Chapter 31
HARK
No way. Absolutely no fucking way.
‘Pick up your sword,’ he said.
Something had changed behind her eyes; he’d seen the fight go out of her.
He’d felt her stop caring. He wouldn’t let her walk away now, not when he was beginning to find comfort in someone so deadly having his back – having his friends’ backs.
She would fit in well with them if she managed to pull her head out of her own arse for ten minutes.
Even Kase liked her – though she would never admit it.
He’d seen the girl he’d come to love like a sister cover a smirk at some of Arla’s better comebacks.
He hated that he didn’t hate her.
‘Pick. Up. Your. Sword.’
Her shoulders slumped as she said, ‘What?’
‘Pick up your sword.’
Fight me for the gods’ sakes.
‘I know you’re going through something right now, but you’re not going to walk away from your emotions, and you’re definitely not going to walk away from me.’ Her fingers flexed. ‘Pick up. Your sword.’
Before he could blink, she had spun, the leaves under her feet scattering as if she had magicked them away. Fire flared in her eyes, but he didn’t even see her fingers curl around the hilt of her blade and arc it through the air.
He met her with a clang loud enough to wake the dead.
The force of her blade striking his reverberated through his bones. Again.
Again.
Again.
Gods.
He couldn’t begin to untangle what she was feeling, what might be going through her head, but he would bet on it having something to do with her dead people and how the slave trade had been going on underneath her nose for years.
He was sweating, and yet she kept coming. Lunge, strike, block. She kept up an unwavering assault on him, sweat beading on her own forehead as she forced whatever she was feeling through that solid piece of metal.
He saw a gap and took it. The aim of her sword was slightly off so that it left her open. He slid his blade into the space, forcing her to take a step back and then the tip of his blade was resting at her throat, pressing into the creamy column of skin exposed only to him.
‘Done?’
She nodded, stepping away slowly and shaking her head, as though the act could dislodge the thing that had made her turn away; the thoughts that had made her believe that it was somehow her fault; the idea that she could have done anything to stop what had happened to her people. What was still happening now.
He closed the gap between them, lifting her chin between his fingers so her eyes met his.
‘We’ll save them, okay? It won’t happen again.’
‘You’re right, you know.’ He’d never heard her sound so …
fragile. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I didn’t have any idea this was happening.
Fucking hell, I don’t know when you’re following me through Hadalyn half the time.
I’m a fraud, aren’t I? I throw a few knives, kill a few thieves, and stab a blade through my hand and somehow that makes me King’s Assassin? Gods, it’s tragic.’ She sobbed a laugh.
She was going to break him with nothing but her words.
‘Stop it. You’re deadly with a blade – even with your arrows, when they fly the way you want them to.
’ She didn’t laugh at his joke. ‘You spot things most people would miss. You spare the lives of people like Brik because you think there’s something worth saving inside them.
You’re willing to storm a camp full of Kastonian soldiers on your own to save slaves that may or may not be your own people.
You are a good person. Now get a grip. We will save them. ’
Her lip rolled between her teeth and, fucking gods, she was tearing him to pieces. It took everything in him not to kiss her right then; to take her to the floor in this gods-forsaken clearing and distract her in the only way he knew now.
‘I do hope you’ve packed something alcoholic, Stappen. Gods help you tomorrow if I’m being made to sleep on the floor.’
There you are.