Chapter Nine
Piris
“This should do,” Jarok said, breaking the silence they’d walked in for what felt like miles. He’d looked back at her on occasion, pointed out snow drifts or other hazards, but he hadn’t spoken a word since he let the horses go. Not that Piris minded. A lot had happened, and having the time and space to run through it in her mind helped.
She’d killed a man. Sure, she’d fought before, but it had only been sparring. She’d not been in a real fight against an opponent bent on hurting her, unless she counted her first encounter with Jarok. She didn’t. Even when they’d fought before knowing one another, there had been a difference, a way the prince moved against her. The threat of hurt had been there, but never the threat of death or other, more vile things.
The fact was she was a trained fighter, but never a tried fighter. She’d had no opportunity. Piris had been hidden away—at the understandable request of her parents, given her magic—spending any fighting time sparring with her father and his guards or training on her own. Her fight with Jarok had been her first real-world experience, but there was a mountain of difference between what had happened between her and Jarok and their encounter with the Benders earlier.
She didn’t regret what she did, killing the Fae. Didn’t mean she experienced some sick joy in taking another’s life. In the moment, she’d known it was her or him, and her training had kicked in, seeing her through. Her father would be happy about that at least, when or if she told him.
Still, blood had soaked her hands until she’d stooped outside the clearing, picked up a fistful of snow, and rubbed her hands together to clean them. After wiping the remnants on her traveling dress, they were better. Colder, but not near as bloody. Except it lingered in spots, under and around her fingernails, and in other places snow couldn’t quite reach.
Pushing herself to focus on the here and now instead of earlier in the evening, she looked up and noticed the intense frown on Jarok’s face. She’d say he worried for her if she didn’t know better. The prince would never worry over her, even if they’d shared a few lust-filled moments before a life-and-death fight. Too much picking and bickering existed between them for him to worry over her.
She arched a brow at him, hitching a hip as she did so in her best attempt at cool and collected.
Jarok took her in, head to toe, blinked at her blankly several beats, and gestured up with his hand. “We’ll stay here for the night.”
“Here” was a giant fir tree, its base branches spread out in dips and folds, stemming from a surprisingly narrow trunk given the number of heavy branches it supported. The thing was beautiful and massive, stretching out at least twenty feet around and towering high above them, reaching so far into the inky night sky she couldn’t see the top.
“How, exactly, are we staying here?” Dubious, Piris stretched her neck around dramatically, looking this way and that in an exaggerated manner to make her point.
“Don’t worry,” Jarok said, his cocky smile set.
Her dismissive snort sounded even more harsh in the cold, quiet air of the wintery night, so she intentionally turned her tone warmer. “All I do is worry.”
“Same, Piris. Same,” he muttered back, a flash of something she didn’t recognize in his eyes. “For now, however, follow me.”
He jumped on top of a low-hanging branch, all nimble limbs and solid footing himself, much like the tree. When he reached back to help her up, Piris was already climbing without any aid. She followed his lead, as he’d asked, step for step and jump for jump, until they reached a rather large branch about thirty feet above the ground. The needles, crowded in thick, stung her face, and the smell of pine and sap seeped from every corner of the tree, lingering heavy in the air.
Jarok pulled himself up to the larger branch with a soft grunt, swinging his leg around it so he straddled the thing, and a flash of memory shot through her mind of how it’d felt to have him straddle her in the inn. With no time for such thoughts, she made to follow. He was firmly planted, so she had to take his hand, the familiar zing of contact with him something else she ignored so she could get a good grip on the trunk.
Piris moved to swing her leg over as well, to face the prince several feet down the limb, but he stopped her, taking her firmly in hand and planting her between his legs. She stiffened, asking, “Is this necessary?” with a touch of breathiness she wished would stay locked down tight.
A hand shot out from behind her, gripping a rope. “If we’re spending the night in the tree, we need to secure ourselves. Just in case.” He moved again, his head brushing her hair as his breath whispered across her ear. “So, yes. We need to be close.”
A shiver rushed through her, but she managed to tamp it down before she embarrassed herself with how much his touch affected her. She shrugged, all uncaring and indifference, as he chuckled to himself. She opted to ignore it.
What she couldn’t ignore was the way he worked the rope around them. He wove it like an intricate tapestry, cinching her tightly to both him and the tree branch. Layering it so there was pressure and assurance but no signs of pinching. Piris wiggled, trying to gain room even if she didn’t necessarily need it, and a gruff command came at her from behind. “No. Stop moving.”
She stopped, though she was uncertain why. She also didn’t argue. Maybe because the feel of Jarok’s warmth at her back and the security of the tight rope around her thighs and torso caused her muscles to lose some of their usual tension, melt and relax. Piris leaned into it, leaned into Jarok, and decided as they were stuck in a tree for the night, she might as well find comfort where and how she could.
“Good girl,” he whispered from behind her as he made one final knot in their bindings. Her mind wanted to snap at him for it, but something deeper inside made her pause, so instead she pretended she didn’t hear him. Opting for feigned ignorance over acknowledgment or confrontation worked better then.
A few minutes passed, enough for Piris to drift closer to sleep, when Jarok spoke. “How are you?”
“The rope is fine,” she said.
“No. I know the rope is fine,” he said, so sure in his use of it. “How are you feeling? After everything.”
His voice drifted off, asking her to fill the stretch of silence. She didn’t at first, not wanting to expose herself to him. Yet he knew a bit of what she felt. Had to. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to give him this, a piece of shared experience neither could deny.
Her voice sounded clear to her ears, though a slight vibrato creeped in where she was usually so steady, enough of a tremor she noted it and was certain Jarok would too. She hoped he wouldn’t comment, though, and would just let her get it out.
“I killed a man. He was going to kill me, or you, but instead I killed him. I’m not sorry I did it because the alternative… I am sad I was forced to do it.”
“All warriors go through this at some point. The first person I killed was in a battle between two Winterlands clans. We’d been called to mediate, but the battle raged before we got there. I was twenty, so young and new, and within the first five minutes of being on the battlefield, a Fae man came barreling at me, blade high and eyes narrowed. Targeting me. My hand shot out on instinct, with the same sword you used today, and cut him clear across the belly. A hard death, and not pretty. Not that any death in battle is pretty.”
“He was someone’s son. Maybe a husband or father or brother,” Piris said. She didn’t clarify she meant the man she’d cut down, but Jarok understood.
“He also made a clear choice to follow a rebel and attack two fighters,” he countered. All true, but it didn’t ease the guilt over what consequences might stumble down to others because she’d killed the man.
“It was very different. Not the action itself. That was all instinct. The feelings after. They were very different than I imagined.”
“They always are,” Jarok whispered, and he moved to wrap his arms around her from behind, bringing some of his warmth around her at the same time. She allowed it, leaned into it even.
“Next time…” She stopped herself. Gods, she wished there were no next time, but with the Benders clearly following them, it could not be guaranteed. Plus, she wouldn’t be completely honest with herself if she didn’t admit the fighting thrilled her… caused adrenaline to course through her veins. During the fight, her world focused, narrowed, and despite the consequences, she’d never felt more alive. Never felt so useful, which was something rarely offered to Fae ladies in any realm.
“Next time I’ll be ready,” she said, though she was uncertain of that as well.
Jarok didn’t correct or counter her assertion. He squeezed her middle and leaned his head down to hers, as if resting there, cheek to crown. Piris closed her eyes, not to fall asleep but to quiet her mind as best she could with the prince all around her.
Piris floated in warmth, the scent of pine and sap, wind and clove, surrounding her. She breathed deep and shifted her back against the cushion behind her, snuggling deeper into whatever was making her toasty and happy. Then a shout sounded, startling her awake and straight into mortification.
“You two finished up there?” Gem yelled from the ground.
Piris blinked, sleepiness and comfort fleeing in an instant. Jarok, the warmth at her back, chuckled in his annoyingly knowing and cocky way. “Sleep well, m’lady?”
She didn’t answer. Shoving away as best she could while still roped to the prince, she growled out, “Could you untie us?” with a great deal of snark.
More annoying chuckles. “Someone is not a morning person,” Jarok muttered, but he unwound the ropes, unweaving the work he’d done last night to secure them to the giant fir tree.
As soon as she was able, she leaned over deep, and Jarok shot out a hand to steady her. She didn’t think she needed it, so she elbowed him with one arm, looking down, down, down, at a grinning Gem far below. A Gem grinning up at them despite her arm in a sling.
“Coming,” she called, a touch too bright and chipper. More chuckles all around, this time from Jarok and Gem, as if it were some weird family trait. She scoffed and swung a leg over, ignoring Jarok’s protest for her to wait for him. Her limbs were a little stiff and tingling from being tied to the tree in one position for hours, but she was used to moving through pain and discomfort. Something her father had made sure she understood in all their training. She stomped hard on her feet as she planted them, forcing the sensations out and waking her muscles in quick succession. In moments, she was scrambling down the tree, following the exact path they’d used to climb the night before, her memory sharp even in the light of morning.
When she jumped down from the final branch and landed with a firm thud on the ground, Jarok was a split second behind, dropping in so close, he pushed into her space and grabbed onto her shoulders to steady himself. Piris shook his hands off and stepped to Gem. “Are you well?”
Gem shrugged her one good shoulder. “Will be. Those damn Benders and their bloody arrows. If only I had Ghel’s healing, this would be no issue at all.”
Jarok, who’d stood so close behind her she could feel the length of his body like a warm wall at her back, stiffened at Gem’s words.
“What happened last night?” she asked, wanting more information about the events after they left.
A crack of a twig made Piris shoot her eyes to the left, where Cylian and Darin stood. They definitely hadn’t been there a moment before, and as they could be silent when they wished, she knew they were announcing themselves.
Gem nodded at Cylian, whose mismatched eyes were tight at the corners. “Five Benders were killed, the rest managing to escape in the chaos. The fire was contained to the inn, but sadly, the inn was destroyed by the smoke. Thankfully no one else was injured.”
“The horses?” Jarok asked.
“Arrived late in the night and were taken care of by Nore,” Cylian said.
“What of Nore and the people around the inn? And the innkeeper?”
“All taken care of, Prince. I sent Nore back to the Winterlands Palace with a message so aid could be brought to the inn as they rebuild.”
Darin, who’d been standing stiff-straight and silent the entire time, visibly started, something Piris suspected was a rare occurrence for the assassin. He pushed his gray hood back, revealing the sharp planes and angles of his pale face and short crop of white-blond hair, looking from Cylian to Jarok.
“Good. Good,” Jarok muttered, mostly to himself, about what Cylian had done.
Darin continued to stare at the prince, intense and steady, and Piris’s hackles rose for a moment before he swept his eyes to her and she saw a softness there she’d never imagined possible. A light of something like wonder at what Cylian and Jarok had revealed about themselves shone in his green depths.
Piris of course knew plenty of history about the Springlands Court. Not as much as the Winterlands, which was her homeland, but enough. Her father thought it important for her, especially as their lands bordered the Great River, which itself was the border between the Winterlands and Springlands.
She knew the history of their monarchy on a cursory level and, more importantly, knew the talk of how the monarchs there, past and present, ruled absolutely and at their own whims, sometimes caring for their people and sometimes not. The sometimes was more often than not mandated by whatever advisers were in favor at the time, how cruel or capricious the sitting monarch was. From the astonishment Darin showed, she’d guess the monarchs cared little for helping their people.
She thought of Ghel, of King Frit and Queen Alene, of her best-friend-turned-Princess. Even of Jarok. Piris could never say these royals didn’t care for their people. She’d seen throughout her life, in small and large ways, their attempts to make the Winterlands a good place for all who lived there. It wasn’t perfect by any means, so few monarchies were, but they tried and succeeded in truly significant ways. She wondered what Darin had endured in his life, close to his monarchs, that made him so very surprised Jarok would be concerned about a coachman and an innkeeper. Sadness planted itself in her chest at the idea, and she felt a sort of thawing toward the assassin. Enough to make her more understanding about his behavior and intensity.
She also looked at Jarok, thinking of him and his family, giving him a smidge more grace than she had before.
Gem interrupted all these thoughts, coming up beside her and knocking her with her good shoulder. “Looks like we’re walking.”
“Huh?” Piris asked. She’d been so lost in her own thoughts, she’d drifted far from the conversation.
“Walking. To Volesion Peak. According to Cylian’s calculations, it will take us about five to six days if we don’t dawdle.” Gem picked up a pack from the ground and slung it toward Piris, who caught it with a grunt of surprise. It held her bedroll strapped to the bottom and was packed with supplies, including her fighting leathers and a few extra blades. “Hope you don’t mind me going through your trunks to get things.”
“Thank you,” Piris said, happy to see the leathers. She moved deep into the woods to change after letting the others know what she was doing. She wished she could burn the bloody traveling dress, but she opted instead to leave it where it lay. No need for it any longer or the odd reminder it would bring.
Coming back to her party, she adjusted the pack on her shoulders and said, “We head northeast, yes?”
Nods all around, and they moved in their small group, walking through the dense, cold woods, each step bringing her closer and closer to home.