Chapter 39
“She needs time to absorb and process—”
“Bastion?” A soft, gentle croak. “Bas?”
The vespertine leader whirls around to his sister’s half-open eyes and outstretched hand. He grabs it with a joyful cry and kisses her wrist.
My breath whooshes out. “She’ll need plenty of rest. I’ll take Quin and be on my way.”
Bastion’s head snaps up.
His men close in on us.
I hoped things wouldn’t turn out this way, but I expected they might. “Breaking your promise?”
“I’ve never cared for rules.”
“Quin, now.” I hold my breath as Quin clouds the air with the sleeping drug he’s made.
Within moments, the slumber descends, and Quin and I make a hobbled escape. We haul in air the moment we’re outside, sneak through the shadows to avoid a patrol, and make for the downhill slope leading to the next farm.
We catch our breath in a dilapidated stable, the smell of mould and hay mixing with our exhaustion. “They won’t stay sleeping long,” I murmur, trying to steady my racing heart. “We have to hurry.”
The crunch of boots on gravel sends a jolt of panic through me.
I shove Quin and myself behind the hay, heart pounding in my throat, the smell of damp straw filling my lungs as I press him into the narrow space.
The steps grow louder, the straw scratching against my skin as I shift to peer through the window above Quin’s shoulder.
A patrolman’s shadow stretches across the frame, his hand curled around a readied whip.
I duck against Quin’s chest and his arms come around my waist, holding tight.
We wait like this for a long minute before I dare to shift, and even then, I move slowly in case the rustle should give us away.
When it feels quiet enough, I prop my chin on Quin’s shoulder and check outside again.
I wriggle closer to get a better look into the distance. Clear.
Quin’s heartbeat is suddenly harried against my chest and my pulse hitches. Is this position paining him? I try to read his pulse, but he shifts his wrist purposefully out of reach.
“You don’t have to act tough for me,” I murmur.
“Not acting . . . tough. Hurry.”
“We’re good. Wait a few moments to be sure.”
He leans hard against the wall and our bodies graze as we quietly collect ourselves. We slip out from behind the hay, the cool air hitting us as I search for the parcel I stashed here before heading to the hideout. I hurriedly unknot the cloth. “Strip.”
“Excuse me?”
“Clothes off, quick.”
“Did I get knocked out along the way?”
I toss fabrics at Quin and skate my hands under his cloak, over his shoulders to push it off. “Not a dream. The farmer should be carting down the road any minute now.”
Quin eyes the fabrics and me over them, and with a grimace, changes into skirts, gloves, and headscarf. Our eyes meet; he shakes his head at the quiet amusement he must read in mine. Yet, he continues to let me lead this absurd act.
I prick my finger and run the red over his lips, grinning at his unfathomable stare. “Pretty. When the wagon stops, I’ll introduce you as—”
“Your sister?”
“—my mother.”
His mouth works hard to hold back words.
I pull him, limping, out the door, and stop, shaking my head. “We need a legitimate reason it’s hard for you to walk.” I cock my head, scrolling my gaze up and down, and—“got it.”
I stuff Quin’s cloak up his skirts to his belly, making it swell. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Quin grumbles but doesn’t fight. I wrap an arm around him and we make for the road.
“Keep your head down,” I murmur, and halt Farmer Georgos and his donkey trundling along the gravel road with their cart of chopped wood. “Please, will you give us a ride into town? My wife’s struggling with her labour. I’m a healer, but we need to get to the apothecary.”
Georgos casts his eye over us. He seems to sense the waves of pain pulsing from Quin; his gaze drops to my hands, one of which is supporting Quin’s waist, the other rubbing his swollen belly. “She’s not your wife. You’d be wearing rings.” He starts to move on. “Consider this your fate.”
Quin grips my wrist that’s around his waist as if to say forget it, but I have no other way to get us to town without causing him unbearable pain. “Wait—”
The farmer pauses.
“We’re from the south, we don’t use rings—we exchange tokens.” Quin keeps his head bowed but turns to me, the heat of his gaze tingling on my profile.
I lift the silver clasp on my cloak for him to see. “Inscribed on the back by Sacran Kyrillos himself.” The farmer’s eyes widen, clearly impressed.
“And hers?” he points a finger at Quin.
I catch my breath, hesitate. What could—
Quin lifts one of his delicately gloved hands and pulls out his flutette. My grip tightens on his waist and slinky shivers scuttle through me. I raise my chin and meet the farmer’s eyes. “I exhausted all my magic making this token.”
“Give me your tokens and I’ll take you.”
I stomp forward, kicking up gravel. “You’re out of your mind. It’s just a ride.”
“Nothing free. One token.”
Quin strokes his fingers along my wrist: calm. Calm? It’s a ten-minute ride in the direction he’s headed anyway. “I’d rather carry my wife than let you touch our tokens.”
“Suit yourself.”
Quin clears his throat demurely and I throw up a frustrated hand. “I don’t care we’re being chased by vespertines. Romantic principles first!”
The cart is moving; I chase after it, Quin wincing along. “Wait, wait.”
The farmer stops. He holds out a hand for one of our tokens and I’m torn between a snarl and the urge to hurry Quin onto the wagon. I dip my finger into my belt and extract Nicostratus’s golden feather.
Quin hisses, “That’s your real—”
I grip him and he silences. The golden feather falls from my fingers to the man’s palm. “I will buy this back from you later.”
The farmer’s eyes light at the sight of gold, calculating how much I’ll buy it back for, and he cheerfully agrees.
A pang of guilt twists in my stomach as the feather disappears into his belt.
That feather is special, a symbol of Nicostratus’s affection.
It was too easy to hand over. Quin’s reassuring squeeze does little to ease the twisting.
I can’t shake the feeling I’ve just done something I can’t take back . . .
Quin clasps my hand and urges me into the cart, atop the wood. Absentmindedly, I pat the bump of our make-believe child while the farmer whistles all the way to town.
I’ll get the feather back. I will. I have to.
As we near the town, I notice how the villagers’ eyes dart to the dispensary before quickly looking away, their faces pinched with worry. A woman clutches a small pouch of herbs tightly to her chest, glancing over her shoulder as she hurries past. Something feels . . . off.
But the way Quin keeps looking at me is more off.
“What?” I finally say after we’re dropped outside the inn.
“Why?” Quin asks.
“It was the only option.”
“You could have given him your clasp.”
I grit my teeth. “You told me never to give it away. Besides, it would’ve alerted him to our act.”
“He would’ve only assumed we were desperate.”
A flare of frustration has me close to letting Quin hobble inside on his own. “What if they had been our real love tokens? Just hand them over? No way.”
Quin studies me, and I growl, “If you hadn’t left without me . . .”
“Think that all the way through, Cael.”
If he hadn’t left without me, we’d both have been captured. Myself, possibly killed in the ambush. No way could I duck all those whips.
I deliberate on this as I take him inside and lead him to my room. When he’s stripped out of his disguise and is resting on a stool, I quietly take off his boots and infuse strong pain relief through his acupoints.
I briefly close my eyes. ‘You will drag me down.’ He hurt me so I’d want to leave.
I set down his foot gently.
He reads my face, every inch of it, and his jaw twitches. “Seeing you and those vespertines . . .” He huffs out a sudden laugh. “But what was I worrying about? You are phenomenally smart—” I preen, and he glowers “—at weaselling your way out of trouble.”
“You—” I flick his thigh all the way to his hip.
He captures my hand. “You saved me. I owe you.”
I slip my hand out from under his and stand. “Owe me so much, you’ll never push me away again.”
I leave him contemplating that and return with food and drink. I make him eat every crumb and send him off to bathe. Something perhaps I ought to do too.
I grab clean clothes and follow a few minutes after. He’s immersed in steaming water, arms outstretched along the rocks, head thrown back towards the sky. Peaceful, quiet.
The air is cool around me when I strip, and I quickly hop to the other side of the bathing pool and leap in with a splash.
Quin jerks his head up and spots me waist deep and wading towards him. He thrusts up a hand in a spray of water. I halt. “Out of my bath.”
“It’s communal.”
He swims to the adjacent side, further away. “From now on, I have a rule. Only the person I give my lovelight to may share the bath with me.”
“But—”
The set of his face tells me he means every word.
“It’s not like I haven’t seen—”
“Out.”
Alright, alright. I flee and return to the room damp. Neither of us mentions it when Quin returns later in fresh clothes.
I pull out the wanted poster, studying it before holding it up against his face. “Why is this picture better?”
Quin’s withering stare makes my insides prickle.
“Ah, that’s why.”
“Give it here,” he demands.
I tuck it away. “What will we do about redcloaks? Our vespertine friends? Megaera?” I cast my eye towards the skirt, gloves and headcloth.
Quin steers my face in another direction.
“You need a disguise!”
“As much as I enjoyed being your wife, any closer inspection and we’d be caught.”
“Let’s get my feather back and run away.”
Quin opens the traveller’s chess set I saved and pours river water from it into a teacup. “You’re forgetting we have no money.”