Chapter 7
By the time we reached the other end, I was shivering.
Stepping into the watery sunlight did nothing to warm me.
In the open air, the wind brushed icy fingers over my wet face and clothes, numbing the skin it touched; water dripped from my wet hair into my neck and ran in chilly trickles down my spine.
Riding was going to be very damn unpleasant.
I’d do it, of course – for Lark, I’d do it – but—
‘Where are you going?’ Durlain snapped behind me as I plodded out and into the valley on my soaked leather boots.
‘Elenon?’ I turned, teeth gritted to keep them from chattering. ‘Or did you change your mind about …’
I stopped talking.
He wasn’t even looking at me.
Two steps from the cave entrance, he’d come to a standstill and let go of Smudge’s reins.
The unnatural sheen of his hair was twice as strong now that his curls were gleaming with humidity, sticking to his translucent skin in a shimmer of otherworldly purple; his equally wet trousers clung to his thighs, revealing the contours of the same muscles I’d spent the whole day pressed against.
And his fingers – scarred, tense, jittery fingers – were fighting with the buttons of his long black coat.
Was he undressing?
Here?
‘Um,’ I said.
‘Turn around.’ It came from between clenched jaws. ‘I’d like to change in peace, please.’
‘But—’
‘Turn around.’ He didn’t wait for me to oblige before stripping off his coat, flinging it into the grass, and continuing with the dark shirt beneath. ‘And get into something dry yourself, for hell’s sake. You’ll come down with a fever.’
The first buttons at his collar sprang open as he spoke.
Beneath, the ragged edge of another glittering scar appeared, stretching across the full breadth of his throat.
I shouldn’t be looking. I was a traitorous little wench for looking, for allowing my eyes to linger on that bloodcurdling sight for even a single heartbeat; what the hell was I thinking, letting Lark down like that?
But it was brutal, that scar. Brutal, and yet so strangely delicate, crystalline like morning frost on a windowpane – standing out against the pale expanse of his neck like a cruel but precious piece of jewellery.
Durlain’s hands slowed.
Only then did I realise what I was doing.
I swivelled around before he could part his lips again, face burning with shame.
The sight of that tangible savagery remained, branded into my mind’s eye.
Someone had slit his throat. Which shouldn’t be such a shock – he had been murdered, after all – and yet the thought of someone killing ice-cold, black-hearted, razor-sharp Durlain Averre like a pig to be butchered felt utterly …
Wrong?
He wasn’t made for a small, quiet death, the bastard undressing behind my back. He was the sort of man to die in storms of fire, taking legions with him in his fall.
Which was, presumably, why his brothers had forgone the legions altogether and trapped him in his rooms instead.
The rustle of cloth over skin behind me was deafening. I swallowed something thorny and trudged towards Smudge, taking painstaking care to never turn my head anywhere near the direction of Durlain and his— Hell, would he be naked by now?
Why did I care?
He was nothing but a tool to me. A necessary evil, a companion I only tolerated because I had no other choice …
and yet the knowledge of his presence was a burning itch behind me, the unbearable awareness that while I was not seeing him, he might very much be seeing me, and even worse, he might be seeing me while naked.
Fucking nonsensical.
I hadn’t slept enough last night.
Biting down a curse, I reached Smudge and found the bags on her back opened already.
Durlain must have taken out some dry clothes before me.
The ones he’d gotten for me in the Ash and Elm had been packed at the top, which was helpful: fine linen trousers and a blue woollen tunic that was slightly too large for me, although nothing my belt couldn’t fix.
I had to look a little longer to find a pair of socks, then bundled everything into my arms and marched for the cave, which was dark and damp and blissfully devoid of fireborn arseholes.
Durlain’s sigh of vexation was unreasonably loud behind me. ‘You could also just ask me to look away.’
‘You kill women in their own damn beds,’ I yelled back, aiming the words at the empty air before me rather than his own, potentially naked direction. ‘Didn’t know you’d draw the line at ogling?’
No reply followed. Good.
I scurried around the first bend in the tunnel, then untied my knives and stripped down to my undershirt, which was clammy but at least not fully soaked.
The back of my old tunic was dryer than the front.
I used that to squeeze water from my hair until it was no longer dripping, then shimmied into the dry clothes and armed myself again.
An operation of three minutes at most, yet it felt like an eternity without the weight of the blades on my waist and shoulder.
When I returned to the mossy valley outside, a fire was burning on the rocky ground.
Durlain’s black clothes lay around it, steaming slightly in the heat.
Why he’d been in such a hurry to get them off him was anyone’s guess, because he didn’t look particularly hurried now, sitting on a boulder nearby and chewing idly on a piece of bread; maybe he’d simply disliked being too cold to draw fire.
His dry shirt had been buttoned as high as the other, hiding the scar on his throat again. Only the frayed cracks on his fingers remained, glittering in the dim sunlight.
‘Time for lunch,’ he said absently, as if our last exchange hadn’t contained accusations of murder.
I arranged my own clothes around the fire as well, then took a chunk of bread from the linen bag beside him and sat down near the fireborn flames, revelling in the warmth. That might be the one thing I missed about Mount Estien – not being cold all the time. The rest …
It took an effort to be here again, in this nameless valley, and shut out the memory of what had happened to the desperate deserter who’d been hiding in it.
A shiver trailed down my back. No use in thinking about that now, damn it – I no longer needed to be that violent creature, that harbinger of doom Aranc had made of me. I’d run. I’d gotten out. I wasn’t going back.
I might as well pretend those hadn’t been my hands at work.
The sun had drawn past its highest point when our clothes were finally dry enough to pack them with the rest of Durlain’s belongings.
He rearranged the contents of his bags quickly and efficiently, then raked a hand through his dark hair – failing to create a result even slightly less ruffled than before – and said, ‘How long from here to Elenon?’
‘Three hours. Maybe four.’ I scrambled to my feet. ‘Depends on the state of the roads.’
He nodded, no response. I took the hint and mounted once again.
Off to Elenon – one of those cities of which I didn’t even know the old Seidrinn name, the populace having eagerly embraced their fireborn provosts long ago.
The bastards had gotten rid of the town’s witches, after all.
Who cared about hunger and arbitrary violence so long as there were still people treated worse than you?
My fingertips brushed over Ehwaz’s hilt.
Then Uruz’s hilt. Isa, Kaunan … Last time Lark and I had passed through the city, three witch corpses – or what little remained of them – had dangled from the city gate.
Rotting finger stumps, mutilated faces …
and that urgent, bottomless fear clamped around my heart again before I could stop it, the movements of my fingers turning suddenly frantic.
Had I truly checked whether I had all of them?
I might have left one of the blades in the cave after changing.
I might not have tied the knots correctly.
One of them might just come loose and fall during our ride to Elenon, and then I would surely never find it again – one more time, then.
Ehwaz, Uruz, and fuck, Durlain was already sitting down in the saddle behind me, reaching for the reins …
‘Wait.’ He’d think me insane. Perhaps he already did – but I had, had, had to check, the anxiety roaring in my gut a physical ache now. Let him laugh. Let him mock me. ‘Wait, I need to make sure …’
His hands fell down again.
Ehwaz. Uruz. Isa. My fingers flitted from knife to knife; my breath was quickening, the tension cold as sharp steel in every muscle of my body.
Had I really, really made sure they were there?
Perhaps I’d just wanted to believe I’d felt them in their sheaths.
Perhaps I’d mistaken something knife-shaped for my actual knives, and I’d find out soon that I had in fact lost them while eating lunch. One more time, then, and—
‘It appears to me that you’ve got all six of them,’ Durlain said behind me, slowly.
He wasn’t laughing.
He didn’t even sound faintly amused.
It was that surprise, more than anything else, that had me stiffening, thoughts swinging out of whack between one knife and the next. ‘What?’
‘Your knives.’ He shifted in the saddle, as if to take a better look. ‘That’s what you’re checking all the time, isn’t it?’
So he’d noticed before.
Shit.
‘I try to be careful with them,’ I bit out, the sharpness of my voice unable to cover up the gaping lie beneath.
Careful meant not going for a roll in the mud with blades on me, or not dangling them before the eyes of pickpockets.
It didn’t mean checking them every three minutes and then not believing my very own senses; the man sitting behind me had to know that as well as I did. ‘I’d hate to lose them.’
He gave a soft hmm. ‘Are you in the habit of losing weapons?’
I blinked.
No. No, I wasn’t.
Eight years since Kjell’s death. I’d been chased and captured and sent all across the kingdom time and time again, and I hadn’t lost a single one of the blades he’d made me. Then again …