Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I t’s been two nights, and we’re still stuck in this Divine-damned cave. The rain is not as bad as it was, but there’s no sign of it letting up enough to travel.We’ve talked through all our plans, including the route and possible scenarios when we get to Erdu City Castle. It seems like breaking into the castle is our only option. But for now, I am sick of going over the same conversation again and again. This is why I like to work alone.
Riley is sitting with his back against a wall staring outside, knees bouncing and looking sweaty. He hasn’t said much to me since that night. Gone is the constant simmering smirk on his face, the lingering stares, the cheeky comments at every turn. A sullen and gray shell has been left in its place. I wouldn’t have been too worried if it wasn’t for the fact that the other three have also been looking at him with concern.
After lunch, where Riley—yet again—barely eats anything, Tovi is napping, and Bitty and Beans are stretching. Beans is telling Bitty a story of his time before he found them. Riley is back to his position against the wall, looking like he might sprint outside at any moment. Like he’s a caged animal, ready to snap.
I’m propped against the wall opposite him as I sharpen my blades, watching. His knees are bouncing again, pale skin still pallid and sweaty. He keeps clenching and unclenching his fists, spearing his fingers out shakily to stretch them. I’m not even sure if he’s aware he’s doing it. His eyes are glassed over as he stares down the passage. Dark circles under his eyes indicate he’s sleeping even less than he usually does, which isn’t much. Decided, I put away my knives.
I crouch down beside him, looking outside for a moment. I don’t think he has even registered my presence. “Do you want to do some hand-to-hand outside?” I whisper, and he jumps, glaring at me.
Standing without a word, he strides outside. Not waiting for me or looking at anyone. Riley’s silhouette disappears, swallowed by the rain. Looking back to Beans, he gives me a knowing nod and returns to his story with Bitty.
Riley stands in the rain with his back to me. We’re both barefoot and not wearing leathers, and his thin shirt is clinging to every muscle. Where Beans has defined muscles, cut without a single inch of fat, Riley is pure bulk. I’m still not sure who I’d put money on in a fight: Beans who is taller with muscles on top of muscles, or the slightly shorter Riley and his solid mass.
Riley has put his dark, blood-red hair in a bun, the rain already darkening it further. I watch his hands repeat their clenching before I clear my throat, and he whirls to face me, eyes rimmed in red.
We start with basic training drills to get our bodies moving. There is no force or strength behind the blows, though they get faster and faster. Mud squelches between our toes, the sounds of slapping as our hits connect over and over. We’re both covered in mud from head to toe. It’s not until Riley slips and connects a punch harder than he intended, splitting the skin over my cheekbone, that we stop.
He rushes forward to grab me before I tip over, grabbing my face in his hands so fast I don’t have time to react. And then I don't know how to react as his focus is wholly on me. Our breathing is hard, the rain smashing down as he hisses, prodding at my cheek. Hissing as if he is the one with a cut face. It doesn’t hurt, even as his hot fingers press and wipe at it. He declares it minor, and nothing is broken, before making eye contact with me. Still holding my face.
“I’m sorry,” he says in a hoarse voice, eyes flicking back to the cut. Still holding my face.
I gently tug myself out of his touch. “It was an accident, Riley.”
He nods, dropping his hands, before swaying slightly and running to the nearest tree to vomit up his meager lunch. I stand there awkwardly, not wanting to leave him alone but not wanting to get any closer to him while he’s so vulnerable.
When he finally stops his retching and leans against the tree, wiping his arm across his mouth with eyes closed, I approach him.
“Are you okay?”
His eyes pop open. “No.”
I nod, that was a stupid question. “What’s wrong?”
He lets out a long and steadying breath through his nose as he fixes his intent stare—returned from wherever it had retreated the last few days—back on me.
“I cannot say to you that it is nothing. But neither do I want to tell you.”
Oh. Of course he isn’t going to tell me what’s wrong or why he’s not okay. We aren’t friends. I give him a tight smile, nodding as though I understand, and turn to leave. He snatches my hand and whirls me back to face him, the heat instantly triggering the rage deep inside me as he circles his thumb on the back of it.
“I just…don’t want to burden you.” He swallows and leans his head back, giving my hand one more stroke. “Thank you for this.” He lets go gently.
I nod, again, as if that is the only thing I can do, and he can’t even see it as his eyes are closed again. I leave him to it, returning to the cave. Once inside, Tovi pins me with a withering glare, looking behind me for Riley, I assume.
“Where is he?” she demands.
Raising an eyebrow at her tone, I gesture with my thumb behind me. Off she stalks, into the rain to see for herself. I frown and look over at the other two, who give me shrugs and wide eyes. It’s not long before Riley and Tovi return, changing from their wet clothes as I did when I came back. The silence from everyone is deafening.
Finally, after two more nights of extreme downpours, sunshine breaks through, and we’re back on the move. The sun sparkles in the sky, a perfect blue with not a cloud in sight.
Riley looks good. The dark circles under his eyes are not as dark, and his hands no longer shake, nor do they clench with every breath he takes. Tovi won’t leave his side, so I don’t go near either of them. During our stop for lunch, he gives me a nod and a small smile, trying to hold my eye before I look away. I have not been alone with Riley since our sparring session, Tovi is making sure of that.
Later, while the other three are preoccupied, Tovi approaches me. “Riley told me what you did for him the other day,” she states matter-of-factly .
I pause, crouched on the ground in front of a patch of fresh mint, and raise an eyebrow.
She clears her throat, looking over my head. “Thank you,” she says with reluctance, clouding the sentiment.
“Why?” I ask. Why is she thanking me for helping Riley?
Her eyes narrow at me, the violet of her eyes looking every bit Divine with their ethereal glow. I don’t get an answer.
We stop for camp the next night, and Riley asks if we can spar. I don’t even get a chance to respond before Bitty excitedly answers yes for me.
It’s different than the time by the cave. Riley is different this time. Without weapons—and at seemingly full capacity—he’s hard to beat. He’s much stronger than I am, and it doesn’t matter how quick I am, I can only take a few hits from him.
I get a few decent kicks in that are stronger than my punches. His lip is split, and so is mine, neither of which stops the fight, thankfully. I force Riley to the ground a few times, but he doesn’t stay down for long, though he never manages to knock me off my feet.
Fighting to win instead of fighting to kill is hard. I know many ways I could have beaten Riley by now, but I lose the fight when I swing a kick at his head in frustration. Not only does he manage to stop it, but he holds on. As soon as I see the smirk bloom on his face, I know exactly what he’s going to do. He yanks my leg up so hard that my other comes off the ground, and I am dangling in the air upside down.
“I’ll save you the further embarrassment of dropping you on your head, Firecat ,” Riley purrs at me. He puts me down gently.
“Who are you calling Firecat?” I spit.
“You. Definitely you. Small, deadly, and mostly annoying. Basically, a teeny tiny bag of claws and teeth that spits fire. And you even have the same color hair as firecat fur!” he says in triumph, as if that proves his point.
I’m still sitting on the ground so I trip him, and he lands on his backside. I have a blade to his throat before he has a chance to move.
“I’ll show you a Firecat,” I growl. My rage starts bubbling in my chest as if Riley had summoned it by speaking its name.
“You just proved my point, I think,” Riley says, with not even a shred of concern about the knife I have against the lifeblood line in his neck. “This was fun. I’ll have to fight Bitty— figuratively, of course—to spar with you each evening.”
True to his word, every night, I spar with one of them. Even Tovi and Beans get in on it. The five of us stop an hour—sometimes two—early each day so we can all spar before it gets dark enough for someone to go on watch.
It turns competitive of course. Weapons are introduced. Beans was right—Bitty is excellent at knife throwing, so it’s always one of us two who wins. Watching Beans and Riley fight with swords is exciting and terrifying—I hope I am never on the receiving end of their wrath.
Almost every fight ends in them wrestling each other on the ground, hollering and yelling. Once, when the day was unseasonably warm, they trained without shirts—their rippled muscles glistening with sweat—and it was a show of pure and unadulterated testosterone and strength. I had to stop watching as the swirling low in my belly triggered my rage.
Riley and Beans also spar with their axes, leaving the leather bindings over the heads to be safe. It takes a lot of control to fight to win, but still hold it back so you don’t seriously hurt anyone. Which is exactly what I have to do, every time I have a weapon in my hand. The rage wants to take over and cause pain, no matter who is on the receiving end.
One evening, I decide to spar alone with my hatchets. Their lightness is conducive for me to flip and jump while having them safely in hand. I fucking love them. Breathing hard, and grinning to myself after a particularly enjoyable sequence, I yank one of the hatchets out of a tree.
“Are you deliberately trying to prove me right?” Riley asks, leaning against a tree not far from me, giving me a heated look up and down with his classic smirk.
I point at him with one of my hatchets and narrow my eyes. “Don’t tempt me,” I threaten half-heartedly.
Riley puts his arms up in mock surrender. “I was coming to tell you dinner’s ready, Firecat.”
I throw a hatchet to hit the tree above and to the right of his head as he ducks and runs back to the camp. “She’s an angry little thing!” he yells in a sing-song way.
My lips twist as I resist the urge to grin.
After a couple of weeks with no inn, we’re all a little testy. Strangely, Riley is in the best mood of us all. We travel in single file, Tovi in front, then Bitty, Beans, me, and Riley bringing up the rear. I spot the back of a blue deer briefly during our silent march through the countryside. Although it is not actually blue, the deer’s coat is just so dark and inky that it almost looks blue. They camouflage so well in the forest, looking like the dappled bushes that overtake the understory.
After so many hours of silent travel, and the other three slowly pulling ahead, I am startled to find Riley walking beside me. The sun glows through his hair, highlighting the dark blood-red color in all its glory. He catches me watching him and the smirk is back, warming my cheeks. Maybe the smirk isn’t totally unattractive.
“Want to play a game?” he asks.
“What kind of game ?”
He waggles his brows. “You bring up a topic about yourself, I try to guess the correct answer. If I get it wrong, then I have to answer instead.”
“Okay…” I drawl. “Example?”
“Favorite weapon. Now you guess what mine is.”
I study him, wondering what the trick is, as he uses his shoulder to gently shove me. “Your hands,” I guess, and his eyebrows go up.
“Yes,” he laughs. “I thought you’d guess my axe, though I know your answer would be your hatchets. Now you pick something for me to guess, and if I get it wrong, I’ll answer it.”
I think on it, wondering what I would like to know about him, that he couldn’t guess about me, but coming up with nothing. “Favorite food,” I suggest, weakly.
“Apricots,” he says within a heartbeat of me finishing the words.
Damn it, I was too obvious with Mama.
“Favorite season in any country?” he asks.
How the fuck would I know that about him. He only has a small smattering of freckles, so I don’t think it’s any of the hot seasons, which leaves three choices.
“Cold and dry?”
“Nope! Now you have to tell me,” he says, with a sparkle I’ve never seen in his eyes before.
“I would’ve said the cold and windy season, but Nemoris is making me doubt that.”
This goes on for a few more rounds, while we learn unimportant and silly things about each other, though I learn more about him than he does about me. I now know he hates being tickled and loves the sound of rain and the smell of fresh bread.
“Siblings.”
“ That is cheating, Firecat. I wouldn’t be able to guess correctly unless you know. Do you know?”
I shrug, giving him a wicked grin that he shakes his head at as he spins to walk backward in front of me.
“Sneaky. Fine, since there’s no point in guessing yours, two younger sisters and an older brother. Favorite color,” he demands pointing at me with narrowed eyes, like it’s the most important question and not giving me a chance to ask anything about his siblings.
Knowing I have to take a stab in the dark, I try to think of something he might like. “Yellow? A buttery, creamy, sunshine yellow?” I flail my hands about, gesturing vaguely at the sun, and finish with a smile as I bite my lip. Riley stops in his tracks as he watches me, and I almost bump into him. I won’t admit it, but this is fun.
“Yes,” he breathes, looking at me in disbelief.
I squeal like a child. “I got it right? That’s your favorite color?”
“I can think of no better.”
My stupid grin becomes self-satisfied, especially when he demands, almost in a whine, “What’s yours? ”
“Oh, you’ll never know, because I was right. ” And I dance off, spinning around to poke out my tongue. I don’t even cringe this time.