22. A Point to Prove #2
Fear and unease skittered through my chest. It was literally foolish to expend energy on concerns about the past that could not be changed, when the future was still so uncertain.
We still had no idea what had happened to Donavyn.
Though Kham felt confident if Kgosi had died while they were still in the same kingdom, he would have felt something.
I didn’t know. I prayed that Donavyn and his dragon had pursued Bren—or our enemies—out of Fyrehold.
But even if he had, he was facing men who’d plotted his downfall.
We wouldn’t know if Donavyn had prevailed until we reached Vosgaarde. Perhaps not even then.
What if they weren’t there when we landed? I could only go to my brothers in the Shadowfang. Tell them what I’d learned, and plan together.
It would be harder without Gil, but—
I stepped out from among the trees, to the small clearing where we’d left our things, to find Grace already standing there, a large hare hanging from her grip by its back feet.
She held the arm awkwardly out from her side.
The hare’s throat had been slit and it bled into the dirt. Precisely as it should.
But how the hell had she passed me to make it back here first?
Her wariness when I appeared was quickly replaced with relief—why did that make my chest warm?—but I had to swallow back a barked question. If she’d eluded me, that was on me.
“I wasn’t expecting you back so quickly,” I muttered as I strode to the center of the campsite, where I’d cleared a space and set a few rocks in preparation for a fire.
Grace just nodded. “I killed it. But, I think it would be better if you gutted it. I’m not very good at that.”
The fact that she had done enough of this to know she wasn’t good at gutting an animal raised a great many questions, but I didn’t give voice to them.
Grabbing leather ties from my satchel, I tied a slipknot in the end of one, then held my hand out for the hare—and she passed me its back feet.
Our fingers brushed as I took the animal, and I had to make myself focus.
“How did you kill it without getting any blood on you?” I asked sharply, looking at her very clean hands holding the bleeding animal.
“Oh, I did. But I washed in the creek,” she said with an apologetic smile. “I don’t like blood.”
She’d gone out, found the burrow, captured the animal, cleaned her hands, and returned before I’d found her?
Why was it that everything this woman did make me feel fucking inadequate?
I gritted my teeth as I turned from her, placing the slipknot over the animal’s hind legs. I pulled up on the leather until it tightened enough to grab, then tied it to a branch at the side of the clearing, so it could continue to bleed out.
For the next hour I busied myself with making the fire, setting up a spit, gutting and skinning the animal—not hard if you knew how to do it. And throughout it all I felt her eyes on me.
Irritation simmered in my chest. I tried to ignore it, but she kept offering to do things I didn’t need her to do, and constantly fucking staring.
I knew I was snapping and caught her flinch once—so I stopped talking. It wasn’t her fault I was angry with Kham, and he was distracted with his mate, so I couldn’t ask for his reassurance.
But then, when the hare carcass had cooked enough that it began dripping fat that sizzled on the coals, I looked up to tell her to wash her hands before we’d eat, and couldn’t find her.
I frowned, my irritation flaring again. She’d probably just gone to relieve herself, but she should have told me.
Five minutes later, I cursed.
Where the fuck had she gone?
I reached for Kham, but he was closed off. I’d asked him to keep his mind closed whenever he mated Koa, so I wasn’t going to push into that.
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered. One moment she was everywhere, and the next she disappeared? I scanned the trees, listening carefully over the crackle and pop of the fire, but I saw no movement, and heard nothing beyond the nighttime quiet of the wood.
Where the hell did she go?
I got to my feet, leaving the hare on the spit and turned a circle. “Grace? Grace! Where are—”
“Sorry, I was just trying to stay out of your way—oh!”
She startled because she’d stepped out from behind the tree and startled me. When I jumped, it was instinct to bring my hands up in a defensive stance and she cowered, backing away, though we were many feet apart and I couldn’t reach her from here.
“I couldn’t harm you from that distance unless I threw a knife,” I growled, straightening out of my half-crouch.
“Don’t cower every time someone moves quickly, it looks weak.
And next time, let me know where you’re going.
If you’re going to be a Flameborne, you have to stop thinking beyond yourself.
Your every move and decision impacts those around you. Think, for fuck’s sake.”
I saw her deflate as I turned back to the fire, and guilt pinched at my chest.
I swallowed it down. “Look… forget it. The food is ready. Come sit. Eat,” I muttered, tipping my head toward the fire.
From the corner of my eye, I watched her approach, hesitant and wary. I frowned, cursing under my breath as I took the spit from the fire and laid the carcass out on a large piece of tree bark I’d cleaned in the creek.
“Stop tip-toeing around like you’re an uncertain child.
There won’t be time for that when we reach Vosgaarde, Grace.
You’ll have to toughen up. Are you a Flameborne, or not?
!” I said pointedly as I tore pieces of meat off the carcass and tossed them onto the tin plate from my kit, and another, smaller slab of the bark.
Grace took the last few steps quickly, but her face was pale and her brows pinched over her nose.
I pressed the plate into her hands, then picked up the bark—I’d given myself the slightly larger portion, but I’d let her have the last piece of fruit from my rations.
Then started for the tree where I planned to sit.
But Grace piped up behind me. “Please. Don’t go away. You don’t have to. I’ll listen! I will. I’m just… I don’t know… I’m not sure when to push and when to stop and… please, Voski. Don’t tell them I can’t do it. I can!”
Her voice cracked as if she’d cry, and irritation flared in my chest again as I turned on her—but I found her standing there, holding the plate looking forlorn?
Then my dragon’s voice, wise, knowing, and disapproving, sounded in my head.
‘You know the fear of uncertainty and self-doubt. Stop excusing yourself and lead as you wished to be led.’
I swallowed the angry words I’d been preparing for her and made myself take a breath.
I knew better.
I had done better.