Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
CAIRN
The sun is disappearing behind the trees when Sorel and Kaelith walk into the clearing with three hares and a brace of grouse between them.
Within a quarter hour, the carcasses are dressed, a spit built, and Caelum settles the meat over the flames.
The smell draws everyone closer, until most of the Guard are around the fire.
Therin leans toward the meat, sniffing loudly. “Tell me I’m not the only one who thinks this smells like fellhare.”
“Don’t,” Vessara groans. “I haven’t thought about fellhare in a hundred years.”
“He’s not wrong, though,” Brael comments from where he’s sprawled nearby. “It’s almost the same … or we’ve just forgotten how it really smells. I think the first thing I’m going to do when we’re home is hunt one down and cook it.”
“You couldn’t cook a fellhare before we were caged. What makes you think you’ll be able to do it now?”
“I’ve had time to really think about it.”
“I’d give a hand … well, maybe a finger … for a plate of brackenfowl right now,” Kaelith mutters. “And a skin of silvermead to wash it down.”
“Silvermead.” Therin sighs, licking his lips like he’s already tasting it. “I wonder if Nightward’s cellar stayed sealed. There should be at least one crate down there.”
“Only if the brownies haven’t found it. They’ve probably all spent the last three centuries drunk and floating in the casks.” Caelum looks up from where he’s turning the spit.
Movement catches my eye. I glance over to see Alleria moving closer. She’s been sitting on the bedroll in the half-shelter for the past hour, and I thought she was asleep. But she’s on her feet now, and moving slowly around the fire to where Serath is sitting.
I send a slight tug down the blood bond. Her steps falter, and her eyes snap up, finding mine across the fire. I tug again, a lazy, gentle pull that has her taking a step forward against her will. Her eyes narrow.
She’s not going to make this easy. Good.
I hold her gaze, and tug again, harder. Her expression sends a rush of warmth through me that has nothing to do with the fire. Her chin lifts. She throws her shoulders back, and she continues toward Serath.
“Ahh, our new twelfth has decided to join us.” Riahn’s voice holds a note that silences everyone. “Alleria, isn’t it?”
Alleria nods.
“Where did Cairn find you, I wonder.” From the way Vel stiffens beside her, it’s clear that Riahn knows exactly where Alleria came from.
“He didn’t find me. I found him.”
“Down the shaft of an arrow, so I’m told.”
“Riahn.” Caelum touches her hand.
Alleria shakes her head. “No. It’s all right. I understand what you must feel when you look at me.”
“You know nothing about how I feel.”
“Then tell me.” Alleria’s words are soft.
“My body has been used in ways you could never imagine. I have lived through torture that would break your mind. I was collared and caged. My magic was stripped away by the iron. My Eldráfn was taken from me. We believed him dead until the night our collars broke and magic flooded down our bonds again. And then we discovered that the magic holding us to him now holds us to you. It has placed you where Praesha used to be. I feel you the way I feel the rest of the Guard.” Her lips curl into a sneer.
“You … whose body has never been collared and caged. You who have not been hunted and bred. You … a human princess. And I am expected to look at the face of the daughter of a man who rules this kingdom and allows the abuse and murder of my kind. And I’m supposed to accept you into our ranks?”
“Everything you say is true. And I can never undo what was done to you. I won’t pretend I didn’t believe everything I was raised on.
I did. Every word. I had no reason to question or doubt it.
I rode to a preserve, and planned to put an arrow through a fae for sport.
If the hunt had gone the way it was meant to, I would have ridden out, found him in those woods, and put an arrow through his heart.
” She glances at me. “I was excited for it. I wanted it. I would have gone home with his antlers and slept peacefully that night, happy that I’d experienced my first hunt. ”
Riahn laughs, the sound hard and loud in the silence of the clearing. “And yet … here you are.”
“Here I am.” She doesn’t raise her voice. “But what I was isn’t all I am.”
“You think you’re more than a spoiled pretty princess playing at rebellion?”
“No, I don’t think that. I know I’m more than that.”
Her eyes find mine again.
This is a battle I cannot fight for her. If I speak, if I move to defend her, then she will never have a place in the Guard that hasn’t been carved by my voice. She has to stand on her own for this.
I hold still and say nothing. Her jaw sets when she realizes I’m not coming to her aid. Her chin lifts. Her gaze sweeps over the Guard where they’re seated and sprawled around the fire, then she nods. I think it’s more to herself than to anyone looking at her.
Beside me, Vessara shifts forward, as though to speak. I close my fingers around her wrist, a silent command to wait.
Riahn snorts. “Then what are you, princess?”
Alleria takes a soft breath. “I learned this morning that I have spent my entire life looking at a face that is not mine. Those same mages who alter fae so nobles can hunt them used the same magic on me so I looked more human. The captain of the king’s guard who watched me grow up chained me up so a mage could invade my mind because they wanted to know what I’d learned about fae.
When he couldn’t break through, that same captain had his soldiers beat me until I could not stand. ”
The fire pops. No one speaks.
“My own father sentenced me to hang because I would not give up the Nightwild Guard. My sister stood beside him. The handmaiden I’d loved since I was a child handed me over because she believed fae had glamoured me.
” She holds Riahn’s eyes. “I walked to that rope without giving them a single one of you.
I would have died on it if Cairn had not come for me.
And I would have accepted that fate because I would rather die than see Cairn and the rest of you suffer a second longer.
“So, no. Maybe I can’t ever fully understand what you have been through, and I am not suggesting that what I have suffered comes close to the things that have been done to you.
I am not asking you to call me one of yours.
I am not asking you to accept me. I am standing here in a body I no longer recognize, and I am telling you that the hands that hurt you and yours have hurt me too.
In smaller ways. I know it’s smaller. But I am asking you to look at me, and know that the kingdom you hate has cost me too. ”
Riahn stares at her.
“I did not choose to be part of your Guard.” Alleria frowns. “No. That isn’t true. I did choose it. Every decision I made in the past month has brought me to this point, and I would not undo any of them. Even if I could.”
Before Riahn can respond, Therin moves. He pushes to his feet, stretching until his shoulders crack, then looks over at Caelum.
“If the two of you are finished sizing each other up, I think the hare is done.” He walks over to where Caelum works the spit, patting Alleria’s shoulder as he passes. “You did good.”
And just like that, the tension eases. Caelum lets Therin take his place, so he can pull the hare off the spit and carve it into portions, which are passed around on plates created by Sorel.
I lean back against the trunk, letting the threads connecting me to each member of the Guard flow through me. There’s a thrum of anticipation running along all but one. That one holds more unease than anything else. I let my awareness flow down it.
Come here.
Her startled gasp reaches my ears before it floods the bond connecting us. No more than a heartbeat later, her footsteps come toward me.
I open my eyes when they stop.
“Sit.”
She lowers herself to the grass beside me.
I study her for a second, then move, wrapping an arm around her waist so I can lift her across me.
She gasps. I ignore her, setting her down in front of me, between my legs, and pull her back against my chest. She stiffens, then sighs, and lets her head fall back against my shoulder.
“Better?”
“No. Yes. Maybe.”
I laugh quietly, and drop my chin to rest on the top of her head. “You handled Riahn well.”
“There was nothing to handle. I understand why she’s angry about me being here. Vel is … was the same.”
“Still. You stood your ground. That was brave.”
Her laugh is shaky. “It was terrifying.”
“You’ve faced worse.”
“Like you, you mean? Sometimes you still scare me.”
“Only sometimes?”
Across the fire, Therin catches my eye. His gaze dips down to Alleria, moves back to me. He smiles, then leans toward Sorel, drawing everyone into a discussion on whether the Guard will be back in Nightward before the moon rises tomorrow night.
Alleria’s breathing slows, her body relaxing into my warmth as she drifts toward sleep. I form a thick blanket and drape it over her. She shifts slightly, her hand curling into the front of my tunic.
I tighten my hold on her and close my eyes.
I wake just before dawn. The clearing is quiet, the fire has burned down to coals, and around it, the Guard sleeps in a loose, scattered pattern. Each of them lies with just enough space around them to be on their feet and ready to defend themselves at a moment’s notice.
I’m no longer propped against the tree. Sometime in the night I’ve stretched out flat on the ground.
Alleria is still curled against me, the blanket I conjured wrapped around us both.
Her hand has loosened its grip on my tunic in her sleep and lies flat against my chest, her head against my shoulder.
She is going to hate me for what I’m going to do today.
Lifting her hand off my chest, I ease out from beneath her, and set her gently down, drawing the blanket back tight around her. She makes a soft sound and burrows into it, but she doesn’t wake.