Chapter Twenty-Five
When next I wake, the sun is high, and the campsite smells of cooking meat.
Titus’s back is to me. He’s crouched by the fire, holding a spitted rabbit over the flames. Without turning around, he says,
“Do you feel as terrible as I do this morning?”
My head is pounding, and my limbs feel as weak and limp as wet rags. Da always said a night of too much magic was worse than
a night of too much drinking. I finally believe him. “Probably not as terrible as you. You fell off your horse.”
He shrugs. “I’ll be fine.”
I crouch beside him. “Want me to get some tea going?”
“I guess.”
Not exactly a resounding endorsement, but I reach for the pot, which I’m glad to see is now empty. Titus must have drunk the
rest. Or maybe he forced it into me while I was sleeping.
He remains silent and brooding as I fetch water from the river, set it to boil, and rummage through our bags for tea leaves,
honey, and another slice of lemon. I need to talk to him about Cerastes, about everything I experienced last night. But something
holds me back.
“Thank you for the lemon,” I say, settling across from him.
“It was supposed to be a surprise,” he says, frowning.
“It was a wonderful surprise. The honey and lemon may have saved your life. There’s an old Grimsvolder saying about Gift-starvation:
Treat the weak with wheat, but the asleep with sweet.”
“That . . . only sort of rhymes.”
“I think it sounded better in Old Grimsvold.”
“A dead language.”
“My grandda was fluent.”
“Also dead.”
“Titus!” I put my hands on my hips and give him my best innkeeper glare. “What’s wrong with you? We just survived something
terrible. You should be—”
He launches to his feet, flings the skewered rabbit into the underbrush, and stomps away.
I freeze in place, feeling like a skewered rabbit myself. What did I do wrong? I rack my brain but come up with nothing. Which
makes me feel so much worse. If I don’t know what I did wrong, I can’t fix it.
Time to make myself busy.
I find the rabbit half buried in a pile of leaves. It’s still too hot to touch, so I use some dead leaves to pinch it by the
feet and lift it out. It’s covered in detritus and only partly cooked. “Ugh,” I say.
We can’t afford to waste food, especially after the night we had, so I’m going to salvage this critter or die trying. I brush
it off as best I can and take it back to the fire, re-spit it, and place it close enough to the flames to cook but hopefully
not burn. Then I set about packing up our bedrolls and tents.
Our campsite is clean, the horses packed, and our breakfast of rabbit and tea steaming deliciously by the time Titus trudges back to me, slumped and shamefaced.
He looks around the campsite, taking in what I’ve accomplished while he was off moping. His scowl deepens, as though my proficiency
makes everything worse. Not exactly the response I was hoping for.
He takes the cup of hot tea I offer without meeting my gaze, and he sips slowly and thoughtfully.
I tackle the rabbit. It’s too hot, but I’m ravenous and my tongue gets burned as I slurp down gritty chunks of meat.
We eat in silence. Then more silence. And yet more silence still.
Titus knows how much I love a good conversation. Or even a mediocre one. But he doesn’t know that I can also out-silence anyone.
Maybe we’ll travel all the way to Cathira without saying another word to each other. I suppose if my liege lord refuses to
give me orders, I’ll be able to do whatever I want. That would get him talking right quick.
I can’t help the tiny grin that sneaks onto my face, which I hide with the rim of my cup of tea.
“Last night with the assassin,” Titus says all of a sudden, and I nearly drop my tea. “I told you I got delayed.”
“I remember.”
“I was following you. From the shadows, I watched you walk up the stairs and into the Flying Fisher.”
I sip my tea.
“I was just about to make my move to intercept the assassin, when a woman with two children approached. They were unruly, talking and laughing and running circles around their mother.”
Probably the same woman and two children I ran into. “Iolan?” I ask. “Bright blue hair?”
He nods. “One of the children bumped into me. I was already grasping the thread of my magic, thinking I might need the ice
cat to deal with the assassin. So when she touched me, I sensed everything about her, including the tumor in her head that
was starting to press against the back of her right eye.”
I set down my tea. Clasp my hands together. “Then what happened?”
“I knew I shouldn’t take the time. But she was so small. So full of life and energy. And if I didn’t intervene, she would
be dead in a few months. She’d probably been having headaches for a while . . . anyway, I cut off the lifeblood to the tumor,
rearranged a few things. It might come back someday, but she’ll be fine for a long time.”
He waits, as though anticipating my response. But I give him nothing.
“I, uh, used a lot of magic for that. And when I saw you leave the tavern with the assassin, I couldn’t change into the cat
right away. He almost had you inside the warehouse before I was able to transform. I was almost too late.”
I retrieve the cup of tea from where I set it down and sip again. I’m not sure what he wants from me. Absolution? He should
ask his goddess friend for that.
He continues, “Then I healed the assassin so we could question him. It left me completely drained. I needed rest, but I told myself if we could just get on the road and eat while we traveled . . . but I passed out. You obviously got me to the campsite, got me warm and fed.”
“I did.”
“You shouldn’t have had to. I was irresponsible. I can’t just heal everyone I meet. There are bigger things at stake. This
time it almost got my shield maiden killed.”
I stare. Does he think I’m going to be mad about him saving the life of a tiny girl?
He says, “And then you were left alone in the night, in the middle of the road, with a comatose, Gift-starved oaf—”
“I did just fine.”
“But you shouldn’t have had to,” he repeats.
“I’m your shield maiden. I guard your back at all times, to the very best of my ability.”
“Yes, but because of my error in judgment—”
“Is that why you were cruel to me? Why you stomped off to pout? Because you made a mistake?”
Titus’s lips press tight. Nearby, Blackwind shuffles his feet, kicking up dried leaves and tossing his head in response to
his owner’s distress.
But now I’m the one who’s spitting mad. “The whole time I was breaking camp, I was sifting through all my memories of the
night, trying to figure out what I’d done to make you so angry.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. I was the one who—”
“Never do it again.”
“I’ll use better judgment with my magic. I promise—”
“Stop.” I consider throwing my remaining tea in his face.
I settle for tossing him some heated words.
“I don’t give a banshee’s ass about you healing strangers.
Heal everyone from here to Cathira; I really don’t care.
But if you take out your anger and self-loathing on me one more time, you will definitely regret it. ”
“I didn’t . . .” His jaw twitches, like he’s grinding out all his thoughts through his teeth.
I raise an eyebrow at him.
“Yes, all right, I did, didn’t I?”
“You know, I’m handling a lot right now. Quite admirably, I must add. I lost my da and my sister, I’ve been nearly killed
several times over, I left my mother and my home behind, I’m in a place I’ve never been, I got insulted by one of the gods.
So you do not get to be cruel to me.”
He suddenly looks like a kicked puppy. “Bria . . .”
My voice is shaky now, closer to a whisper as I struggle to hold back tears. “I mean it, Titus.”
He stares into the fire as though seeking answers.
“I’m glad you healed that little girl, by the way. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I’m glad she’s going to be
fine.”
His eyes snap to mine. “Not if it means losing you.”
The intensity of his stare makes me warm all over, and for once I have no idea what to say.
“Wait,” he says. “When were you insulted by a god?”
I pull Cerastes’s coil from under my tunic and hold it up for him to see.
His breath catches.
“She came to me last night. Or she brought me to her? I’m not sure. It seemed like we were here, but also . . . not here.”
Titus is nodding. “I know just what you mean.”
“Cerastes said all the other champions have chosen useful companions. She told me that I was mud on your boots, merely a complication in your story.”
I wait for him to contradict the goddess, but he says nothing, so I add, “I suppose she was right. I definitely felt like
mud on your boots this morning.”
Titus launches to his feet and closes the distance between us in the space of a blink. My instinct is to recoil from his sudden
intensity, but I hold my ground and meet his gaze with my own.
“Bria, you are mud on no one’s boots. Surely you know that? I was angry at myself. So angry I couldn’t see straight. And I
recognized that I was taking it out on you, so I walked away to do some thinking. I’m sorry, all right? I’m really sorry.”
Truly, Titus has the nicest eyes. You’d think the amber color would be off-putting, but it’s not. It’s warm and bright and
so, so full of feeling.
“Was that so hard? I accept your apology.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. You said you’re sorry, and I choose to believe you.”
His hand comes up to squeeze my shoulder. It’s a friendly gesture, an expression of gratitude, but his face is suddenly so
close I can feel his warm breath. Am I going too easy on him? Forgiving him because he’s so beautiful I can’t think straight?
“Cerastes is wrong,” he says. “I chose the most useful companion of all.”
I swallow hard and manage to say, “I did tell you I’d make myself useful.”
His hand does not leave my shoulder. It takes everything in me to resist leaning toward him. “The other thing about my companion,”
he says. “She turned out to be decent company.” His grin deepens. “Even if she talks my ear off sometimes.”
Finally he drops his hand, and my shoulder is unbearably cold.
He says, “Let’s get on the road.”
“Wait! I still have questions!”
“Of course you do. We’ll talk while we ride.”