Chapter 21 #2
“Vheara needs to pay,” Flora says, echoing my thoughts almost exactly. “The Butcher needs to burn.”
“They will. I swear it.”
“What if you go through the doorway and don’t come back?”
The oathbands warn me—cold and fire flashing from the runes until I manage to bank the fury that veers too near what Chulainn has forbidden.
“I’ll drag myself out of the Pit if that’s what it takes,” I say. “Killing Vheara is not a task I’ll leave undone.”
Flora thinks a bit—I can feel her weighing my words, measuring my conviction.
“You can have Vheara and the Greys,” she says eventually.
“They were Siorai, so that’s a task for the Anvar’thaine.
But the Butcher is human. It needs to be one of us who kills him.
Slowly. In pieces carved off his body strip by strip, then cooked on the fire as he’s forced to watch. ”
“That sort of revenge requires conviction. It isn’t justice.”
“I’ll be plenty convincing given the opportunity.”
I smile in spite of myself. “Oh, I’ve little doubt.”
It says nothing good about me that Flora’s thirst for blood distracts me with a flash of desire. But nothing can keep our minds from the desolation we’re riding through for long. The senseless torture, the gratuitous infliction of pain, is far too visible.
We’re both spent as dawn approaches. “We should look for shelter,” I suggest. “It will be too dangerous to keep riding once the sun comes up.”
Flora nods, but a light rain has begun to fall again, and the thin woods of birch and alder don’t provide anywhere for us to sleep. Every rustle and creaking branch has us searching for scarlet coats and booted feet. Flora’s shoulders get tighter and her spine more rigid with every mile.
We stop to let the horses drink at a small river flowing through an open field of boulders. We ride another half hour while the stars dim and the sky fades to grey.
Then two faint shimmers of light bob down the slope to our right, slowing to float briefly three feet above the ground in front of us before darting a short distance back up the hill, inviting us to follow them.
“Whisperwraiths,” I say. “Do you see them?”
Flora reins Eira to a halt. “Should we follow them?”
I should know by now that Flora rarely reacts the way that I’d expect. “Can you hear them whispering?”
She gives a slow nod. “Although it’s not words, is it? Not even voices, unless you’re hearing something different than I am. It’s more as though they’ve whispered an entire idea into my mind. As if it’s my own thought. That should be terrifying.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No…” Flora rolls the word around on her tongue as if she’s testing it.
I wonder if I should be concerned that she’s not afraid. “Of all the Shadelings,” I say, “Whisperwraiths are the ones that worry me.”
“I’ve heard stories about what they do to people they don’t like—the way they can put ideas in people’s heads.”
“Most magical creatures answer cruelty with cruelty, and Vheara has turned some of them, too. Used them to make our soldiers attack each other.”
“These don’t feel dangerous.”
“I’m not sure whether to admire you for being brave or shake you for being too trusting.”
“Is that what Siorai do? Shake women? I am not your sister or your wife.”
“It’s an expression, and trust me, I am aware you’re not my sister.”
She turns in the saddle to look at me, but she says nothing and simply nudges the mare off the trail to follow where the Whisperwraiths lead us.
The bracken-covered slope ends in a rockface that climbs almost vertically a few hundred feet.
The Whisperwraiths dart behind a copse of stunted pine trees to the left.
Hidden from the track below, a wide rock ledge juts from the granite crag, providing a natural shelter from the rain. The ground beneath the ledge is flat.
Briefly, the Whisperwraiths hover inside, then they give a sudden dip and wink away.
“Do you suppose they’ve been following us all this time—since back when you said we needed to find a shelter?” Flora asks.
I dismount and hold out my hand to help her down. “One or the other of us should have been able to see them. Then again, the Riders and I never saw them on the battlefield either. We only found out later that our soldiers heard them whispering in their heads.”
The overhang is too small for our horses, but a hidden gully nearby provides water and forage.
We unsaddle them and rub them down in the fading darkness, then I clean the rabbit and cook it over a small fire before we settle ourselves in the shelter beneath the ledge.
I’m more careful than usual to lay my swords and knives within easy reach.
“Let me check the bandage again,” Flora says, and she steps closer to untuck the fabric of my shirt from beneath the kilted plaid and push it upward. Her fingers leave trails of heat along my skin.
She seems to have no idea of the reaction she provokes, no more than she seems to have been aware of the effect each time she moved in the saddle. For all that she once boasted about having brothers, she’s far too innocent about how men behave.
I force myself to stand still, force myself not to reach for her. Even when those eyes look up and her lips are so close that I can feel her breath.
But I concede defeat and step back to put more space between us. “Don’t fuss. It feels much better since you healed it again.”
“You’re still a little warm,” she says.
“I am many things, but cold has never been one of them.” I spread two of the extra plaids on the ground in the same way that she did the last time we stopped to rest. I know it’s insanity; sleeping beside her will only be a steady drip of torture.
I almost hope she’ll argue—snatch the remaining two plaids for herself and make a bed somewhere out of reach. Instead, she stands and watches until after I’m stretched out on my back. Then she lays down on the farthest edge of the heavy fabric, as far from me as possible.
My jaw tightens, and I draw her closer until the remaining plaids cover us both. Then I turn away.
“Goodnight, Flora.”
“It’s daylight,” she says. “Sleep well.”
Flora’s at once too close and too far away to make sleep likely. The heat of our bodies releases the smell of wet wool and hints of old smoke, but that doesn’t drown out the faint scent of rosemary and bog myrtle soap that still clings to her clothes and skin.
She lies unnaturally still, her every shallow breath brushing my back, her spine curved, and her muscles as taut as bowstrings.
Does she feel any of the pull I feel between us?
I think back to her conversation with the man in the village, and it’s impossible not to imagine her lying like this on her wedding night, tense and trying to make herself smaller. Afraid, but refusing to run away.
The thought of her throwing herself away on a man who doesn’t love her—on a man who could hurt her, control her, try to take away her fire and spirit—sends anger clawing at my chest.
I roll over onto my back and stare up at the granite slab above our heads. “You’re not actually thinking of marrying someone your Clan Council chooses for you, are you?”
“Dunhaelic is my home. It’s my responsibility.
How do I walk away from my people and trust that whoever comes in will treat them well?
Dughall wouldn’t.” Her voice sounds flat, as though she’s already given up.
Then she rolls over, too, and lies on her back beside me.
“I know my limitations, Chyr. I can keep good accounts and raise fast, sturdy horses, but I’m no warrior.
Dunhaelic needs strength now more than ever.
More strength than I can offer. Look what happened at Aknacaery. ”
“What happened at Aknacaery is all the more reason you shouldn’t betray yourself,” I say. “Your life is too fragile to waste it giving yourself to someone you do not love.”
Her answer is slow in coming. “That’s survival,” she finally says, “not betrayal.”
“It’s madness, and you deserve better.”
“What do you know about what I deserve?” She pushes herself up on one elbow and turns to look at me, her breath coming faster. “You don’t know me. You don’t know us. You know nothing about having your choices stripped away, because you’re the ones who’ve stolen them from us.”
She’s right, but she’s also wrong. She’s prey caught in the cage of her circumstances, but I’m trapped just as surely by the layers of oaths that bind me.
Something cold and bleak settles in my chest. “I know that marriage should be sacred, and that keeping Dunhaelic will take more than strength. It isn’t a sword that makes a leader. Don’t sell yourself too lightly.”
“Don’t pretend Siorai never marry for convenience. The Compact required the true queens to take Riders as companions. That wasn’t about love.”
My oathbands flare a warning.
“I’m aware of the oaths I took, believe me.”
“If those oaths still follow the Compact, then you technically agreed to marry without love, didn’t you? To make a personal sacrifice for something greater, something you believe in. You have no right to judge me for doing the same.”
Her voice cracks on the last word, and her face begins to crumple towards tears, but she catches herself and smooths it back to a semblance of calm as though the mask had never broken.
I’ve seen it now, though, and I recognize it.
I know the cost of it. It’s the same sort of mask I’ve had to wear my entire life, never letting anyone see that there’s something vulnerable underneath.
Showing weakness only gives your enemies the ammunition to defeat you.
My breath hitches, and my hands ball themselves into fists. It’s all I can do not to curse. Or close the short distance and kiss her until we both forget. The silence draws out between us until eventually, I’m forced to admit the truth.
“I’m not judging you,” I say. “I’m angry for you. I’m breaking for you.” I hate the idea of you with someone else.
She exhales, watching me with her eyes nearly black, the pupils blown wide open. Her breath is a whisper against my cheek, the long braid of her hair a rope of silk against my arm.
I want her to say something, to break the tension. To give me permission.
Instead, she turns away.
I can’t blame her. I’m everything she grew up fearing and hating. I’d be a fool to expect she feels any part of the need she wakes in me.
We lie back-to-back again in the heavy silence as the sun climbs higher outside. I feel every gossamer breath Flora takes, every minuscule shift of her body. It’s a sweet and bitter torment.
Then she clears her throat, her body tensing even more.
“Would you…could you roll over?” she asks, her voice so soft I’m afraid I heard her wrong. But it unravels everything I’ve tried to hold together.
I turn and pull her against my chest, my arm sliding around her waist as though it knows where it belongs. I would scarcely need to move at all to claim her lips. She can’t be so innocent that she doesn’t know she’s tempting me.
“Does that hurt?” She tilts her head back to look at me, and it takes a moment to realise that she’s asking about my wound.
“No,” I say, and it’s not a lie because it’s not my injured flesh that pains me.
Flora isn’t mine. She can’t be, and there are many days yet until we reach Muilean. One lapse of self-control could change too much between us.
I lie still and count her heartbeat until it slows and my hunger becomes an ache.