Chapter 18
It was difficult to wake up the next day. Otho’s bedroll was so comfortable, much more than the cot I had shared with Collum. As for the bunk in the barracks, it was a toss-up.
“Who the fuck are you?” Askel nearly dropped the bedroll he had been rolling when he saw me sitting up and stretching my arms toward the sky.
“This is . . .” Otho trailed off, probably realizing he had never asked what name I would be going by.
I chuckled and stood, hoping he wouldn’t notice my awkwardness as I offered him the traditional greeting. “Runa.” I left my last name out, knowing he would recognize it. I would need to come up with a new one before it became an issue.
“Yes, Runa.” Otho picked up where he had left off. “She’s a new recruit Adis sent to come meet us.”
Askel gave me a once-over. Although I never sensed any ill-intent from the man using my empathy magic, the movement of his eyes still made me apprehensive. “She isn’t going to last long.”
“She is only along for the ride. She will be leaving us for a separate mission when we reach the front lines,” Otho explained before turning to prepare his horse.
I briefly wondered where he had slept the night before, but at the same time I knew I would feel guilty if he suffered for my comfort, so I swallowed my question.
After rolling up Otho’s bedroll, I stood there awkwardly, not sure where to put it.
“Here.” Otho reached out his hands for the mess of material, putting it on the horse before handing me a sack which looked suspiciously like my old bag, though he had made some adjustments to change the appearance enough to not be suspicious.
I took it from him without question and loaded up the spare clothing I had been given.
My gaze again caught on the lace of the nightgown.
Why would Friar send something so impractical?
And then we were off, my feet aching from the moment I slid them into my boots. Otho hadn’t offered me new footwear, and considering the price of leather, it was likely Friar didn’t have any to spare—not that they would be my size anyway.
Unlike the day prior—when the men didn’t even spare a glance in my direction—today I was the subject of many nods and gazes.
I tried to ignore it, especially because none of them had the confidence to actually come speak to me, but it was hard, and by lunch I was ready to say goodbye to this traveling group for good.
As we munched on the same meat and bread as the day before, I ensured I stayed separately from the soldiers.
While I did wish they didn’t whisper so much about me, I was also glad they kept their distance.
Because I knew as much as anyone else that the more you talked, the more likely you were to slip up with a lie.
Something I would be doing for the foreseeable future.
Otho and Askel also stayed outside of the group of soldiers, speaking in hushed whispers.
But unlike the soldiers, neither of them glanced my way.
No one asked after Milo Potson either.
After lunch, the sun beat down overhead as we made our way over more grassy hills, keeping the forest to our right.
It wasn’t until after lunch that I noticed the change in the landscape.
The grass was no longer blowing in the breeze, and the amount of dirt exposed through the thinning plants increased as water grew more scarce.
The forest became something of the past, leaving us with only the long grass behind us, and the dying grass in front of us.
Now, I had never been to war, as I had never stepped foot outside of Ralheim. But I didn’t need anyone to tell me this is what war did to the land.
I hadn’t been smiling before, but by the time dark tents rose on the horizon, I was frowning.
There was something so inherently sad about war, something I hadn’t considered until now.
As the tents grew closer, Otho guided his horse around the soldiers in front of me, coming to ride next to me once more.
“Your tent will be in the center of camp,” he explained as soon as the men were out of earshot. “Askel’s will be right beside yours. We will only stay here for two nights before you will be sent on your first mission.”
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. “Okay.”
“I’ll let you know the details tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
He continued riding next to me, and I couldn’t describe the energy between us as anything but awkward. I wasn’t sure what it was about Otho, besides the fact he changed personalities in laundry rooms apparently, but it made it hard for conversation to flow between us.
“If anyone bothers you, let me know.”
I kept my gaze forward, watching as the soldiers arrived at the rows of tents and dispersed. “I don’t think there are any worries there.” They didn’t seem interested in spending any more time in my presence than they had to. I was a momentary novelty and that was that.
“They’re just getting used to you.” He frowned, lines appearing on his forehead. “Once they do, you’ll have to beat them away with a stick, and you’ll long for the days when they didn’t even glance in your direction.”
I wanted to tell him that I could handle them, but I knew, thinking of my brief soldier training a few days prior, that I probably couldn’t.
He didn’t say anything more, nudging his horse just a bit faster, leaving me to follow the small cloud of dust the horses’ hooves raised from the ground.
There was no grass here.
The tent I was given was about the same size of the cell in Adis’s house, with the same accommodations as well.
There was a cot, with two blankets instead of one, though, which I supposed was something.
There was no chamber pot, but I was told there were outhouse tents on the other side of camp. Lovely.
Camp wasn’t large—only about forty tents arranged in four rows at the bottom of a slight incline.
Most soldiers slept two to a tent and the only ones who had their own were myself, Askel, Otho, and Karl—when he was in camp that is.
The twenty soldiers we had brought with us were to replenish those who had been killed.
It didn’t seem like enough soldiers to win a war, but I wasn’t well educated when it came to war.
Supposedly, Malheim’s men camped not far away, and battles raged just over the hill daily, but it had been eerily quiet since we arrived.
Maybe there was no fighting today.
I glanced around my tent and briefly considered unpacking my measly belongings, but with only two outfits in addition to my own, and the few things I had brought from my life before that Otho had crammed into the bottom of my bag, it didn’t seem worth it.
I kept to myself for the rest of the evening, only emerging from the tent for a few bites of dinner before returning. After a final trip to the outhouse tent, I pushed back the flap of mine only to find a man sitting on my cot.
It took a moment for me to recognize him. “Leif!” I shouted, looking over my shoulder when I realized how loud it was. The soldiers didn’t show any indication they’d heard my slipup. “What are you doing here?”
Leif had changed from the last time I had seen him in the woods. He now wore a soldiers’ uniform, which was why it had taken me a moment to recognize him. His hair seemed to lack its usual luster, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“I followed you,” he whispered.
“You . . . what?” I don’t know why, but panic for this man I barely knew snaked through my veins. Following me would mean he left Adis’s employ, and perhaps ruined his whole future. While I no longer felt guilty, as he knew more about who I really was, I was still aghast.
And slightly pleased.
Was this what being someone’s weighted felt like?
But I didn’t let that selfish thought stay, forcing it away.
He dropped his head in his hands, and for the first time, he wasn’t the self-assured stable hand I had met just a fortnight ago. He was someone . . . real.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said you’re my weighted. In the woods last night . . . I was so shocked I felt I had to step away, but then I felt something pulling me back. I went back and . . .”
He trailed off, and I let the silence hang between us for a few moments, hoping no one was eavesdropping outside of the tent, before I pushed him. “And?”
He shook his head. “I just thought . . . I’ve always been attracted to both men and women, but men slightly more.
So when I first felt you were my weighted, I didn’t question it.
Then, when you said you were female . . .
I just questioned everything for a moment.
Thought maybe you weren’t my weighted after all and it was just lust obscuring my judgment.
” He breathed, still not looking me in the eye.
“Then I watched you change and realized it didn’t matter, and that I’m attracted to you no matter what your gender is. ”
I knew what he said was supposed to be sweet, but my attention caught on what he had said just before his declaration. “You—WHAT?”
He grimaced, but he knew what I was mad about. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to. Like I said, I walked away, but then something pulled me back and I had no idea the transformation was happening right then . . .”
I wanted to yell at him, to tell him that was a violation of privacy, but then again, he didn’t know. Instead, my body encouraged me to do the last thing I ever thought I would do when a man confessed to be spying on me—I sunk down on the bed next to him. “What are you going to do about Adis?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. My job is certainly gone now anyway. So, I might as well head home.”
“To your coven?”
His lips twisted. “Yes. The offer still stands for you to come with me if you want.”
Somehow, I had known he would say that. Maybe it was because of the empathy power I had read into myself, or maybe we really did share a connection. But either way, I had already made my decision a few days before, and it was time he knew. “I’m going to stay with the army.”
His shoulders slumped. “Why?” He turned to me for the first time all evening, his blue eyes boring into mine. “You don’t want to come with me?”
I shook my head. “We really don’t know each other all that well, Leif—something I tried to tell you in the woods.
But . . . I know you can’t ever understand this, but I lived most of my life under the rules of someone else.
I finally have a chance to be me, and I’m planning to take it.
” I smoothed down the front of the dress I wore, still slightly tearing up at the fact that I even could wear a dress in public now.
Resolve settled on his features. “Then I suppose I am officially in the army now.”
He wasn’t understanding. “Leif, I’m not a soldier. So if you really feel strongly about fighting Adis’s battles, then stay. But I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
“Where?” His tone carried notes of panic.
“I don’t know yet.” Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell him.
For as much as Leif made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, I also knew I needed a chance to explore who I—Runa—was, without standing in Milo’s shadow.
“But I think if you are really against the war here, you should go back to Adis and help Collum.” Even just saying it caused a pang in my gut, but I brushed it off and continued.
“Or go to your coven and convince your readers to begin reading to civilians.”
“But—”
I cut him off. “I don’t know much about this war, Leif, but I did learn a little from Otho over the past few days, and it will get worse before it gets better.
I think it’s only a matter of time before the conflict is no longer contained within these fields between towns.
And Otho seems to think other towns will get involved. ”
“All over Heimland?”
Leif was just as much in the dark as I had been a few days before, and I laid my hand over his hand as I explained.
“That’s what Adis wants us to think, that this is some sort of petty land dispute.
But it goes far beyond that.” I didn’t know how to put what I had inferred from Otho into words for Leif, and to be honest, I wasn’t even sure how much I could tell him.
“This war, Leif, I don’t think it’s about land.
I think Adis has gotten greedy for magic. ”
It was Leif’s turn to tilt his head to the side as I had once done so many nights before it seemed like another life now. “But Adis already has magic.”
I swallowed as I breathed out the words, “But he wants more. He wants the dark books, the ones that grant eternal life. The ones that grant the power to kill with a single word.” I had a quick internal debate before deciding that I did trust Leif.
“Otho didn’t tell me this, but when I spent all that time with Adis .
. .” My arm throbbed where the brand still lay beneath the sleeve of my dress.
“He mentioned how all the best magic books in Ralheim were burned, but he suspected that Malhiem—”
“Still has some.” Leif swallowed, and I could see he was formulating his own plans. “I better go back to my coven.” His hand moved to cover mine, leaving our stack of hands on his thigh. “But I will find you again . . . I just realized I don’t know your name.” Pink crawled up his cheeks.
I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. “It’s Runa.”
“Well, Runa.” He smiled, reaching out to grasp my hand and bring it to his lips, warmth spreading in my hand. “It is my pleasure to meet you.”
Then, before I could say anything else, or recover from his moment of charm, he rose from the cot and disappeared into the night.