Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Oh, that’s right.” Pigeon nods, her eyebrows knitting together. “We were trying to come up with a plan to disrupt it, but there’s too many guards to go at it safely. That big one on the bridge there is particularly infallible.”
“Howell,” I say. “He’s one of the most senior guards. Definitely not to be underestimated. And the other…”
“The pretty blond one?” Pigeon asks.
“Hmm,” Will says with a held-back laugh. His hand slips around my waist protectively. Possessively. “Not sure that’s the adjective I’d use to describe him.”
“Are you kidding? Those shoulders? I’ve never felt attraction a day in my life, but I’m sure he’s a popular one.”
I grit my teeth together. “That’s, um…That’s my ex.”
Jeremy snorts into Pigeon’s open palm and the last of the carrot disappears.
“Oh,” she says. “Huh.”
“Judge me later,” I say. “We need to get past them. Can you help?”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m here.”
Will takes a step around Jeremy and strokes his mane.
“I have a handful of ideas,” he says, focus sharpening his face. “I’m not sure any of them are actually feasible. The issue is, we still need to travel by horseback after the bridge, otherwise I’d let Pigeon take Jeremy home. It’ll take too long without him.”
He flattens his palms against the horse’s neck and closes his eyes.
His mouth moves in a whispered spell and before my eyes, Jeremy starts to disappear, the forest filling in where his neck once was.
The invisibility spell bleeds out from Will’s fingers, but as it travels down Jeremy’s shoulders to the main bulk of his body, Will hisses. His face screws up.
It reminds me too much of the dungeon.
“Will, stop.”
Will flinches and blinks rapidly. I rush to take his elbow as all the visibility floods back to Jeremy.
“Okay, scrap that one,” Will says, his breaths a little haggard. “He’s too big. The spell is only meant for humans.”
I dig my fingers into his arm. “Don’t do that.”
“Sorry, Princess.”
“Plan B?” Pigeon asks, hands on hips and ready for action.
“Uh…” Will looks down at me, hesitant. “I’m not sure anyone will like it. I don’t like it.”
“Go on,” I say.
“I can use the invisibility spell on myself to sneak past the guards. Once I’m on the other side, I can create a fog that will cover you as you bring Jeremy over. Pigeon can stay on this side of the bridge and, if need be, distract the guards.”
“I have a little phosphorus left,” Pigeon says. Will shoots her a look. “I said a little.”
“Don’t use it while Fliss is still on the bridge.”
“Wait—” I interrupt. “We have to go separately?”
Will smiles sadly. “A lot of spells require concentration, so I can’t do the invisibility spell and anything else at the same time. We need a way to get Jeremy over to the other side and using fog might be the best shot to do that. I told you I didn’t like it.”
“Neither do I,” I say.
“I’ve got your backs,” Pigeon says, pulling her bow into prepared hands.
“Will…”
He grins at me. “Let’s give it a go. See you on the other side?”
I grab his collar. “Promise.”
“Promise.”
He kisses me, the lightest brush of his lips, then he’s striding to the bridge and fading from view.
I wait for Howell to shout, for the sound of metal scraping from a sword being drawn, but it doesn’t come.
Pigeon brings Jeremy’s bridle to me, and I curl tense fingers under the leather as we head back to the tree line.
“He’ll be okay. He always has a knack for getting out of trouble somehow,” she says, and leaps onto a tree root to peer ahead.
“The first time we met, I’d been stealing from travelers in the forest and ended up bumping into some guards.
Will helped me out of it and only asked for the medicine back. We shared the food.”
I’d seen that in Will’s memory. She’d looked so gaunt at the time.
“I hope living like that becomes a thing of the past, not just for you, but for everyone.”
Pigeon’s braid swings sideways as she jumps onto a lower root. “I do too. Sometimes. But it’s not something I allow myself to get hung up on. I have my family to feed, which means being pragmatic rather than idealistic. I can’t indulge in hopes and wishes.”
When we’re back in the citadel, I should put Pigeon’s pragmatism into practice. Keeping my mouth shut for so long has only upheld the pretense of peace. No longer.
“Here we go,” Pigeon says, pointing to a thick layer of fog that creeps over the bridge and spills into the river like a cloudy waterfall.
Howell unsheathes his sword.
“What is that?” Lark calls, running to position himself at Howell’s side. The canopy-high block of smog swallows the two guards.
Pigeon squeezes my shoulder.
“One foot in front of the other, Fliss,” she says. “Keep to the edge and use the wall to make sure you’re going straight. Don’t stop.”
Jeremy whinnies softly. We can do this.
“I owe you again,” I say.
She shrugs. “What are favors between friends?”
“Friends.” I smile, then step toward the cloud of fog.
My eyes struggle to focus as the world turns white.
I can see only a few inches in front of me and have to work to find the edge of the bridge.
When the cool stone is under my fingers, I lead Jeremy on, walking slowly, as quietly as a horse can be, but with the fear-filled urgency of Howell and Lark being nearby.
One more step. To Will. Keep going. One more.
“Found anything?” Howell shouts.
“Nothing!”
“Keep looking! Spread out!”
“I can’t see anything in this damned—”
Jeremy and I cross the peak of the bridge and start on the downward slope.
Almost there.
Almost back to Will.
Almost.
The crunch of metal is the only warning I have before a hand flies across my mouth from behind.
“Halt,” a voice I used to love growls in my ear.
I panic, unhook my fingers from the bridle, and slap a hand against Jeremy’s shoulder just before Lark slams me into the stone edge.
Thankfully, Jeremy gets the message and canters out of view.
Lark leans me so far backward my hair dangles above the gushing river.
His green eyes meet mine and his face pales.
“Fliss?”
“Please let me go,” I say with a strike of pain through my abdomen. He’s stretching my stomach, stretching my scar. “Lark, please.”
He pulls me back to standing and clasps both hands around my arms. I try to wrestle out of his grip, but he keeps me pushed up against the wall.
“Fliss, you’re—you’re alive? How?” he asks, frenzied.
“Yes. Lark, please. Please let me go.”
“You were dying. You were dead.”
“I was healed. Please.”
“When I thought you weren’t going to make it I tried to—I looked for more herbs. I sent a message to the healers in my village but—”
“Lark.” I say his name so forcefully, so resolutely, that he meets my eyes again. I don’t look away, like I often have. I don’t avoid him. The anger I had for him is feeble now, it’s almost pathetic. I was clinging tightly to a poisonous hatred that never did me any good. “It’s okay.”
I mean it.
He takes a deep breath in and his shoulders relax, like he’d been needing to hear that, like he’d been holding on to the pain just as tightly as I was.
“It’s okay,” I repeat. “Let me go.”
“You’re…” he says in disbelief, “you’re not looking at me the same.”
I study him, his eyes that match the color of the Lunarie’s petals, that dark blond hair that means nothing to me now. No, I don’t suppose I am.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s heavy, a storm denser than this fog.
“It’s okay.”
It’s the end of us, our story. From strangers, to lovers, to loathing. To nothing.
His hands loosen.
The woosh of an arrow shoots between us and my weight shifts back, almost toppling me over the edge of the wall. Lark reaches for his sword.
“Run!” Pigeon shouts from somewhere in the mist.
“I’ve got her pinned,” Howell bellows.
The shake of an explosion jolts the bridge and has me stumbling to a knee.
“QUICK, RUN!”
I don’t take one last look at Lark.
I lurch up and run headlong into the dissipating fog.
When I break through, Will is pacing. Tense. Almost ripping out his hair. Jeremy toes the grass in the open plain on this side of the bridge. I see them both and my heart aches, melts, gives way, and surrenders. I run right into Will’s open arms and breathe him in. He envelops me like I’ll vanish.
Behind us, as I plant myself in a safe embrace, rocks crunch and slide, and the bridge crumbles into the water, swept away like the remnants of the fog in the wind.
Neither Pigeon nor the guards are to be seen.
Only a crater of rubble parting the river remains, the fingerprints of waves already finding a new path onward, already moving on.