread the poultice across his wound. He gritted his teeth, staring straight ahead with no response.
Was this better than Alixe’s distance? Worse than Luther’s fury? Taran already felt like I’d betrayed him with the Guardians—what if this destroyed any chance at mending our bond?
I drooped at the thought as I took another handful and smoothed it over his inflamed skin.
“You did it for me, didn’t you?” he mumbled.
I looked up at him, but his gaze was still fixed in the distance, guarded and unhappy.
He jerked his chin toward the wound. “You did it because that’s getting worse.”
I grabbed a fresh batch of linen and packed it on top of the poultice, then wrapped it around his shoulder to hold it in place.
“We needed supplies for the journey,” I said.
“ Bullshit . Even mortals can survive without food for a few days. If it wasn’t for this, what did you get that was so important?”
I had no answer to give him. I reached for his second cut.
“Tell me the full story,” he demanded. “The real one. Not the lie you gave them about how easy it was.”
When it came to Taran, I had nothing left to lose. With our friendship so fractured and his life on the line, perhaps truth was the balm we both needed.
So I told him—how I’d tied up a stack of metal plates, with a candle burning beneath the rope, and how the eventual clattering fall had distracted Alixe and Luther long enough for me to escape unseen.
How I’d buried my clothes in the sand and waded so far out into the frigid sea that the shore nearly disappeared.
How I’d swam an hour down the beach, then hunted in the woods, naked and shivering, too afraid that dripping clothes would give me away. How I’d been forced to come back over land to avoid ruining the herbs with saltwater.
How I almost made it past the Guardians unseen—until a poorly timed sneeze forced me to run for my life while black arrows rained down on my head.
Though he gave no response, I noted the softening of his features and the small twitches of his lips at each absurd predicament or ballsy risk.
When his wounds were fully tended, I slouched back in my chair. “Well? Are you going to forgive me, or should I threaten to tell Luther you gave me the idea to go alone?”
His azure gaze thinned. “You wouldn’t dare.”
I crossed my arms with a savage smile.
“Fine. I forgive you. But I’m not sure Lu will. He got that I’m-going-to-murder-someone look again. It was even worse than after the island.”
“He worries too much.”
Taran snorted. “Have you met yourself? There’s a lot to worry about.”
I smirked. “Just get better, will you? Making him mad was a lot more fun when we did it together.”
Despite my smile, a gnawing regret warned that I might have finally pushed Luther too far. He’d been stormy and withdrawn since leaving Arboros, and I’d been so focused on Taran’s injuries that we’d hardly spoken. With his dearest friend’s life in the balance, perhaps he was nursing wounds of his own—wounds I’d just poured salt right into.
I sighed guiltily and scooped the remaining herbs back into a dry pouch. Luther needed me, and he needed to know I was safe. There was little I could do to give him that comfort—especially here, especially now—but for him, I had to try.
As I turned to go check on Alixe, Taran grabbed my wrist, and our eyes met.
“Thank you, Diem. I’m too selfish to say I wish you hadn’t done it. I hope you know I would have done it for you, too.”
“Then prove it,” I said, a spark of challenge in my tone. “I faced death for you and lived .” I gestured to his wounds. “Time to return the favor.”
His face gave way to a feral grin, that inveterate cheekiness I adored returning once more. “Anything for you, Queenie.”