Chapter Thirty-four #2
He passed a hand over his face with a quiet groan of frustration.
There was no way he’d heard the end of this from Torj, and he knew Thea was simply biding her time before she attempted to corner him.
She knew he was keeping things from her.
And if there was one thing he knew about Thea, it was that she didn’t give up easily.
He rode ahead, putting some much-needed distance between himself and the others, his mind aflame with everything he knew and didn’t know.
He felt sick, the gratitude in the half-wraith’s eyes flashing before him.
He had known he wasn’t going to make it, his body too broken to put back together, the pain too great.
Wilder couldn’t bear the thought of more agony inflicted upon him before he drifted off with Enovius.
Had the wraith been quicker, he might have escaped with his life, and Wilder still wasn’t sure what that would have meant.
The acrid scent of burning flesh tickled his nostrils and he glanced back to see a thick column of smoke drifting up into the afternoon sky. The others had done as he’d bid, at least.
Wilder waited on the crest of a ridge for them to catch up. No one spoke to him as they did. Probably for the best , he tried to convince himself.
‘We ride till nightfall,’ he commanded.
Though Torj was the more senior of the two Warswords, he didn’t object. Perhaps he didn’t trust himself to speak after Wilder had already undermined his authority.
The company rode in silence for what felt like the longest time.
Usually, Wilder liked the silence; preferred it, in fact.
But these past few months, with Thea by his side, with Torj and now the rest of their crew slowly weaselling their way between the cracks in his armour…
All the silence did now was remind him of his failings. And there were many.
Malik, Talemir, Thea… Perhaps the midrealms themselves…
All suffering because of him. When the quiet grew too loud, he was transported back there, to each one of those moments he’d failed the people he loved most. Malik thrown against the rocks at Islaton, talons piercing Talemir’s flesh and reaching for his heart, the same happening to Thea in the Bloodwoods…
‘Stop!’
Wren’s urgent voice pulled him from the spiral of flashbacks and he almost sighed with relief. She was jumping down from her saddle without so much as an ounce of her sister’s grace.
‘What is it?’ Thea called, halting her own horse alongside the other, frowning.
‘If she needs to relieve herself, how about we give her some privacy?’ Wilder said, starting away.
‘I don’t need to do that,’ Wren snapped, dropping to her knees in the brush, rummaging through her satchel and retrieving a knife.
‘What in the realms are you doing, then?’ Torj asked, stopping his own horse right by where the alchemist was sawing at something in the undergrowth, her cheeks turning pink with the effort.
Wren shot him a look of annoyance. ‘If you’d give me a minute, I’d tell you.’
‘We really can’t afford to delay —’ Wilder started, but Thea cut him off.
‘We’ll be glad for this at some point down the line,’ she said quietly, watching her sister work.
The four men and Thea waited until at last, Wren got to her feet, dusting herself off, her eyes bright with passion. ‘Do you know how rare it is to find these?’ she said, holding up a handful of ugly weeds for them to see.
Kipp’s nose wrinkled. ‘I hope you don’t expect us to eat them.’
Thea shook her head. ‘Not everything is for eating, you prat.’
Wren laughed. ‘Especially not this. Unless you want to explode into a million messy Kipp pieces…’
Wilder’s stomach lurched at that. ‘What is it?’
‘Bitter hellebore,’ Wren answered. ‘When used correctly, they’re explosive florets that can be —’
‘Used in battle,’ Kipp finished for her, suddenly eager. ‘I’ve read about that plant. Apparently it was used in another realm to murder an entire council of people, or cyrens – I can’t remember —’
‘Exactly,’ Wren said, wrapping the florets carefully in a scrap of fabric and placing them in her satchel. ‘Might come in handy where we’re going?’ She gave Wilder a pointed look.
He held his hands up in surrender. ‘My apologies.’
Everyone glanced at him in surprise at that. Wilder tried not to think about what it meant.
The company continued on across the valleys of Tver, with Wren calling to stop every so often when she spotted something useful amid the foliage around them.
Elwren was a master alchemist in training, that was for sure.
She wielded her secateurs and gloves with the same confidence and precision with which he and Thea wielded their swords.
Over the course of their ride, she managed to harvest not only bitter hellebore, but wild draketail and silver boxweed as well – a dangerous assortment of plants.
‘I’ve heard that wild draketail can be taken for… fun,’ Cal ventured as their horses crested another ridge.
Wren and Thea looked at each other and burst out laughing.
‘Go on then, Cal… Wren will give you a leaf,’ Thea said, shaking her head at her sister, the pair clearly enjoying some private joke.
‘I was just saying,’ Cal replied defensively.
‘Not sure a journey on the way to battle is the ideal time to be experimenting with plants that make you think the sky is melting,’ Wilder offered.
‘What?’
‘That stuff can make you hallucinate something fierce,’ Torj joined in, nodding knowingly.
‘Gods, what I’d pay to see a bunch of Warswords out of their minds on draketail,’ Thea muttered to Wren, loud enough for Wilder to hear.
‘Malik and Talemir would have had no problem granting that wish,’ Wilder replied. ‘You might have regretted it, though…’
Thea’s brows shot up and she twisted in her saddle. ‘Malik? And Talemir?’ She gaped, her anger at him suddenly forgotten.
Wilder chuckled. ‘They were the worst.’
Torj made a noise of agreement. ‘Malik liked to think he was the toughest of our kind, the Shieldbreaker… But a few leaves of draketail and he’d be giggling till he cried.’
Wilder huffed a laugh. ‘That was the least of it.’
The three Guardians and the alchemist were staring at them in disbelief.
‘Err… perhaps forget we told you that,’ Torj muttered.
‘Un-fucking-likely,’ Kipp said with a grin.
* * *
At long last, evening fell, and the group stopped to make camp in one of the many golden valleys. Wilder watched with a tinge of regret as Thea left with Cal to hunt game in the nearby woods, leaving the rest of them to sort the horses and the fire.
Wilder ventured off to find some thicker logs, but Torj’s heavy footsteps followed.
‘You gonna tell me what in the realms that was about with that creature back there?’ the Bear Slayer demanded, starting to bundle branches in his arms.
‘No,’ Wilder replied gruffly. He was surprised Torj had lasted this long without bringing it up.
‘You don’t think I deserve to know what the fuck is going on?’
‘It’s not about what you deserve.’
Torj muttered a curse. ‘You used to hate it when Talemir did this to you. I assume I don’t need to remind you of that?’
Wilder sighed heavily. ‘No reminder necessary.’
‘So?’
‘So what, Torj?’
‘So tell me. This is not just your burden to bear. I’ve been a Warsword longer than you —’
‘Not by much,’ Wilder snapped.
‘Long enough to know that one man can’t carry the world alone.’
‘I’m not doing this, Torj. Not now.’
‘Then when?’ his fellow Warsword bit back. ‘Because there is a reckoning lying in wait for us, brother.’
‘I know,’ Wilder admitted, reaching for another log and settling it in his arms before turning to Torj.
‘I know what’s waiting for us, better than most. There are things from the past, from my time in Naarva, that make me question what I’ve seen, that make me wonder if I’ve got it all wrong, or if I’ve just scratched the surface of the truth… ’
‘Which is?’
‘Beyond treasonous if I’m wrong.’
‘And if you’re right?’
Wilder took a breath and glanced back towards camp, where Wren and Kipp had managed to get the fire roaring, sparks drifting up into the darkening sky. ‘Then the midrealms will never be the same again.’
Torj considered him. ‘So then they will change. Sometimes change is good.’
‘Only time will tell.’
Torj grunted at that before nodding to where Thea and Cal had emerged from the woods, a goat strung up between them. ‘You fucked it up with her already, then?’ he asked, his gaze trained on Thea.
‘Something like that,’ Wilder muttered.
‘Didn’t take long.’
‘No shit.’
Torj scoffed. ‘You gonna fix it?’
‘If it were that easy, I would have done it already.’
A mild punch hit his bicep. ‘If it were that easy, it wouldn’t be worth it, brother.’
‘Oh? Since when did you become an expert?’
But Torj wasn’t listening anymore. His attention was elsewhere.
On the alchemist tending to the fire.
Wilder shook his head. ‘Furies save us all.’
* * *
They ate and drank their fill, chatting quietly across the fire.
But Wilder dreaded the moment the talk would quieten and they would retreat to their bedrolls.
For several nights now, he’d slept soundly with his arms wrapped around Thea, the rest of the world fading away to nothing.
No night terrors, no flashbacks, only Thea and the comfort of her steady breaths against his body, her hair tickling the crook of his neck.
No sleep would come to him now without her. He knew that much.
All the same, when Torj stamped out the larger flames of the fire and the others rolled out their bedding with loud yawns, Wilder once again opted to put a little more distance between himself and the rest. He listened to them all readying themselves for sleep, and finally, he lay back on his bedroll in the dark, staring up at the infinity of stars canvassing the inky night.
Footsteps sounded across the camp and a bedroll was dropped unceremoniously next to his.
Wilder didn’t dare move as Thea lay down beside him, curling up on her side against him, her head resting in the dip between his shoulder and chest. She was warm from the fire, and smelt like smoke, but the shape of her fitted against him perfectly, as she always did.
When he couldn’t bear the silence any longer, he peered down at her. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Sleeping.’
‘Here?’
‘Where else would I sleep?’ she asked.
‘I just… I thought…’
‘That I was angry at you?’ Thea raised a brow.
Wilder braced himself. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Furious.’
‘And yet…’
‘And yet here I am. I thought by now you’d know I’m harder to shake than that, Warsword.’
The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘I —’
‘I’m still furious,’ Thea assured him sharply. ‘And believe me, I’ll have the truth from you, one way or another. But for now… why should I lose sleep?’
Wilder couldn’t help the breathy laugh of relief that escaped him. ‘Why indeed,’ he muttered.
They were quiet for a moment. Wilder breathed in her presence like it was a drug he’d been craving.
Every fibre of his being wanted to haul her on top of him, to fuck her senseless until they both forgot all that stood between them – not just the secrets he kept, but the fate stone resting between her breasts and the world on fire around them.
But he didn’t move. There was a time for secret campsite debauchery, but this wasn’t it.
After a time, Thea nestled into him, tugging her blanket up over them both. ‘This is where I belong,’ she murmured.
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
Wilder’s arms tightened around her, and throughout the night, he didn’t once let go.