Chapter 17
Durlain was nowhere to be seen when I emerged from my wardrobe-sized bedroom at sunrise, fully clothed and armed.
His bed was ruffled but empty. His bags had been packed and piled up by the still-covered mirror.
Next to the riot of flowers on the table, a plate of bread, cheese, and strawberries stood waiting for me, and next to it was an empty bowl which showed, unmistakably, some last traces of the hearty porridge it had contained.
Death’s balls.
There was not even a gloating note to point out the implicit message, and somehow that made the whole thing ten times worse.
‘Rat-hearted bastard,’ I muttered at the silent room.
Then I sat down and ate, because skipping breakfast to make a point back at him seemed as childish as it would be stupid.
I’d just stuck the last strawberry into my mouth when the sound of long, languid footsteps grew louder outside the door, morphing into Durlain’s crisper strides as the doorknob turned.
His face was an impassive mask as he slipped in, even his illusionary eye looking decidedly cold beneath his spelled eyepatch – no trace of last night’s vulnerability left on him, and nothing that suggested he would even dream of sacrificing his breakfast to accommodate unwelcome travel companions.
All the same, he had.
Perhaps even the prince of many faces got his masks mixed up every now and then.
Scowling back at him was my first instinct, but the lingering aftertaste of strawberries held me back. ‘Good mor—’
‘There are two men in Aranc’s livery downstairs,’ he said.
I froze.
The words echoed – two, three more times – before I grasped what he’d just said.
Aranc. In Brainne. His own men, at least, which amounted to the same thing – personal forces, direct orders, the sort of effort the Estien king only made for troublemakers truly igniting his ire.
See, my thoughts went, you knew from the start it was a bad idea to resist Valern …
and then I realised that did not make sense.
Because Valern had died last night.
And we were still two days away from Mount Estien.
So … they couldn’t be here for me, could they?
For us? It had to be some terrible coincidence – whoever were sitting downstairs must have been after someone else, passed through Brainne, and come to take a look when they heard of a court favourite’s death.
Aranc couldn’t know I was here. He couldn’t.
And yet—
‘Shit,’ I said, a good half-minute too late.
‘Yes.’ Durlain’s voice was too slow and too measured as he gracefully sank down on the edge of his bed. ‘I had the same thought.’
‘Do you … do you know anything else?’ I wanted to scream. I wanted to crawl beneath the bed and never show my face to the world again … but asking questions seemed slightly less likely to evoke any biting retorts. ‘What did those two men look like? I might know them.’
‘Green coats. Antler crests. One of them was small and blond and looked more like a pageboy than like a soldier, and the other—’
‘Tall,’ I finished hollowly. ‘Burn scars on his face.’
Durlain’s lips gave an unpleasant little twist. ‘Ah.’
‘Jay and Rook. Birds. They usually work together.’ I felt myself bending over, elbows landing unsteadily on my knees, face landing more or less in the palm of my hands. ‘Fuck. Fuck. Anything else?’
I all but expected he’d tell me to calm down before we could resume the conversation, but he continued immediately, with none of Lark’s gentle caution. ‘There might be more of them around. I caught a shred of conversation about someone they called Kestrel—’
My head jerked up.
My thoughts followed a moment later – an unending screech of no, no, no, no.
‘Are you sure of that?’ It came out on a choked, breathless gasp. ‘Are you very, very sure they said—’
‘Quite, yes.’ A frown slid across his shadowy features. ‘Bad news, I take it from that look on your face. Who is he? Kestrel?’
Nightmares.
My voice wouldn’t leave my mouth.
I smelled sulphur and smoke. Felt the blistering heat of Aranc’s molten earth on my skin, saw blood trickling from carved skin again. I’d tried so, so hard to run. Tried to get away from all of it, and here I was, here they were—
‘Thraga?’
Durlain suddenly stood half a foot before me, tall and foreboding in the dusky room – as if he’d materialised out of thin air in the shadowy morning light.
Gloved fingers locked around my chin, tilting up my head, forcing me to meet his narrow-eyed gaze.
I froze in place, realising only then my hand had tightened around Ehwaz’s worn hilt – my heart fluttering like a caged bird against my ribs.
‘We need to go,’ I squeaked over the rush in my ears, that deafening pulse of nothing but away, away, away. ‘Please. We—'
‘That’s clear, thank you.’ There was an edge of glass in his voice – something that could so easily have been annoyance, except that it was, somehow, the opposite.
‘And I’m not planning to linger a moment longer than we need to, but I prefer to know what we’re dealing with before it’s making earnest attempts to kill me. Who is he?’
There was nothing and no one I wanted to talk about as little as Kestrel.
‘Aranc’s worst,’ I choked out, because somehow that was easier than the whole truth – just facts, cold and impersonal. ‘If someone really angered him, if he really wanted to hurt someone, Kestrel was the bird he’d send to … to …’
Carved limbs. Rotting heads. A human heart, lying tattered and bloody before the dais of Aranc’s hall.
My chest felt too small for my heart, my lungs, my ribs.
‘Ah,’ Durlain said, lips curling softly around that single word. ‘Someone like, for example, a witch he considered his possession running off? I see.’
He didn’t – he really, truly didn’t. But I’d have to elaborate to explain.
I’d have to stop and dive back into that world of fear and bloodshed, face the memories crowding up on me, and hell have mercy, I had run.
I had run. It all lay behind me now, Kestrel, everyone else, Aranc and his gleeful savagery, and I was not going back.
Durlain knew all he needed to know.
What difference would they make, the agonising details of that history?
‘I don’t understand,’ I rasped instead, managing only with the greatest of efforts not to shrink away from that piercing one-eyed gaze.
He was seeing too much, the bastard. His gloved fingers were too strong against my skin, a dangerous parody of safety.
‘They must be here for us – for me – but it’s two days to Mount Estien. How—’
The fingers on my skin squeezed tighter, a last firm press, then let go. ‘It’s been three nights since we ran into Belloc.’
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
What had Durlain told Aranc’s brother? Colris, then farther east – which would have made Brainne the logical next stop on our way. So if Belloc had woken the morning after, suddenly remembered why he knew my face, and sent a raven to court right away …
Three nights. Two days. Aranc’s people could have arrived in the poisoned city just before sunrise today – travelling towards us, asking around for white-haired women and one-eyed fireborn men.
It fit too well.
And I … I was about to be worse than dead.
‘We need to go.’ I stood before I knew it; my hands moved without me moving them, frantic and unsoothable.
Ehwaz, Uruz, Isa, and fuck, even if I had a thousand knives, they would not make the visceral horror of the memories any less real.
‘We need to go right now. Did Jay or Rook see you? If we take the back door, they might not notice until we’re out, and then … then …’
Durlain didn’t move.
His gaze lay fixed on me like an anchor.
‘Come on.’ My voice cracked. I wanted to shake him – wanted to punch him until that beautiful fucking face of his showed at least a tenth of the panic spreading like wildfire in my guts.
‘They’ll ask around. Rook always finds out everything, and then they’ll come for us – then the whole city guard may come for us for all we know!
Why aren’t we grabbing our bags yet and—'
‘Because I’m thinking.’ The minuscule lift of his brow was a warning. A challenge. An invitation, almost. ‘Someone needs to.’
I gasped for breath. ‘You pox-ridden—’
‘I know, Thraga. I know.’ He prowled closer without a sound, dark boots gliding like shadows across the floorboards. ‘I’m a swine. We agree on that point. Can we discuss our plans now, or do you prefer to waste more of our precious time with this aimless panicking?’
It wasn’t even a sneer, exactly.
It was just … a question.
I gulped down another lungful, felt the cool of the air in my throat. Kestrel, my thoughts still whispered, away, away, away … but even in this restless, jittery state, I had to admit that wasn’t quite a strategy, exactly.
Shit.
So much for keeping myself alive.
‘Sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean—’
His dark brow nudged up another fraction. ‘And I’m sure I mentioned once or twice how much I dislike unneeded apologies.’
My mouth fell shut again.
He didn’t move – towering over me in a way that should have been threatening and felt like the safest thing in the world instead.
In the pale morning light, his narrow face was all sharp-edged cheekbones, all soft-arched lips.
I could distinguish the traces of my witchcraft from so close, the illusion lines that marked the shape of his spelled eyepatch – his false eye strangely empty, the other twice as alive to compensate, flecked with purple and brimming with a bottomless focus that sent my guts twisting in almost-pleasant ways.
The five spots where his fingers had pressed against my skin felt cold and exposed.
But my heart was slowing down, flutters solidifying into firmer beats … and something curled around his silky lips, a smile that didn’t contain any acid or murder, none of his icy Niflheim cold.
‘Excellent,’ he muttered, finally stepping back. ‘Plans, then?’
Lost for words, I nodded.