Chapter 29 #2
‘If you’re thinking of jumping, could you wait until Arla’s back? Arranging funerals seems more her forte.’
Kase grunted, turning to face him. He couldn’t hide the relief when she lowered herself back onto his side of the railings. ‘It would be a grand affair, I’m sure.’
Hark smiled. It would indeed if Arla Dragonhart had anything to do with it.
Kase lowered herself onto one of the carved wooden benches on the balcony, close to the doors so the warmth from the hall still reached them. He took a seat next to her, nudging her with a knee if only to evoke a smile. Something she didn’t do enough.
‘How are you holding up?’ he asked tentatively. Push too far with Kase and she’d shut him out for a long, long time.
‘Better now I’m outside.’ Her voice was too quiet. Too not like herself. He’d seen it in Arla when she’d first awoken here. She’d felt faraway from herself for days as she tried to build the strength she had lost after almost dying. ‘I just want him to be okay. I know I don’t … that I’m not…’
‘I know,’ he murmured, taking her hand in his, surprised by the warmth as they watched the sun set below the mountains and shower Flambriar in gold and orange and pink.
‘Do you think he does? Know, I mean?’ There was no need to ask her of what or of whom she spoke. It had been as obvious as breathing from the moment Jack had first joined their crew.
‘He knows, Kase. Don’t think he doesn’t watch you every moment of every day. The prick hasn’t known a day’s peace since he met you.’
She laughed, a bright, twinkling sound that never failed to make him smile. He loved Kase. Desperately. She was the sister he’d never had, a sibling that had meant more to him than his brother ever could.
‘I want what you and Arla have,’ she said quietly, her gaze fixed on the sunset. ‘I’ve never seen someone look at a person the way she looks at you. Like you’re her entire world.’
Gods he couldn’t do this. Couldn’t think of her. He swallowed the lump in his throat.
‘I have loved her for longer than she ever knew. Sad, isn’t it, that I used to wish for her to fight with me just so I could see fire in her eyes and pretend it burned for me.’
‘Maybe. But look what you have now.’
Oh, he knew. He knew how fucking lucky he was to call her his, for him to be able to touch Arla without risk of having his throat cut.
He wished she were here now. She’d know exactly what to say to cheer everyone up – or how to change the subject, at the very least. Was she okay in Malarye?
Had she managed to piss its royal family off within five minutes like he knew she was entirely capable of doing?
Gods, he hoped she made it back safe. He’d tear the world apart if she didn’t.
Kase seemed to read his mind. ‘She’ll enjoy Malarye. They’re violent enough to give her a bit of competition. If she manages to make it onto the shore without dying.’
His blood stopped flowing.
‘What do you mean if she manages to make it onto the shore?’
Kase sighed as if she couldn’t believe she was having to explain this to him.
‘Malarye doesn’t take kindly to guests, especially those who claim to have magic.
Arla’s been sheltered in Hadalyn and has spent years denying the existence of magic or the gods; she won’t have expected the welcome they likely gave her. ’
He was going to fucking kill Kase. ‘What welcome?’ he ground out.
‘They’ll have tried to kill her.’
It was an effort not to strangle the silver-haired girl next to him.
‘And you didn’t think to mention this to anyone? Let alone Arla?’
Kase turned to look at him, her eyes clearer than they had been in hours. ‘She was bored here, Hark. No one is equally matched to duel with her, not even you. She’s been wanting to stay on top of her training, and I think she’ll appreciate nearly being killed. It will keep her on her toes.’
In the name of the fucking gods—
‘Not a good enough reason,’ he growled. Kase had the sense to shift beside him.
‘Relax. If Arla Dragonhart was dead, don’t you think we’d have heard about it by now? News like that would have reached the darkest corners of the kingdoms quicker than you can say dragon – which, by the way, she is paired with, if you recall.’
Hark had never been so glad of Thara’s existence. His heart had beat too hard in his chest for every second that Arla had been gone, for the regret that he hadn’t gone with her, and that he wasn’t there to protect her should anything happen.
And yet … he believed in her. He knew she was more than capable of handling Malarye by herself and that lit a glow of pride within him that burned far brighter than the regret eating away at him.
Silence stretched between him and Kase, the night getting darker for every moment that passed until he found the courage to speak again. ‘You never talk about Malarye.’
Kase’s shoulders went rigid like a wall building between them to protect her from the things she didn’t want to say. ‘There’s nothing much to say. My parents died and I was left with my uncle. I was sixteen when he moved us here and…’
She didn’t need to say the rest. She’d already revealed as much about her past as he suspected she was going to. Her uncle … that man had deserved everything she had delivered him.
Kase cleared her throat, straightening as she pulled a blanket from the far end of the bench and placed it over them.
‘Don’t tell Arla. She’d … how did she put it the first time we met?
Ram those jewels in my ears down my throat?
If she knew we were huddled beneath a blanket watching the sun set together. ’
There was no malice in Kase’s voice, not when it came to Hark and Arla.
She knew they loved each other, and Hark was pretty certain she looked at him in the same brotherly way he looked at her.
But yes, Arla would do something violent if she could see them now, and so Hark shuffled, putting a larger gap between him and Kase.
He loved Arla too much to ever make her wonder if there was something in his heart for anyone else.
‘Where are the others?’ Kase asked.
‘Seb is scouting tonight, and Jaz hasn’t left that damn library all day.’
Kase sighed. ‘He hasn’t stopped since we got here.’
It was true. Ever since they had settled in Flambriar, Jaz had combed through every book they’d smuggled into that library, trying to figure out how Arla was supposed to unite the kingdoms. Hark hadn’t thought it mattered at first. He’d imagined that rescuing the slaves would put an end to it and the kingdoms would begin to flourish again.
That was before merchants and traders started arriving in Flambriar every day telling of how there were food shortages and sickness spreading not only through Kastonia and Hadalyn but on the continent too.
Jaz had barely slept since then.
‘I think something bad is happening in Kastonia,’ Kase murmured softly.
‘Arla said she spoke to someone in the markets back when she was in Kastonia who seemed to believe there were strange things happening at Larkire Palace. What if Elrod is up to something we aren’t expecting?
What if it isn’t enough to just save the mages? ’
‘Let’s wait and see what she comes up with in Malarye. They’ve invited her there for something. And if they’re as devoutly religious as you say, hopefully they will have some answers.’
Kase scoffed. ‘That or she’ll torture it out of them.’
Hark couldn’t stop the smile that broke out over his face as the night sky finally winked into existence. It was always cold here at night, and he didn’t think when summer finally came it would make it much warmer.
He was about to say so when the balcony doors crashed open, the glass rattling in the panes and Sebastian appeared, hair ruffled with sweat and a mad panic in his eyes.
Dread pooled in Hark’s gut immediately.
‘Soldiers, three of them,’ Seb panted, bracing an arm against the railings. ‘In the mountains. We can’t kill ’em.’
Hark snatched his sword without thinking. Kase too carried blades that slotted into leather braces on her arms and another set hung loosely at her hips. Seb only stood still long enough to rally the remaining guards stationed at Flambriar, and then they were all running.
Hark had seen enough of these mountains to last him a fucking lifetime. He’d spent months scouting them every day for any sign of Elrod’s men or threats to Flambriar and just when he’d started to become comfortable, they’d been fucking found.
Dozens of Flambriar’s soldiers were dotted across the mountain above Claret Hall, their focus fixed somewhere in the distance. Some held bows and fired arrows seemingly at random. Others stood and watched whatever was playing out in front of them, a mixture of shock and dread marring their faces.
Kase fidgeted at his side. Already he could sense her eagerness to jump into whatever was unfolding ahead of them. He gripped her wrist just as she went to take off. ‘Be bloody careful. Whatever’s up there has even Seb spooked.’
There was challenge in Kase’s eyes when she blinked back at him, a resolve there that whatever he tried to keep her from she wouldn’t listen.
Flambriar was her home too and he’d be damned if he tried to stop her from defending it.
He released her arm and watched her go, long legs striding up the mountain beside the other soldiers that had been called up from the hall.
He saw her hesitate for the briefest of seconds as she reached the outcrop of rocks obscuring everything from view, and then she disappeared out of sight.
‘Here we fucking go,’ he muttered, and then his own feet were marching, loose rocks shifting underneath his weight as he reached the rocks.
What was unfurling before him defied any sense of logic.