Chapter Thirty-One
“Go away,” Kaelen shouts.
We hear Chitai’s musical laugh, then she raps on the wooden door once more. “Time to get on the road, young … merchant. And if you happen to see Soli, please tell her the same.”
“She knows,” I groan, putting a hand over my eyes.
“I’m sure they all know. Does it bother you?” Kaelen rises on one elbow and looks down at me. “I’m sorry if—”
“No. No,” I say, even as Trick’s face flashes into my mind. I wonder if I’m telling the truth. Does it bother me?
No, I realize. If this journey has proven anything so far, it’s that the threads of our lives can be cut short at any minute. I can’t be sorry I took this one night for myself. We could have died in the Barrows. Or in the attack at the palace.
I touch the locket, remembering the throne room where it all started.
“No,” I repeat with a smile that’s only a little forced. “It doesn’t bother me. But she’s right. We need to get going.”
We quickly dress before Kaelen opens the door to Chitai’s smiling face.
“It’s about time,” she says, folding her arms.
“We were busy,” Kaelen tells her, glancing back at me before giving her his most impassive expression.
“We were busy, too, but we’ve already been down for breakfast and are packed and ready to go,” she says, studying my face over Kaelen’s shoulder.
The door across the hall opens. Elianna walks out and freezes, clearly unprepared to face us. Chitai grins at me and then turns, puts an arm around Elianna’s waist, and pulls her into the most passionate kiss I’ve ever seen in public.
Kaelen whistles. “I guess you were busy.”
“Let’s go,” Chitai says cheerfully, then turns and runs lightly down the stairs.
Elianna looks at me, and I look at her. Neither of us speaks until she breaks the awkward silence with a laugh. “What can I say? She’s persuasive.”
“And hot,” I say, grinning at her. “Really, really hot.”
“Soli, I’ll meet you outside after you get your things,” Kaelen says, shaking his head at the two of us. Then he grabs his bag and follows Chitai.
Elianna raises an eyebrow.
“Don’t say it,” I mutter, not in the mood to hear any warnings about how he’s not for me.
She shrugs. “I was just going to say it looks like he’s persuasive, too.”
I have to laugh. “And hot. Really, really hot.”
The silence between us is almost relaxed as we head down the stairs. I make a stop at my room to gather up my things. Before I leave the room, I rummage around in my pouch, decide to tempt fate, and twine Joy into my hair.
Outside, I’m walking toward my horse when I hear shouts from the edge of town, from the direction of the fields. I shoot a glance at the prince. We need to get going.
Now.
Before anybody questions us.
Andras guides his horse nearer. “Let’s move while daylight favors our journey.”
“Thank you so much,” I tell Younkin, swinging up on Cloud and patting her neck. I never thought I’d be so happy to see a horse.
But the man is distracted by the shouting children running toward us, so he gives me a quick wave before turning his attention back to the furor.
“The fields!”
“They’re growing!”
“They grew!”
“There are crops!”
Chitai catches my urgency and speaks up. “Is it a game? Your younglings are very high-spirited, innkeeper. We wish you a good day and hope to visit again on our return journey.”
With that, we head out of the village at a brisk pace, not moving so fast that we give the appearance of fleeing, but not slowly enough to invite conversation, either. I smile and nod at a few of the villagers but don’t slow Cloud’s pace.
Behind us, the excited chatter grows louder and louder, but we don’t look back, don’t hesitate, and don’t talk among ourselves until we’re nearly half an hour outside of town. Then Andras wheels his horse around and rides back to me.
“The crops grew?” His voice is drier than my throat.
I sigh. “Artemisen was busy.”
He studies my face and neck and raises a single dark eyebrow. “She wasn’t the only one.”
On my other side, Kaelen turns to look at the Sylvan and raises an eyebrow of his own. “Perhaps we should get farther away before we stop to discuss the actions of goddesses. I don’t want the fine people of Merrion to decide we had anything magical to do with their unexpected good fortune.”
Andras laughs. “Fair enough. But I want to hear about this—the crops—when we break for camp.”
With that, he canters ahead, and Chitai gallops past us to join him.
Behind us, Bern and Sergeant Neville ride next to each other, talking, and behind them, Trick drives the wagon.
Elianna is probably taking a nap, which seems to be one of her favorite things, and also her preferred way of avoiding conversations she doesn’t want to have.
Trick turns his head away when he sees me looking back at him, and my belly roils sickly.
I feel like I’ve let him down, even though I know that makes no sense.
We’re only friends; he spoke freely to me in the past of his romantic liaisons.
Neither one of us ever tried to move our relationship in that direction.
We eat our midday meal on the road, since nobody wants to stop for long, which thankfully postpones the discussion everyone wants to have about the crops.
It also delays any conversation between Trick and me.
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, even though I’m already embarrassed about what he knows.
Or what I’ll tell him.
Most important, I can’t let any awkwardness or even anger between us drive me back down into the fog, especially not now.
Gray Mind doesn’t always care about external events; it claws what it wants from me with greedy, grasping fingers, taking especially vicious delight in ruining happy moments.
If I fall back there, after the best night of my entire life …
I’ll only feel more helpless and hopeless.
The vicious cycle of Gray Mind: If my brain drives me into the fog of nothingness even when I should feel happy, how can I possibly predict when it will strike? And if I can’t predict it, how can I ever hope to avoid it?
I flinch at the memory of the one and only time I tried to explain this to the Sister Superior.
You can’t be sad, Soli. You’ve nothing to be sad about! It’s the summer solstice. You were just out in town for the Blossom Festival. Now we know this entire display of Gray Mind is nothing but a farce. A facade you use to hide from work.
I cowered before her, knowing the lash was coming, knowing I could stop it if I could only pretend hard enough to be happy.
Slow tears ran down my face when I couldn’t find the strength to do even that.
Fine. Why don’t I give you something to cry about, then?
I don’t realize how low I’m hunched over my saddle until I feel Kaelen’s hand touch my arm.
“Where did you go?”
Straightening, I scrub at my face with the heel of my hand. “Nowhere I want to be.”
He lets it go, although I can tell by his troubled eyes that he’s not happy about it. A muscle clenches in his jaw, but he nods and changes the subject. “What should we tell them about last night?”
“What?” In my shock, I raise my voice so much that Andras turns in his saddle to look back at us.
I flap a dismissive hand in the Sylvan’s direction and repeat my question in a whisper. “What?”
Kaelen’s wicked grin makes me blush. “Not that. What should we tell them about what happened in the fields?”
“Oh. Well, everything.” I feel my face heat again when I consider the implications of everything. “Not the kissing part, naturally. But the amulet pulling us into the field, the crops … We can’t succeed if we keep secrets from the rest of the company, can we?”
A shadow crosses behind his eyes. “You’d think so, but I’m betting everyone else in our group has secrets of their own.
We just found out that Elianna has been lying to us—at least by omission—all along.
And Chitai still hasn’t told us the story of why she was in Pallanhold at exactly the right time to be sent on this quest. Even Andras—look how long he held back the details of his involvement with the amulet. Trick …”
“What about Trick?” I hear the defensiveness in my voice even as I ask.
He snorts. “I don’t trust a word out of his mouth.
No offense meant to you. Probably even Sergeant Neville has secrets.
Who knows what the king commanded before sending him with us?
Neville is one of the king’s longest-serving, most trusted guards.
You don’t survive in Pallan’s service without seeing and doing some unpleasant things. ”
His cynicism shocks me until I think about it, and then I realize it doesn’t. He’s right about Chitai and Elianna. Andras, certainly. Trick, well … Kaelen has reasons to be suspicious there, too. But Sergeant Neville?
“Surely not Bern?”
Kaelen smiles and shakes his head. “No, not Bern. I think he will be loyal to you until the end of his days.”
This answer baffles me, so I ignore it and ride on in silence. With so much to think about, and memories of last night and Kaelen constantly intruding—his hands, his mouth, his body—the day passes in a haze. We see a few travelers on the road, but they’re always coming from the east, heading west.
There’s little news, and all of it is bad. The Zhagarn are advancing. People are being burned out of their homes and villages. All signs point to even less snowfall in the mountains than last winter, and we were already in near-drought conditions.
With nature out of balance, from the thirsty seedlings buried in the soil, to the lessening snow in the mountains, to the absence of stars in the sky, how long will it be until all of Altarra turns into the blighted wastes of the Degradation?
When we finally break for camp, dusk is fading.
Trick walks his horse over to mine, and we spend time in silence tending to our mounts.
I keep waiting for him to say something about last night—about Kaelen and me.
But the silence grows denser and more impenetrable with every minute it persists.
Eventually, I decide that waiting for him is more painful than breaking the silence myself, so I speak up.
“Trick, how is it that the thieves have a Guild? Theft is against the law in Pyrrh.”
He looks startled but answers me readily enough. “It’s not official, of course. But we have the same hierarchical structure, with Guild bosses and the like. Those of us lower down the ladder pay dues upward.”
“Are you in the Guild? It’s just … you said you were high in the ranks, but Elianna says you’re not, and I don’t care. I really don’t. Our friendship has nothing to do with your status in an … an illegal guild.”
When he looks away from me, as if ashamed to meet my eyes, I reach out to touch his arm.
“Listen to me. It doesn’t matter. Whatever happened or didn’t happen, whatever your status with the Guild, you’ll always be my friend.
The past is just that. From now on, let’s move forward without carrying those burdens in our hearts. I love you, my friend.”
Now he meets my gaze, and there’s a trace of amusement in his brown eyes.
“But only your friend, right?” He winks at me, but then his face turns serious.
“I can only hope that fancy prince is good enough for you. I’ll make sure he meets the pointy end of my daggers if he’s not.
And I love you, too, my friend. Forever and always. ”
I hug him, and I know we’re fine. We’ll always be fine. He grins, kisses the top of my head, and then walks with me to the wagon to retrieve our cooking supplies. He lifts a heavy pot filled with bags of grain and dried beans, his arm muscles straining his sleeves.
I realize, not for the first time, that Trick is a very handsome man and wonder absently why I never thought about him romantically.
Then I think about my overpowering attraction to Kaelen, and the truth strikes: Trick feels more like a brother to me.
We carry everything to the fire in silence while I muse on this epiphany, and then he pulls me aside. “Please let me find us a way out of this. The first key nearly got us killed. Who knows what kind of danger surrounds the second?”
“I told you, Trick. I choose this. This quest? It’s for all of Altarra. It’s important. And … I’m important to it. I’m staying.”
His hands clench into fists. “We’ll die if we stay. Also, I can’t be trapped this way. The binding … You know about my father.”
“The drunkard who locked you in a closet so many times when you were only a tiny boy, may he rot in the afterlife?” As always, pain and rage shoot through me at the thought of it.
Trick’s face hardens. “Yeah. That damn closet. The inside of that heavy wooden door probably still carries the grooves from my fingernails from where I was clawing to get out.”
“I’m so sorry.” I put a hand on his arm, but he shakes his head and moves away.
“Elianna’s binding. It’s a horrible sensation, like being trapped again. I’ve been testing the limits ever since she bound me.”
“I’ll tell her she has to remove the binding,” I say. “Tonight.”
“We can’t escape if she doesn’t,” he says grimly.
That’s when I realize he may have listened to me, but he didn’t hear a word I said.
“Trick—” I begin, but shouts from behind me interrupt, and I whirl to see Bern galloping toward us.
“Prepare for attack!”