CHAPTER FORTY-ONE #3
“I decided to take charge. Gathered everyone in secret.” Her eyes grew glossy. “But after I led them into battle, no one returned. They were all slaughtered. Everyone except me and Thorrin.”
The war had been a bloodshed. Vesper recalled the anarchy, constant burials or burnings, and how corpses were piled until they nearly blocked out the sun. He hadn’t fought since he and Fionn tended to other matters like securing weapons and distributing food.
“I remember,” he said, his voice low, full of horrors. “I remember those bodies with those vines twisted around their bones.” He shuddered. “Their insides were so … mangled.”
Kyrith lifted her tunic to reveal a tiny patch of tanned skin with a wicked white scar along her side.
“I was shot with an arrow made of it and it splintered under my skin. I had to cut myself open and dig it all out with my bare hands. And it happened so fast. It spread through my body, ripped through it more like, and—” She lowered the fabric and stared out over the ocean.
“I thought that was it. I even started praying and though I knew the gods had let it happen, I prayed anyway.”
“Maybe the gods were looking out for you.”
She smirked at that. “I don’t need the gods. I make my own destiny.”
Vesper couldn’t help but smile at her tenacity. “At least the gates are sealed and that blasted gruvine is gone.”
“I’ve heard,” she started, “there have been a few plants spotted. Some idiots brought down the barriers in the Sacred Lands and there’s a whole fleet of them. They’ve been brewing down there for, I don’t know, a century.”
The barrier that he and Emmery opened just a few months ago? Another one of his bloody brilliant ideas.
Vesper eyed the grass in her hands. “What are you making?”
Kyrith grinned as she fastened the last knot. “I made you a crown.”
A nervous twinge shot through his gut. “Why?”
“For fun.” She eyed his unruly hair from the flight over. “Bend down.”
Vesper leaned as she placed the crown on his head. He sat back and fixed his hair around it though his stomach knotted. And as he looked at her, he couldn’t decipher if she knew.
“What do you think? Is it too much?” he asked.
Kyrith cocked her head. “You’ll have to make me one. So we match.”
“You want to be my queen?” He leaned back on his hands and shot her a grin. “I think we would make a good pair. I could sit around while you point that blade of yours at anyone’s throat who looks at you wrong. Snarl obscenities at them. Call them a moron. It certainly beat me into submission.”
Kyrith lifted her hand to tuck a strand of his hair under the crown but hesitated and dropped it.
And he couldn’t help but stare at her like an absolute buffoon, lost in her mismatched eyes, silver and cerulean.
But he tore himself away. Not that Kyrith would even glance twice at him, but he needed to keep his cock in his pants.
Maybe it was her tenacity, the way she cultivated Rensburrow in a way he’d always dreamed he could in Ellynne, or her refusal to take shit from anyone, but she was … special. Perfect. Infuriating.
He wanted her not to hate him. And he swore, in that moment, as the air shifted and something gathered between them, she didn’t hate him at all. Quite the opposite.
“What upset you earlier?” She nodded at his forearm. “Was it the bite?”
He hadn’t realized it, but she lifted the heaviness from his chest, not that he deserved it. He took off the crown and fiddled with it until he got the words out. “Nef is worse. And I was beating myself up over it.”
Kyrith lifted a brow. “Worse?”
“She’s been coughing up blood and hiding it from everyone, including me. When I went to check on her today I saw the blood on her pillow. She wasn’t happy with me. Reamed me out and sent me away. Dimitri took over.”
Her gaze softened. “We’ll figure out a cure soon. The lead we had today was unorthodox, but the more I think about it, the more I’m hopeful.”
“What was the lead?” he asked. A little spark of hope flooded him.
“You’re going to say I’m mad, but it was about Gravers.”
Vesper’s mind snapped back to his interaction with that shopkeeper.
“This lead didn’t go anywhere, but I have an idea.” Kyrith got to her feet and offered Vesper a hand, a bridge or truce between them. She stared for a tense moment before he took it.
“What do you say we come here tomorrow?” she asked.
He tugged on his mask. “Wasn’t this out of pity?”
“It was, but I guess you aren’t all bad. Don’t get me wrong, you’re still a moron, but your heart is okay.”
“Thanks, I think?” Vesper busied himself as he retrieved his knife free of its sheath. He fiddled with it, before he asked, “Can I ask a favour?”
“You may.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder.
He cleared his throat. “Do you have paper I can use? I noticed you have, uhm, drawings in your cabin.”
The corners of her lips curled. “I suppose I can spare a few.”
An itch had formed in his fingers that hadn’t existed for almost a century. He had some things stirring in his soul he needed to sketch and some letters to write. Some wrongs he needed to right.