Chapter Twenty-three
THEA
A n ache formed in Thea’s chest as she tried not to stare at Wilder in the flickering firelight, his usually fierce features softened, a gentle smile lifting his lips.
He turned the first card over. Thea tore her gaze away from him and trained her eyes on her cards, but she could still feel him watching her.
She studied her hand for her highest card and placed it in the middle. Wilder did the same.
They placed cards down in silence for a few moments, waiting until a knave or fool appeared. It seemed to go on forever, and Thea used the time to wrack her mind for what she might ask him, what secrets she could tease from him.
But Wilder won the first round, which meant he took both cards and looked up with a cocky grin. ‘I believe I’m allowed a question, Apprentice.’
‘Get on with it, then,’ she said through clenched teeth. She hated losing. She should have challenged him to a game of Dancing Alchemists instead.
‘How did you become friends with Callahan and Kristopher?’ he asked.
Of all the things she had expected him to interrogate her about, this hadn’t been one of them. Not to mention her friends’ given names sounded oddly formal, enough that she laughed.
‘That’s what you want to know?’
‘That’s what I want to know.’
Thea shrugged. ‘Alright, then… The day you delivered me to Esyllt for shieldbearer training, we got assigned to clean-up duty in the armoury. According to our dear weapons master, we were all as useless as each other. I’ve been friends with them ever since.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Pretty much. Those two are hard to shake.’
‘So I’ve noticed.’
‘Jealous you don’t have any friends?’ she teased.
Wilder chuckled. ‘Says my self-proclaimed friend.’
‘You saying I’m not your friend, Warsword?’
A deep laugh burst from him then. ‘I’d say you’re probably my best friend, Apprentice.’
‘That’s depressing,’ she said, but warmth swelled in her chest.
He gave her a crooked smile. ‘I don’t mind it so much.’
Thea blushed and gestured to the cards. ‘Next round.’
They played again, Thea winning with the highest card this time. She claimed her prize with a shout of victory.
‘Humble, aren’t you?’ Wilder said, amused.
‘It’s hard to be humble when you’re the best,’ she quipped.
He laughed, and Thea didn’t think there was a sound in the entire world she loved more.
She sat back, resting on her palms as she considered what she wanted to ask.
Of all the things that remained unknown about the Warsword before her, the sapphire from his cabin lingered in her mind.
Heat crept up her cheeks again and she cursed herself for being such an idiot.
‘Have you…’
‘Have I what?’
She was already mortified. ‘Have you had many lovers?’
Wilder’s brows shot up. ‘ That’s what you want to ask?’
‘I…’
‘Ask what you really want to ask, Thea.’
Her toes curled in her boots at her name on his lips, but that sapphire still glinted in her mind. ‘Who was before me?’ She struggled to swallow, unsure if she wanted the next answer. ‘Or after?’
Wilder’s gaze darkened and he placed his cards face down on the ground. ‘There has been no one since I met you. No one else in those three weeks after the Bloodwoods,’ he told her reverently. ‘Nor have I wanted there to be.’
Thea exhaled shakily, only now realising how fast her heart was beating. ‘And before?’
Wilder sighed. ‘Before was a long time ago.’
Thea waited, watching him as he pushed his hair back off his face and met her gaze again.
‘Her name was Adrienne. I… I cared about her a lot. She was good to me.’
Thea’s heart hitched. ‘You deserve that,’ she heard herself say. ‘Someone to be good to you.’
He gave her a sad smile. ‘Do I?’
The cards lay forgotten between them. ‘I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it,’ Thea said. ‘When did it end?’
Wilder hesitated, seemed to war with himself about whether to tell her or not.
Was it so recent that it still hurt? Would it hurt her to know?
‘We said we’d be honest,’ she reminded him.
He sighed. ‘Six years ago. Give or take.’
Thea blinked. ‘Six years?’ she blurted. ‘You haven’t – you didn’t… For six years? ’
‘I’ll take your state of shock as a compliment, Apprentice,’ Wilder said drily.
‘But —’
‘You’ve had your question. Several, in fact. And if we’re dropping the pretence of this card game, I’ll ask you the same.’
His silver gaze was intense, glimmering with the reflection of the campfire flames.
Thea took a breath. ‘There hasn’t been anyone else since…’ she answered slowly. In the three weeks since they’d first fucked, all she’d thought of was him. With anger and hurt, certainly, but always him.
‘And before?’ he prompted.
‘No one of consequence. No one who meant anything.’ She sounded harsh, but it was the truth.
‘What of the stable master’s apprentice?’
Thea frowned in confusion, before she remembered their brief encounter in the stables and how Evander had practically fled upon seeing the Warsword darken the doorway. ‘He was my first.’
‘And he wasn’t special to you?’
Thea reached for the flask of fire extract resting against the Warsword’s pack and took a swig, grimacing at the burn down her throat. ‘He was what I needed him to be at the time… Until he wasn’t.’
Wilder’s voice went low, nearly a growl. ‘What do you mean?’
But Thea merely shrugged. ‘He thought me ridiculous. Dressed in boys’ clothes, trying to be a warrior. He wanted nothing to do with me once he knew what I wanted to do. I think I embarrassed him.’
Wilder shifted, his face completely serious as he said, ‘Shall I kill him for you?’
Thea burst out laughing. ‘I don’t think that’s necessary…’
Wilder’s nostrils flared. ‘I didn’t like the look of him.’
Still laughing, Thea wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘And that’s reason enough to kill a man?’
‘I’ve killed men for lesser reasons.’
Thea stared at him. ‘You’re joking.’
‘Am I?’
Thea couldn’t tell, not even when he offered another one of those wicked smiles. The sight made her heart stutter, and her breath catch.
‘Do you think all lovers of warriors are doomed from the start?’ The words tumbled from her mouth before she could think to hold them back. She knew it was dangerous territory once again, but she couldn’t help herself.
Wilder stoked the fire with a stick, coaxing the flames across the logs he’d fed it. ‘Jury’s still out on that one,’ he said finally.
Thea wasn’t sure what she’d been hoping he’d say, but she sensed the time for talking of such things was over. Instead, she looked to him in challenge. ‘Will you tell me of the Great Rite now?’
Wilder groaned.
‘You can’t tell me I haven’t earnt the tale yet. How many others have saved you with bolts of lightning? Twice?’
He lifted his gaze to hers, resigned. ‘I’ll tell you what I can,’ he said. ‘If you eat another helping of dinner.’
‘Another bribe?’
‘Another incentive,’ he corrected her, waiting.
She reached for her bowl. ‘Fine.’
Wilder took a deep breath. ‘There are rules about what I can and cannot tell you.’
‘Whose rules?’
‘The Furies’? The Rite’s? They are not written down, but a Warsword can feel them. The words simply won’t form if it’s something the Furies wish to remain secret. Do you understand?’
Thea nodded. ‘But you’ll tell me what you can?’
‘I will.’
Thea handed him the flask of fire extract, not taking her eyes off the warrior before her. He took it gratefully and drank deeply.
At last, he seemed ready. ‘You remember what I told you of the Great Rite when we were in the Bloodwoods?’
Thea nodded. That pocket of time felt like a lifetime ago, but she remembered his words exactly. ‘The Great Rite is not contained to a single location. Nor does it adhere to the seasons, or even time itself…’ she recited back to him.
‘Exactly.’ Wilder took another drink. ‘Over seven years ago, I was in Aveum with Talemir, trying to herd a frost giant back into the mountains —’
‘A what? ’ Thea couldn’t help herself.
Wilder raised a brow. ‘You heard me.’
‘What’s a frost giant?’ she asked, hardly able to contain her excitement.
‘Pretty much what it sounds like. A giant —’
‘How giant?’
‘Six, seven times the size of Malik?’ Wilder offered with a shrug. ‘Some are even bigger than that. They produce frost and ice… They’re actually why Aveum is a winter kingdom. It’s the frost giants that keep it so.’
‘But you had to kill one?’
Wilder shook his head. ‘No, just herd it back to where it belongs.’
‘How?’
Wilder laughed. ‘Well, what do you think a frost giant hates most? Fire. We used fire.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I thought you wanted to hear about the Great Rite?’
Thea was torn. She wanted to hear all the stories, about every adventure he had ever had. But she had been waiting a lifetime for this tale in particular. The frost giant would have to wait. When it came to the Great Rite, she would listen with bated breath.
He didn’t seem to notice how tense she was. Instead, he wore a far-off expression, as though he were no longer sitting by the fire in Delmira with her, but in the grips of the ancient ritual itself.
‘I felt the call on the frozen banks of the great lake in Aveum,’ he told her.
‘I remember the creak and groan of the shelves of ice around us. I remember Tal was saying something about the giant, but… Everything else faded away. It was like a song without words, a whisper in the wind that murmured my name.’
Thea was hardly breathing.
‘The Great Rite was welcoming me as a challenger. There was an opening not three days’ ride from where I was.
So I went. Tal rode alongside me, but I barely remember the journey, only the call.
When I reached the foot of a great mountain, Talemir couldn’t follow any further.
Later, he told me I disappeared before his eyes, but to me…
To me it seemed I simply wandered into a pine forest, and started to climb a mountain. I didn’t look back for him, not once.’
Thea took over stoking the fire, needing to do something with her hands to keep from interrupting. This was Wilder’s tale and he would tell it at his own pace.
His throat bobbed. ‘There was nothing to indicate the Rite had started. No marker of any kind. All I knew was that I was climbing this incredibly steep, perilous mountain. And that I climbed it for weeks.’
Thea gasped. ‘Weeks?’
The Warsword nodded. ‘It was not a simple climb. Each time I reached a plateau, I faced one challenge or another. Things I’m unable to tell you about, save for the fact that they were harrowing – more harrowing than anything I’ve ever encountered, even now.
I saw things I wish I could unsee, did things I wish I could undo… ’
Thea noted a bead of sweat running from his temple, his hands clasped together as though to hide his trembling. She suppressed the urge to reach for him.
He exhaled shakily. ‘When I emerged, I was where I had started. I held a Warsword totem in my hands. Talemir was there waiting. He’d been there for three days.’
Thea frowned, the question poised on her lips. But Wilder beat her to it.
‘Time works differently in the Great Rite. As does reality itself. All the new scars I had were gone. There was not a trace of the Rite on me, save for the Furies-given strength and magic at my fingertips, and the memory of it all, as crisp and clear as the snow before me.’ He watched her.
‘That’s all I can tell you, Apprentice.’
Thea exhaled, feeling a chill rake down her spine. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for sharing it with me.’
He gave her a subtle nod. ‘Eat the rest of your food,’ he told her.
With the blanket of infinite stars overhead, they talked quietly into the night, though they kept the subject matter light going forward.
Thea kept stealing glances at Wilder across the fire, at the stoic warrior she was slowly coming to know more deeply, more intricately.
It was with a mixture of longing and regret that she savoured these moments with him, realising with a resounding grief that she would never come to know him as deeply as she wished to.
Her hand drifted to her fate stone.
The more she knew about Wilder Hawthorne, the harder she fell. And she would never know enough about him, would never have enough moments with him.
There was not enough time – not for her.