Chapter 4 #2
But the anger had taken an edge now. It writhed inside her veins, and she didn’t have the strength to stop it.
‘You live in your perfect white castle upon the hill, gifted with magic to keep you safe while the rest of us suffer. While we wait for news that the war has come for us. A war we didn’t start. But a war we’re expected to die in, nonetheless.’
His hand tightened over his sword, but he didn’t draw it. ‘Says the woman who senses when danger is near. I don’t think you can count yourself as nomage, Minder. You argue for a people you aren’t even part of.’
Her blood went cold. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
A smug smile crossed his lips. ‘Tell that to the shadow wolf who nearly removed my head. No one can detect when they’re near. And yet …’ he raised a pale, scarred brow, ‘here I stand. How did you do it?’
‘I heard them coming.’
‘Impossible,’ he growled. ‘They make no sound.’
Her heart was a war drum now.
He knew about her strange magic. Of course he knew, and she’d been a fool to save him, to give her secret away.
But what was he going to do? Throw her in prison like the others?
He’d have to drag her all the way back to Rendegard to do that, and suddenly she was furious all over again.
‘You don’t know what it’s like to lose, Prince,’ Ezer spat. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be left in the darkness, waiting for—’
‘I don’t know what it’s like to lose?’ he asked.
She paused, looking up at him. Because his voice had changed.
She’d thought him angry before.
Now?
Now, she backed up a step.
‘N … no,’ she said.
He lifted a pale brow and stalked towards her. ‘And how would a Ravenminder, hidden away in her tower, safe and sound from the tide of war, know what a Sacred Knight has or has not lost?’
‘You …’
She swallowed her words, because now she sounded like a fool, throwing stones when she had no clue of where they should land.
‘The Sacred are not given choices. We live. We serve. And we die early when the power required takes its toll on our bodies. That is the chief end of those who have magic.’
He said it like a warning.
She met his eyes, and where she expected fury to be on his face …
There was only an emptiness that matched her own.
‘I understand that to mourn, Minder, is to feel half dead yourself. I understand that there are people we love, people we think we will never lose. We plan things with them, we envision them in our future, and then one day, before we can even think of uttering a goodbye … they’re already gone.’
His chest rose and fell swiftly, like he was short of breath.
Perhaps there was more to the story behind his scar.
‘I could have been kinder to you,’ Arawn said. ‘When I delivered the news about your uncle and your assignment. For that … I am sorry.’
She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had told her they were sorry, let alone a prince. She’d nearly forgotten the word, and it seemed he had, too, for he looked horribly uncomfortable saying it. The word came out with a wince.
And then, to add to her surprise … he held out a calloused hand. One that pointed towards the distant woods, instead of the road below.
Her eyes widened.
‘You want to run? Then go ahead,’ Arawn said. His voice was not gentle, but it lacked the usual gruffness it carried. ‘I suppose I owe you a life debt now, anyhow. You saved me from a beheading on the road, and there’s not an invocation in existence that can bring a person back from that.’
‘Keep your debt,’ Ezer said, surprising even herself.
She turned around and stared at the woods.
She would go south, far enough away from the cold that the wolves would not be a bother. She would pick up another job as a Ravenminder there, make enough of a living to scrape by for a time, until the war ended.
She’d start a new life. Earn enough coin to find answers about her family, perhaps pay a visit to the census archives in Touvre. After that … she had no plans. It was open-ended, and in some ways that felt like more freedom than she’d ever had.
Ezer took a step towards the woods, opposite from the path where the wolves had melted away. She’d only made it ten paces when she paused.
South, she thought, staring ahead. Yes, that must be south, just between two bare aspens. Back towards the nearest settlement, which had to be less than a day’s journey … if anyone was still left there.
But …
No.
That wasn’t quite right.
Ezer turned in a circle, unable to get her bearings in the snowy wood, for suddenly it all looked the same.
Perhaps that was south, where the evergreens were thicker.
Where are you now, Whisper? she thought.
The wind said nothing to guide her path.
‘Confusion,’ Arawn said.
She turned back to him, where he stood like a chiseled sculpture, his tattered cape waving in the breeze.
He ticked off his next words on his gloved fingertips.
‘Shivering. A feeling of exhaustion so strong, you just want to lie down and close your eyes, if only for a moment. All symptoms of slowly dying from the cold. Freezing from the outside in.’
He smirked and looked to the sky as snow continued to pour down over them.
‘Storms are worse by night. The cold settles in quickly, regardless of your size. Starvation, too, for you won’t know how to find a good enough meal in winter if you’re not from these woods.
The northern villages are decimated, the Acolyte’s wolves have picked off nearly every animal that used to thrive here.
And we’re not even at Realmbreak yet. True winter hits then, in just two months …
and since you don’t have a horse or carriage, you’ll be taking at least half that amount to escape the snows with how lost you’d get out here. ’
She realized she was shivering.
So badly her teeth were chattering, and she couldn’t feel her hands anymore, nor any of her toes.
She hadn’t even noticed. Her body had gone numb hours ago.
‘The shadow wolves always come back to where blood was last spilled. And then there’s the occasional darksoul troupe that breaks past our aerial forces.
I don’t even need to mention the strange ways their magic can make a mortal die.
And with the raphons … once that sun truly sets … the real danger begins.’
He’d crossed his large arms and was now casually leaning against an aspen tree with his broad shoulders, his perfect muscles practically glistening in the fresh moonlight.
He raised a pale, blood-flecked brow, as if he were silently mocking her.
Challenging her.
Bastard.
She huffed out a breath.
‘I …’
Gods.
He was right.
And she was a coward.
‘… I will stay. For now,’ Ezer said, lifting her chin high as she picked up the fringes of her tattered cloak and stepped through the heavy snow back towards him. ‘Though I should remind you, I’ll ask for that life debt to be repaid in another way soon enough.’
She’d be a fool to give away the promise of a prince.
She began to march downhill towards the road.
‘Minder.’
She turned and found him grinning at her like a hungry lion. ‘The road is that way.’