Chapter 3 #3
‘Don’t you dare!’ Arla seethed, a day’s worth of anger simmering underneath her skin, just dying to bubble over.
‘Kastonia ruined my life when their soldiers stormed the city that day. It was not our fault your kingdom had no food. It was not our fault they had no money! But they killed my parents, and I was left with nothing! I worked so fucking hard to get into royal service. Not everybody gets promoted from soldier to one of the King’s Guard, Stappen, and nobody ever got selected as King’s Assassin.
I worked the hardest, I nearly killed myself to get to where I am, I gave up my whole life for the Crown, so if I want to be spoilt, if I want to do as I please, then I will, because I deserve it and you don’t get to say a gods-damned word about it when it was your kingdom that made me the way I am. ’
He was staring at her, as if she had gone mad.
Perhaps she had, because she couldn’t remember a time when she had felt this angry – certainly not recently, anyway.
Maybe it was seeing Halos caring for her twins and calling Arla out for murdering and thieving her way through life, or perhaps it was because Hark had accused her of being spoilt and difficult.
All of those things were true, and she didn’t feel bad about it. She wouldn’t feel bad about it.
Because look how far she had come.
‘I’ll make the fire,’ Hark said, turning and strolling back towards the trees. Arla didn’t care. She’d slept outside on cooler nights, and on much more dangerous jobs. Alone.
When she returned from checking on the horses, he was placing more wood on the fire, his own saddle bags open and revealing the wax sheets in which he had wrapped his supplies.
Good. At least he wouldn’t slow her down through lack of food or poor planning.
The mission would be quick and simple: dispose of those responsible for stealing the supplies, return to Hadalyn, and place a formal request for the ambassador for Kastonia to be sent home and a new one dispatched in his place.
She had thought it would be easy, being alone with him; it wouldn’t matter that his blood was Kastonian.
It wasn’t Hark who had killed her parents; it was the Kastonian king who had sent his army to raid the city after his troops had been slaughtered trying to retrieve non-existent dragons from beneath Castle Grey.
But, gods, it was harder than she had thought.
He was proving to be exactly what she had always believed the Kastonians to be: arrogant, and host to a sense of entitlement that made Arla’s jaw ache with the strain of clenching it.
‘Why didn’t you kill him?’ Hark demanded, his voice suddenly loud against the silence they had preserved over a crackling fire.
‘What?’
‘You didn’t kill the thief in the alley in Hadalyn. Why?’
‘I…’ Arla trailed off, whatever explanation she had intended having failed to come to her tongue.
Because it wasn’t that simple, was it? She didn’t know why she hadn’t killed Brik – gods, she’d had plenty of opportunities.
But she … hadn’t. She settled on, ‘He’s not a bad person,’ hoping it would be enough to staunch the line of questions.
‘Liar. I saw him take that rattle, and he pocketed at least six coins from people outside stalls at the market.’
Arla stifled her annoyance at the revelation that he had been following her all yesterday afternoon. She didn’t know who she was angrier with, him for his disregard for her privacy, or herself for not realising he was there for so long.
She was slacking. These mindless jobs were making her sloppy.
‘It’s complicated,’ she offered, unable to explain her own actions.
‘In what way? He bedded you or—’
‘Oh, gods, no!’ Arla interrupted, almost choking on a mouthful of cheese.
‘Have you seen the state of him? Brik, he, I … I don’t know.
He’s been there since … since the war. I was nine and had been sleeping on the streets for about five weeks.
I was starving. Brik was much older – seventeen maybe – and he stole me an apple one day.
I suppose there must be some good in him.
I guess I think he’s savable.’ The words had come from somewhere buried and long forgotten, but they were there all the same and Arla immediately regretted being so vulnerable in front of Hark – for revealing, not a weakness, no, because Brik wasn’t a weakness, but for sharing something that could be used against her. Gods. She’d have to kill Brik now.
But Hark wasn’t looking at her with revulsion or shock. He appeared deep in thought, and it occurred to her for a fleeting moment that he looked as though she’d put him under a spell. But that was silly nonsense because the magic had disappeared with the imaginary dragons.
‘Some people don’t deserve to be saved, you know,’ Hark said, the softness of his voice foreign to Arla’s ears.
‘You would say that.’ The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. He had been … not kind, no, but he had spoken to her gently; he hadn’t meant to cause offence.
The hardness was back in his voice in a heartbeat.
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
‘That your kingdom saw fit to raze ours to the ground because you thought we were keeping dragons from you. You didn’t think us worth saving at all, did you?’
Gods, could she not control herself?
Hark’s face became sharp and pinched, the keen edge of his jaw now more deadly than handsome.
‘You’re impossible,’ he condemned, turning away from the fire and untying his bed roll.
‘It’s Kastonia’s fau—’
‘I don’t want to hear it. Blame everyone else but yourself, Reinhart; it’s all you know how to do.’
She tried to ignore the aching feeling in her stomach and in her heart. No, not everyone was worth saving.
Especially her.