Chapter Thirty-four
WILDER
W ilder burned the message from Dratos. It warranted no reply, only offered a warning, and that warning had come too late.
He snuck a glance at Thea as they disembarked from The Furies’ Will .
She hadn’t spoken so much as a word to him since their argument.
Heaviness settled in the pit of his stomach at the thought.
He should have known their bubble of happiness was bound to burst. Wilder was incapable of not fucking things up; he’d lived long enough to know that about himself.
Every relationship he’d ever had, friendship or otherwise, had come to an end because of his own shortcomings.
Tal, Adrienne, even Malik… He couldn’t help but hold himself at arm’s length, and now he’d dragged Thea into his mess.
In the privacy of their cabin, with his head between her thighs or his cock seated deep inside her, it was easy to forget who she was to the world. But as he watched her check her saddle on the dock, her gaze clouded with endless storms, there was no denying it.
Here among them was the heir of Delmira.
A princess. A would-be queen.
He’d allowed himself to pretend otherwise for a time, but now… As they headed to war on the home front of a ruling kingdom, the time to pretend was over.
He led Biscuit out onto the dock, waiting for the beast to settle now that he was back on dry land. But the stallion shifted uneasily, his nostrils flaring and his neck braced. Wilder rubbed his forelock reassuringly.
‘Thought you’d be happy to be home,’ he murmured, scanning the port around them for any sign of danger. Biscuit usually had fine instincts for such things, but Wilder supposed that a few days at sea might have muddled the stallion’s senses.
Tver’s main port was half the size of Harenth’s and not nearly as commercialised. There were no stalls or traders flogging their wares, only fishermen and a few travellers looking to book passage on the next ship out. It was a simpler life here, one that Wilder had always admired.
‘Ready?’ Torj was already in his saddle.
Wilder mounted, reaching down to stroke Biscuit’s neck. ‘Got the supplies?’
Torj nodded. ‘I sent Cal and Kipp to the market and told them to meet us at the northern entrance to the village.’
Wilder’s eyes fell to where Thea and Wren lingered by the port gates.
The sisters sat straight-backed in their own saddles, Wren looking slightly uncomfortable, while Thea was perched with the ease of a warrior.
He waited for her to sense him, to meet his gaze across the way with those piercing eyes that promised all manner of storms.
But she didn’t.
She didn’t acknowledge him at all.
The cold shoulder from her made his chest ache, but that little voice inside him told him that perhaps it was for the best. It was the same voice that had told him to treat her as nothing more than an apprentice. Perhaps he should have listened.
But as much as he wished he could, Wilder couldn’t bring himself to regret one minute with her.
‘Hawthorne?’ Torj called. ‘We moving or what?’
Wilder tried to shake the thoughts of Thea from his head. ‘We’re moving.’
They left the port behind and rode through the surrounding village.
The townsfolk who spotted Wilder and Torj lifted three fingers to their left shoulders in respect, bowing their heads as they passed.
Wilder wondered if they’d seen the mass of shadow moving across the sky, headed for their capital.
He wondered if they knew what awaited him and his companions, what evil they rode towards.
They passed a raucous tavern, a handful of drunk patrons spilling out onto the street, tankards still in hand.
With a pang of regret, Wilder realised just how long ago that afternoon in the Laughing Fox suddenly seemed.
His life had been punctuated by so few moments of joy that the spaces between them had stretched on into indiscernible periods of time. Until Thea.
He rubbed his sternum, as though the movement might ease the ache there.
It didn’t.
And so he simply rode on, for that was all he had ever done in the face of such pain.
Torj’s apprentice Cal and the troublemaker Kipp were waiting for them by the gates of the village, saddlebags full to bursting.
‘Sure you got enough?’ Thea said as she approached.
Kipp rolled his eyes. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, there’s six of us. And two of us look like that.’ He jutted his chin in Wilder and Torj’s direction.
‘We’ll hunt on the way,’ Wilder said, urging his horse past them and onto the main road.
‘More for me, then,’ he heard the strategist quip.
* * *
Wilder led the company inland from the seaside village, already missing the fresh briny wind on his skin. They had been riding for some time already, following the lay of the golden valleys before them. But try as he might to soothe his stallion, the creature was on edge.
Torj noticed him fussing and gestured to his own horse. ‘Tucker isn’t himself either,’ he said with a wary scan of the lands ahead. ‘Teerah panthers, do you think?’
Wilder shook his head. ‘Not this far south of the mountains.’
Teerah panthers were enormous, predatory wild cats that were rumoured to have entered the midrealms through a tear in the Veil long ago.
A pride of them were known to hunt through the mountains south-west of Notos, but as far as Wilder knew, they kept mostly to themselves, unless set upon.
He’d only ever seen one from a distance, its silvery-black fur a stark contrast against the golden mountainside.
It had locked eyes with him, staring him down until it realised he had no cause to attack.
Then, it had turned with a flick of its tail and disappeared into the rugged terrain.
Torj’s stallion gave a loud snort and skidded to a stop, pawing the earth beneath its hoof.
Wilder frowned. ‘Something’s not right —’
Wren gave a shriek as her horse reared up.
Thea was a blur as she lunged for her sister’s reins. ‘Hold on!’ she shouted, half out of her own saddle, trying to wrangle Wren’s horse back onto its front legs.
Somehow, Wren managed to keep her feet in the stirrups, and Thea brought the terrified creature to heel, still clutching the reins, giving Wren a worried look as the horse whinnied loudly, a tremor passing through its shoulders.
Wilder turned his gaze skyward, his heart seizing at the shadow he found circling above. ‘Torj —’
‘On it.’ The creak of a longbow sounded and an arrow whistled as it tore through the air.
A scream pierced the sky and a pair of membranous wings flapped wildly as the projectile found its mark.
‘Cal!’ Torj yelled. ‘Your turn!’
His apprentice had already nocked an arrow to his own bow and was taking aim. The bow twanged upon release, the arrow soaring.
It was Cal’s shot that brought the monster down, a precise shot that went clean through one of its wings. An agonised cry sounded, one that seemed all too human to Wilder, his insides turning to lead at the realisation.
The creature came crashing towards them, landing on the hard ground with a thud. Wilder flinched.
Steel sang as it was unsheathed from various scabbards and the Guardians and Warswords of Thezmarr leapt forward, blades in hand as they surrounded the monster.
‘It’s one of them…’ breathed Cal, his eyes wide in disbelief.
‘A half-wraith,’ Thea murmured, her gaze tracking across the still-human body and the wings spearing from the monster’s back.
The half-wraith’s eyes were screwed shut in pain, a trail of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, one wing in tatters.
Wilder stared, resisting the urge to crouch beside him. He looked familiar.
‘We should question it,’ Torj said, palming a dagger and surveying the creature’s body for the best place to start.
At that, the half-wraith’s eyes flew open with a gasp. For a moment, he looked feral, black veins fracturing his otherwise smooth, human face, claws protruding from his fingertips.
‘Ladies,’ Torj was saying. ‘You may want to walk away from this.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Thea replied, her words hard.
Wren cleared her throat. ‘What are you going to do?’ There was no mistaking the fear in her voice, or the disgust.
‘Interrogate the bastard,’ Torj told her matter-of-factly.
The monster recoiled, his broken body twitching on the ground. He rasped, choking on his own blood while he scanned their faces madly. When his wide-eyed gaze met Wilder’s, his expression flared in recognition.
‘Please —’ he groaned.
And Wilder thrust his sword through the monster’s heart.
The creature rasped a final breath and looked at Wilder, not with pain or shock, but with relief.
‘What the fuck, Hawthorne?’ Torj shouted, shoving him away.
Wilder didn’t budge, staring at the poor creature before them. ‘He had nothing to tell us.’
‘Horseshit,’ Torj snapped. ‘He could have given us information on the unit heading for Tver, he could have —’
‘No, he couldn’t have.’
‘How do you know that? You speak to two of them at Harenth and now you’re suddenly a fucking expert?’
‘Yes,’ Wilder said simply, withdrawing his sword from the half-wraith’s corpse and wiping the red blood on the grass.
All the while, he could feel Thea’s eyes on him.
She’d noticed him flinch as the creature hit the ground. He wondered if she’d seen the recognition between them too…
‘Do you think someone is sending them after us?’ she asked, brows knitted together.
‘It certainly looked like it,’ Torj replied thoughtfully. ‘It was heading right for us.’
‘Burn it,’ Wilder said to no one in particular, sheathing his sword at his back and leading Biscuit away from the corpse.
His stallion had been unsettled since leaving the ship…
Was that how long the creature had followed them?
How hadn’t Wilder seen him? Had he been trying to relay a message?
Wilder had been so wrapped up in thoughts of Thea that he’d let his guard down, his keen observation skills lost in worry for her. It wasn’t the first time…