14. Chapter 14 #2
“I’m fine.” My voice came out rough and uneven, undercutting the confident image I was trying to project. “You?”
Her bright eyes, wide with worry, met mine as water dripped from her hair onto her shoulders.
“I’m all right,” she said, voice so thin it shook me. “You—you came so fast.”
Her stunned attention held me prisoner. She breathed out a shaky, relieved breath, and the last string holding my self-control snapped. My hand rose to cup her jaw—slowly, giving her time to pull away. Even with my hardened calluses, I savored the softness of her skin as my thumb brushed her cheek.
“Lunette,” I murmured, unable to keep a possessive edge from entering my voice, “no one lays a hand on you. No one.”
Her breath hitched. For a long, trembling moment, the world held perfectly still. And, cursed gods, I wanted nothing more than to pull her close and press my lips to hers until every scrap of worry had fled from her face.
“Muffin warned me,” I said instead, a shaky laugh escaping as I swayed to one side.
As if summoned by the sound of his name, the little veska came bounding up, breaking the spell we were both under. On the way he stopped to sniff then hiss at both the bodies.
Muffin wove his long body around my legs in a way that almost felt like he was saying thank you. He scrambled up Lunette’s cloak to perch on her shoulder.
I thought this meant we had a truce again, but then I felt the blast of his breath as he hissed at my hand still on her chin. Staking his claim on her.
I finally lowered my hand, exhaling carefully as my ribs protested.
Her gaze darted to the bodies then back to me. “They were looking for you.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “You need to leave before anyone sees you.”
“I’d heard the Assembly was in the area, but this…” Lunette’s assessing gaze flicked back to the corpses. Then she said confidently, “We’ll leave them here. No one will question an attack on this road.”
I’d known conditions were bad in the borderlands, but I hadn’t expected her attitude to be so cavalier. What had she endured to make her this unflinching?
What she said next nearly knocked me off my feet.
“If we don’t take their horses, someone else will. They’re the fastest way off the road. And a way for you to return home.”
Home. The castle hadn’t felt like home in twenty years. Part of me never wanted to leave her tiny cabin in the woods.
Despite the pain and the danger—both of which would only get worse riding a horse for days on end—something unmistakable and inexorably dangerous settled deep in my chest.
Mine.
She was mine.
Mine to protect. My role had always been to make difficult choices. I would willingly embrace that duty for her, etching it into the very fabric of my soul.
Yet on the heels of that, another thought arose: She’s unlikely to let you after watching you murder two men.
Sure, she seemed fine so far, but once the shock wore off, she’d remember everything. Limbs flying. The fountain of crimson when I’d sliced open the artery. Impaling his head on my blade like it was nothing.
And I’d add to the memory by playing the demon robbing a corpse.
I looked down. There on his index finger, as promised, was a gold band streaked with lines of glinting ruby.
It had to be an artifact, because the air close to it pulsed with magic that hit my senses like a blast of hot sand.
I didn’t want to touch it—not yet. So I sliced a piece of his undertunic off and pried it off his finger.
Even through the cloth, it was freezing in my hand.
The blood and lingering magic had set the horses to stamping nervously. Lunette murmured to them in a soft, steady cadence that soothed the animals instantly. Another reminder that everything about her bent toward caretaking, exactly the opposite of what I’d just shown.
We both mounted—me slowly, painfully with the ring tied to my belt by the strip of cloth—and led them down the road until the faint hum of magic prickled along my skin.
A wave of disorientation crashed over me so abruptly that I had to grab the horse’s saddle to stay upright.
Lunette’s ward was doing its work on me and doing a fine job of it.
My mind became a cacophony of warnings, each one a shout that I was heading in the wrong direction.
“I’ll lead. Just keep the horse fixed on me,” she said, sensing my struggles.
I did, but my gaze settled on the gentle curve of her hips, the water dripping from her hair. And just like that, the disorientation ebbed, and the warnings ceased.
Crossing the barrier, I felt a shift in the air and a return to normal sensation. I drew a slow breath, blinking at the abrupt clarity. “It only reacts on approach, not departure,” I said, thinking aloud.
She nodded ahead of me, steering her horse down a narrow path through the trees even before we saw the first house in Selmont. In my current mental state, I’d probably start a fight with one of the villagers, so it was a good thing.
“Being trapped in here would be truly awful,” she said with a shudder.
“Incredibly sophisticated magic,” I murmured.
She kept her eyes ahead, but there was a hint of self-deprecation in her voice that I didn’t like. “It’s just what my mother taught me.”
Just. As if the ward she’d maintained all by herself was anything short of a masterpiece. Exhausted and wounded, I still felt a profound sense of wonder at this humble woman. “It’s exquisite,” I insisted.
When the cabin came into view, Lunette led the horses toward a small shed beside the vegetable patch. Just under the overhang sat an old trough, the water inside reflecting the rainbow of leaves above.
I cast her a sidelong glance.
She brushed a stray curl behind her ear. “I leave it for the deer that wander down from the ridge every morning.”
Of course she did.
I opened the mercenaries’ saddlebags, searching for grain or feed. There wasn’t much, but enough to tide the horses over. We emptied the meager rations into the trough. The animals dipped their heads gratefully, already calming in the quiet of her home’s little clearing.
Returning to the cabin, I steeled myself for the inevitable conversation.
The pain in my side flared again, yet it was nothing compared to the torment of what duty would force me to do next.
I followed her in and collapsed onto the bed, since I wasn’t certain I wouldn’t fall over completely.
I let out a heavy breath, some of the dread I carried trying to escape with it.
Tail twitching, Muffin made a displeased sound from his perch in the rafters.
“We missed lunch,” Lunette said.
“I can’t take food from you,” I said. “I’ve relied too much on your goodwill already, and now I’ve brought danger your way.”
She spun toward me, the fading light glinting off the bread knife. “My life has always been dangerous, Rowan.”
It shouldn’t be, I thought. You should be surrounded by every comfort my kingdom can give you.
She continued. “And as you saw, I’m not defenseless.”
“Yes, what…was that?” I asked cautiously.
Her lovely face contorted into a snarl. She wore righteous fury like a crown—head high, shoulders back, beauty on proud display.
I loved seeing it. “My magic has two sides.” She turned her face away before confessing the rest. “I severed the tendons of his wrist and his hand’s connection to his brain—all at once. ”
The water I’d been drinking nearly came flying out of my mouth. “You…what?”
“It makes sense,” she said, still turned away, nervously adjusting the utensils on the counter. “If a fractured bone heals badly, the fix is to re-break it and reset it. I can rend flesh. It’s…actually easier than healing.”
I was so surprised that I couldn’t speak for a long moment. Before I could think of what to say, she turned back around, plates in hand. And—my heart lurched—she wore the same mask of dignity I’d donned countless times to feign support for Berian’s cruelty.
“Lunette,” I said, sitting up straighter. “That power is truly remarkable.”
A little shake of her head. “Most don’t agree.”
“This village has already proven that it can’t see your worth, so why should their opinions matter?” I argued.
She shrugged. “They’re my people.”
A silence settled between us, and I found myself circling back to what she’d said on the road. That unexpected understanding I’d seen in her eyes stuck with me, a persistent splinter underneath my skin.
“You knew exactly what to do with the bodies,” I said carefully. “That wasn’t the first time.”
She went very still at the counter. Then she set the plates down softly and turned to face me. I recognized the same calculation in her eyes that I used to determine a war council’s capacity for truth.
“No,” she said finally. “It wasn’t.”
She didn’t elaborate.
I waited, keeping my expression as open as I could manage.
“The raids leave…leftovers,” she said, her voice carefully detached, as if the word itself was something she had to push away. “Food. Clothes. Materials.”
From the first, I’d noticed that her demeanor held a type of resilience that could only be gained once tested.
The picture of where that had come from was just starting to become clear.
Yet before I could speak, she continued, and something in her voice had changed.
It was lower, like a confession that had been waiting a long time for a witness.
“The raiders don’t always finish what they started.” She kept her eyes on the table. “That’s where I step in. I’ll never let a person suffer longer than they have to.”
Did that mean she…