Chapter 32
She had needed that. And he was right; she had been running away from everything, because she couldn’t bear to confront how she felt or come to terms with where that left her. But the sight of him so close to her, his fingers on her face, his lips right there…
He was carving away at the stone around her heart and she hated the way she was allowing it. She wished she’d never known what it felt like to have his skin beneath her fingers because now … now she couldn’t get the craving out of her head.
It wasn’t surprising that Kase, Jaz, and Sebastian returned almost immediately after her spar with Hark; she had sensed them lurking in the treeline the entire time.
She hoped Kase didn’t realise how close she had come to falling apart completely; she’d hate to have to cancel out that little flash of vulnerability with something wicked to prove she wasn’t weak.
Hark was right. She would save the slaves – every single one. There was no other option.
The flames of Jaz’s hastily built fire brought Arla to the very edge of consciousness. Her eyelids heavy and drooping as the first warmth in hours licked at her skin. Whisky and leather wrapped around her, the scent comforting and familiar and … Hark.
‘Tea,’ he said, handing her a steaming cup of the sweet-smelling liquid. His kindness was another chink in the armour of her heart.
What was happening to her? She couldn’t be softening at the edges, could she? Though it wouldn’t come as a complete shock, she had felt, in one way or another, not herself since leaving Castle Grey. Her hand strayed to the brooch on her cloak as she watched Hark’s crew.
Something was cooking over the flames – rabbit, if she was not mistaken – skewered so crudely on a branch that she looked away.
Hark and the others were speaking in quick, raised voices, so overlapped that she couldn’t decipher what was being said.
They were in disagreement, or at least, Hark was in disagreement with his friends.
Kase’s silvery voice had become grating and high-pitched and Sebastian looked positively flustered as Hark asserted whatever power he wielded over the group.
Stretching her legs and ignoring the throb of her ankle, Arla levered herself off the ground and slotted herself into the circle of Kastonians.
‘As much as I thoroughly enjoy telling Stappen where to stick his horseshit ideas, I’m sick to the gods of listening to you all squabble like children. So, if one of you could explain whatever it is that’s going on, you’d be doing my head a favour.’
They turned to face her, and she didn’t miss how each of them flicked their eyes between her face and the bloodstained stone against which she leant. Once the dispute had been resolved, she would ask.
‘Waiting.’
‘Hark thinks we should get them out. All of them. Tomorrow,’ Sebastian said, pinching the bridge of his nose as Hark raised a brow.
‘The slaves?’ Arla asked, though they could hardly have been referring to anyone else.
‘All of them. We storm the camp and destroy it. No more slaves, no more trading, no more almost killing ourselves in these raids,’ Hark stated, his voice gravelly and full of something she couldn’t quite place.
‘Are you fucking serious?’ Kase snarled, tossing the tea she had been sipping onto the floor and flinging her braid over her shoulder.
‘Kase, those people could have been killed today because of our fuck-up—’
‘Our fuck-up? Again, are you serious?’ she snapped, her blue eyes staring him down.
‘They never listen! I told them to keep quiet and move slowly, then one of them has to fucking flicker in and out of existence, drawing the attention of the entire camp of soldiers. So please, Hark, explain to me where we fucked up?’ She was …
intense. The very air seemed to become heavy as she challenged him, and the muscle ticking in his jaw told Arla everything she needed to know.
Kase was yanking too hard on whatever tether he used to leash his temper – a tether Arla knew all too well how to snap. But—
‘Explain this flicker. I watched them disappear with my own eyes, but there must be an explanation. It’s not possible,’ Arla interrupted.
‘Ma—’
‘Leave it, Kase. She won’t believe it anyway,’ Hark said with a sigh.
‘Leave what?’ Arla demanded.
Kase smirked, sticking her tongue out at Hark in such a childish way that Arla almost laughed. ‘The slaves are magic-wielders,’ she said. ‘They crossed through whatever boundaries apply to everyone else and back again. They flicker in and out of existence.’
Not again. The stranger in Vorstrum had said the same thing. That the slaves they were trying to rescue bore blood magic.
The words felt useless as she spoke them. ‘There’s no such thing as magic.’
‘One point to Stappen. You truly don’t believe me, do you?’
‘I— Magic is—’
‘Real,’ Sebastian interrupted, ‘and it’s why they’re being rounded up. The King wants the magic.’
The truth settled on her like a lead blanket and she was sure the golden brooch felt warm through her cloak.
‘It’s true, Reinhart,’ Hark said. ‘Those rumours about the magic healers living in the mountains? Here they are, rounded up and being traded. Elrod is trying to harvest that power for himself.’
She didn’t know if she fully believed it, but clearly Elrod did. And if he did, then what…?
‘How is he harvesting this so-called power?’
‘Bloodletting. Sacrifices. He does horrible things to them, and he’s getting worse the longer it takes for any sort of magic to present itself within him,’ Sebastian explained, and she was glad it hadn’t been Hark.
She’d barely forgiven him for keeping the slave trading from her in the first place, so to keep something as abhorrent as this from her… Gods, she felt sick.
‘We’re getting them out. Now,’ she said, her exhaustion melting into red-hot, burning anger. Something in her was desperate now, urging her to save them all.
‘Not at night, Miss Reinhart,’ Jaz said gently, his first words to her all day. ‘They double the patrols at night and the slaves are kept under strict supervision. We’ve taken too many under the cover of darkness, and it has become our enemy, rather than our friend.’
Gods, gods, gods!
They’d been taking these slaves from under the king’s nose for how long? How had he retaliated? she wondered. More slaves? More blood? More sacrifices?
‘Does Cyrus know?’ She whirled on Hark again, a small part of her hoping against all hope that Cyrus didn’t have a hand to play in this. He was a good king. He protected her people. He had protected her.
‘I don’t know what Cyrus believes, Reinhart, and I don’t know how completely Elrod has manipulated him – if at all – but he knows of the slaves, and he knows of the sacrifices. He sent you here to ensure the slaves make it into Elrod’s hands. He sent you here to stop us.’
Something small and delicate cleaved in her chest.
‘So what’s the plan?’