Chapter 10
TEN
SOMEONE WAS THERE. THIA WAS SURE OF IT. SHE HAD BEEN DREAMING about home, a pleasant sequence involving Grandma Winnie and Gilmore Girls that was quickly fading as she blinked in the darkness.
With the dense tree cover, she had no idea what time it was, but Dess was still snoring next to her, and Thran was a motionless log a few feet away.
Her skin prickled. She struggled to silence her breathing, sure she could hear rustling.
“Mavrel?” she whispered into the dark.
There was no answering call. She sat up, unease squirming in her stomach. The fire had dimmed to coals, giving just enough light to see the outlines of her travel companions, but nothing beyond them.
The rustle sounded again. In the tree above her. She froze, her heartbeat in her throat.
Silence.
She drew a shallow breath, praying it was the wind.
But there was no wind. The branches of the tree were still. The sound came again, this time less of a rustle, and more of a brush along bark.
She reached over and nudged Dess, shaking him gently by the shoulder. “Dess,” she hissed. “Dessfar. Wake up.”
He groaned and pulled his bedroll up over his head.
Cursing him silently, she shook harder. “Dess.”
He startled awake, finally clueing into her urgency. “What is it?”
“I think something’s out there.”
His mouth hardened into a thin line, and he drew his sword from where it lay sheathed on the ground beside him. Easing himself upright, he gave her a questioning look. She pointed at the tree above them.
She obliged his gesture to stand, and they mirrored each other, Thia drawing Pagdan’s knife.
They waited for a moment. A minute. Two. When there was only silence, Thia was prepared to count her lucky stars and sigh with relief.
Then a dark shadow hurtled down from the branches.
Dess reacted, driving into the thing, pushing it up against the trunk with his sword against its throat.
Throat? A person. Definitely person-shaped, and faster than Dess, as it drove a knee upwards, leaving him gasping in pain. An elbow connected with his chest, and he doubled over, dropping his sword. Thia twisted the knife in her palm, shaking.
“Is this any way to greet a friend?” the figure said coldly.
Oskaren.
Thia pushed past her, resisting the urge to knock her with a shoulder, and rushed to Dess. He was clutching his stomach, still gasping.
“Are you okay?”
He forced himself to stand. “Just winded. I’ll be fine.”
Thia spun, firing a glare at Oskaren. “What the hell are you doing here?” The girl wore no pack, but had a small sack in one gloved hand.
Oskaren cocked an eyebrow. “I should think it obvious, Faelyn. I’m accompanying you on your quest.”
“My name is Thia,” she snapped, just as Dess said, “Absolutely not.”
Oskaren smirked at Dess. “I suppose you think you could stop me, brother?”
He growled. “I’m not your brother.”
“Aren’t you?”
Dess tensed. Thia put a hand on his arm. “Why are you here?” she demanded again.
“I wish to kill the king,” Oskaren said lightly, like she was remarking on the weather. “I hate him.” She paused. “Among others.”
“I thought you didn’t have feelings.”
Oskaren shrugged. “My hatred is more of a state of mind.”
She resisted the urge to tear out her hair in frustration. An unusually self-destructive thought, but it was late, and this girl was an ass. “Wish all you want,” she snapped. “But I need his help.”
Oskaren’s laughed dripped ice. “He will never help you.”
“If you’re so certain, how do you think you’ll get close enough to kill him?”
“He will grant us an audience if he thinks the Storm Crow has been found. Then he will kill you, of course.” There was nothing but cool indifference on her face.
“And I will strike.” She shrugged. “You should be thrilled for my company. Perhaps I will kill him before he gets you. Or at the very least, exact revenge on your behalf after you’re dead. ”
“I’m not the Storm Crow.”
Oskaren rested a casual hand on the hilt of her sword. “Who you are or aren’t matters little to me. I only care what the king believes, and unfortunately for you, there’s a powerful sorceress claiming otherwise.”
“You can’t come with us,” Dess insisted. “Thia needs the Tyrant’s help. And I….” He trailed off, and Thia suspected it was because he didn’t know what he was going to do. He seemed too good-hearted to fully desire another person’s death, and yet had expressed his own desire for vengeance.
But she recalled Sorscha’s words. She was so kind. So good.
Thia sighed. “It’s as much her right as it is yours,” she said to Dess. “If she wants to come, I don’t feel we should stop her. Besides,” she rubbed her forehead, “she’ll only follow us anyway.”
Dess protested. “You don’t know her. She will betray us in the end. If she even makes it that far, with that stomach wound.”
Oskaren gave a cold laugh. “And how far will you make it without me?” She tossed the sack at his feet.
He eyed it warily. “What is that?”
She gave a dramatic clutch of her chest. “Such trust. This is the thanks I get.”
“Thanks?”
She jutted her chin at the bag.
Dess waited another moment, then cautiously picked it up. His mouth parted at its contents. “Atorweed.”
“Blooming just above, ready to drip, drip, drip”—Oskaren punctuated each repetition with the tap of a finger on the air—“poisonous sap onto your precious, sleeping heads.”
Dess slammed the sack shut. “Or you were collecting it to use on us later,” he muttered, but his cheeks were pink.
Oskaren’s answering smirk was not a comfort. “You wound me. I could cry.”
Thia knew the girl wasn’t serious, but something in her heart caught as she wondered if the girl even could cry with what the Tyrant had done.
She turned to Dess. “It’s not her fault. Her heart was taken, just like your memories. You are the same.” She’d promised Sorscha she’d ask the king about Oskaren. Perhaps if the girl came with them, she could do her own asking.
Dess winced. “We are not.”
Thia sighed internally. “Oskaren.” The girl gave a mocking salute that sent her nails into her palms. “Do you promise not to harm us?”
Oskaren surprised her by sobering for once. “I need you for my plan. Until it is fulfilled, I will protect you with my life.”
That was more than Thia had bargained for. She cleared her throat, suddenly feeling awkward. “Good.” She paused. “Dess? Are you okay with this?”
Dess chewed his lip, attention flicking between Thia and the weed Oskaren had supposedly spared them from. Finally, he loosed a breath. “If you do not have a problem with her, then I will do my best to swallow mine.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Thran roll over on his bed. If he was awake, he was pretending not to be.
“It’s settled then,” Thia said, suddenly exhausted. “Can we get some sleep now?”
“By all means,” Oskaren said, sweeping her hands out in a grand gesture. “A lady needs her rest.”
Thia swallowed a retort, recognizing the bait for what it was, and climbed into her bedroll. After a moment, Dess did the same.
To Thia’s immense and continued annoyance, Oskaren fetched her own pack from where she’d evidently stashed it a few yards away, and began spreading her roll right next to Thia’s.
While she and Dess were back-to-back, Oskaren lay facing her, curling up onto her side so that they were mirrored.
They watched each other for a moment, Oskaren laughingly, Thia infuriated.
But she refused to let the girl get to her and held the stare until Oskaren finally closed her eyes.
Thia waited for the trick, the snide comment or sudden prank, but after a few minutes, the girl’s breathing deepened, letting Thia know she was asleep. She moved to turn onto her back, but something in Oskaren’s face made her pause.
The girl’s mouth lost its sneer as she rested.
Her thick brows curved upward in the middle instead of down, so she appeared much younger.
Vulnerable even. In the dim light, her scar was barely visible, and Thia could almost imagine the girl she used to be, who had loved Sorscha fiercely and freely.
She was quite beautiful—or maybe handsome was a better word, with her strong jaw, sharp cheeks, and rugged mouth.
A study in smooth planes and sharp angles, her black hair even more ink-like in the dark.
Her lips parted, expelling a restless breath in sleep.
Thia started. This time, she did turn and close her eyes, full of sorrow for Sorscha. And, though she was loath to admit it, for Oskaren, who had lost the good parts of her humanity, whether she missed them or not. She wondered what the girl had done to anger the king enough to exact such a curse.
And she wondered also what dangerous game she herself was playing, asking the man who had done it for help.
She sighed and turned all the way over so that her face was to Dess’s back, as though the motion could also turn away her heavy thoughts.