Chapter 24
Tomas emerged from the trees holding his bow, with an almost-empty quiver slung over his shoulder.
‘They have all gone,’ Tomas reported to Torgrin.
‘Bury the dead and set up a perimeter. We will stay here for what’s left of the night, and head back to the others at daybreak.’
Tomas nodded and left to carry out Torgrin’s commands.
‘Nice work getting out of those ropes.’ Torgrin almost smiled at me.
‘My dagger!’ I had dropped my father’s dagger during the confrontation. I darted around, searching the camp in a panic. Suddenly, I froze. Recalling how I’d originally gotten the dagger back, I turned to look at Torgrin.
Torgrin was bending down to pick up something in the middle of the camp. Gnawing on my bottom lip, I came to stand beside him.
He stared at the dagger in his hand. ‘Did you read it?’ Torgrin’s tone was calm.
‘Yes,’ I whispered.
He turned the dagger around and held it out to me, hilt first.
‘It belonged to my father.’ I took it from him and slipped it back into the hidden sheath in my boot. ‘Thank you for keeping it safe all these years.’ The desire to ask him why was strong, but I decided against it. ‘I have the journal with me if you want it back.’ I touched his forearm gently.
He looked down at my hand, pale against his tanned arm. ‘Keep it,’ he said. Then he turned abruptly and walked away, leaving my hand to fall back to my side.
I walked over to the horses to check on Nightmare, who seemed fine despite our ordeal. To my relief, both of my swords were found abandoned nearby. I wrapped one sword, placed it in my saddle, and took the sword Iain made with me.
Torgrin’s soldiers began clearing the camp. There were many bodies to bury, but nobody wanted my help. They were afraid of me. The only one who didn’t seem wary of my presence was Tomas. He came to where I stood alone, digging the toe of my boot into the dry dirt.
‘Water?’ Tomas handed me his flask.
‘Thank you.’ I took a long drink. ‘Are Cillian and Bethel okay?’
‘Bethel is – well, you know – Bethel.’ Tomas shrugged. ‘But Cillian was very distraught about leaving you.’
I made a frustrated noise, knowing it would be hours before we made it back the way we had come.
‘Cillian will be okay when he sees that you’re safe. Torgrin had to leave them both back at the camp. We didn’t want them slowing us down.’ Tomas looked over to where Torgrin was digging a hole. ‘I’ve known him a long time and have never seen him show fear until tonight.’ Tomas watched me closely.
‘I’m sure he was just worried that Lord Warwick would be disappointed with him for losing Bethel’s lady-in-waiting.’
Tomas snorted in disbelief. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re okay.’
Torgrin had confided in his journal that he cared for me. He’d walked into a camp of soldiers unarmed for me. He had shared so little of his feelings directly, but his actions spoke loudly.
Tomas went to help Torgrin, and I wandered around the camp until I found a comfortable patch of grass. I sat and drew my legs to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. With my chin resting on my knees, I watched Torgrin and his men dig graves in the hard ground.
I wanted to ask Torgrin so many questions about tonight’s events, but I wasn’t sure he would speak to me now. We always seemed to be at odds. I wished he would talk to me the way he wrote in his journals – I longed desperately to hear his thoughts.
The camp was soon clear enough for us to settle and get a few hours of sleep. Torgrin was looking around the camp, and when his gaze found mine, he went still.
Was a shared past life what drew us to each other? If so, what had happened in our past lives to make it so hard for us to communicate in this one? We pushed and pulled as if we carried unhealed wounds that we didn’t remember.
He moved to grab something from his horse and then from my pack on Nightmare’s back. I tensed, afraid he was going to take back his journal. I had offered to return it, but I didn’t want to. My body relaxed when I saw it was my bedroll.
I admired his long legs as they ate up the distance between us.
His expression was as unreadable as always, but his gaze never wavered from mine.
Torgrin hadn’t even blinked when my Darkness turned a man to ash at his feet.
Tomas was right; Torgrin was never afraid.
Yet he was tonight when his father and his men took me.
I was silent as he rolled out our bedrolls side by side. Maybe he wasn’t as angry with me as I thought.
‘Sleep,’ he ordered.
We both kept our clothes and boots on. It was a chilly night – even more so with no fire. I lay down on my side, facing away from him.
‘You’re cold,’ he said from behind me. Suddenly, I was being pulled against his hard body. Heat spread throughout my body at the feel of him pressed against my backside.
What was he doing?
I tried to create some distance between us, but he growled, and his muscular arm became a steel band, pulling me in tighter. Guilt flooded me as I thought of Cillian, who was probably worried about me, while I was here with Torgrin’s warm body pressed against mine.
‘Relax,’ he whispered. His hand stroked my lower belly, having the opposite effect.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I blurted out.
His hand paused.
‘The truth,’ I demanded.
He sighed as he released me and rolled away onto his back. ‘I don’t know,’ he whispered, almost as if to himself.
Turning to face him, I stared at his profile in the dark.
‘When they took you, I was terrified. Right now, I need to be as close to you as possible so I don’t lose my fucking mind,’ he blurted out, looking at the night sky.
My heart fluttered. He had told me what he felt. Here, now. No journal, just us.
I shuffled towards him, not caring who saw us.
I tucked myself into his warm side and waited for him to lift his arm.
He did, and I laid my head on his shoulder and my hand on his chest. He raised his hand to caress my back, and I smiled when he let out a satisfied grunt.
We lay in silence for a while, simply enjoying the closeness.
‘Your father seems nice.’
Torgrin snorted.
‘Do you know why he was trying to kidnap me?’
Torgrin’s hand paused on my back. I wiggled a bit, and he got my not-so-subtle hint and went back to stroking my back.
‘I don’t.’ His words rumbled under my cheek.
‘How would King Goa even know who I am?’ I asked, confused. ‘I’m a nobody.’
‘You, Caris, are most definitely not a nobody.’ His voice was deep and smoky.
‘So, you were born in Ephemeros?’ I looked up at his face in the dark.
I couldn’t see much, just the outline of his brow and angular jaw.
He was usually clean-shaven, but tonight, a dark shadow covered the lower part of his face.
My fingers itched to touch his chin and feel the stubble growing there.
‘Yes. I left half a lifetime ago,’ he whispered into the air above us.
‘How old were you?’
‘Twelve.’
My heart clenched. ‘Why did you leave?’
‘I had no choice,’ he said enigmatically.
‘You came to Pedion on your own?’
‘Yes, I ran away.’
‘You were so young.’ I hated the thought of him alone as a child.
‘I survived,’ he whispered.
He did, but he had suffered.
‘How, though?’ I’d had Iain to protect me when my mother died. Who had protected Torgrin? I think I knew the answer.
‘I joined an army. The only thing my father had taught me was how to be a good soldier. So, I did that,’ he admitted.
‘I read about what Merrick did to you,’ I whispered. ‘He hurt you.’
‘Every day.’
His bitter tone stabbed me in the heart.
The horrendous things Merrick likely did to my mother before he killed her surfaced in my mind for the thousandth time, but now I remembered the last thing I saw after Torgrin pushed me into the river – the furious captain’s fist slamming into Torgrin’s boyish face.
‘You saved me from him. I owe you my life.’
‘I thought I might have killed you when I saw the river swallow you.’
‘But you dreamed of me?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Did you ever think about looking for me?’
‘Who said I didn’t look for you?’
‘You did?’ My voice heightened with surprise.
His chest rose and dropped heavily. ‘I didn’t belong in your life,’ he murmured.
I shivered as a coldness reached my bones.
‘You’re still cold,’ he said, pulling me in closer to his side.
‘Do you know where he is?’ I asked in a small voice.
‘No. I wasn’t lying to you.’ He didn’t need to ask who I meant. ‘But I don’t want you to find him.’
‘Why?’ My hand gripped the fabric of his shirt over his chest.
‘Because he is a dangerous and sadistic man, and I don’t want him near you. Ever.’ He placed his hand gently over my fist, and I relaxed, releasing the fabric.
I pushed up onto my elbow so I could see him better.
He looked back at me with those obsidian eyes.
I touched his face and traced his brow, running my fingers down his scarred cheek and along his tensed jaw.
My hand lingered on the roughness of his stubble, and my fingertips tingled.
The face staring back at me was still the face of the boy I had woken up to ten years ago.
Perhaps the plains of his face had sharpened with age, and a toughness lurked behind his eyes, but his peculiar scar remained unfaded – as did the scars I could not see.
‘How did you get this scar?’ I asked him, trailing my fingers over it again and feeling how the slight ridges fanned out like a fern.
‘I was struck by lightning when I was a child,’ he said, his voice husky.
Lightning was the last thing I would have expected.
‘Kiss me,’ he commanded in his deep, quiet voice.
My hand paused, hovering over him. ‘I can’t. Cillian …’ I whispered.
‘Screw Cillian,’ he growled in frustration.
‘I care about him,’ I admitted. ‘A lot.’
‘Do you love him?’ His eyes bore into me.
‘Yes,’ I said without hesitation, knowing it to be true.
‘Do you want me?’ he whispered, staring into my very soul.
Yes. I couldn’t say it because my desire for him scared me. It wasn’t safe and soothing like it was with Cillian. Torgrin had already shown he had the power to hurt me deeply. The thought of him with Bethel haunted me still.
Was it fate that made me want him? Fate might have brought us together for some purpose, but I wouldn’t allow it to take away my choice.
I dropped back down, laying my head on his chest. His heartbeat was fast and erratic. He might seem calm on the outside, but his heart revealed the truth. I listened as it slowed to a steady thump, the familiar sound soothing me to sleep.
?
The stars could not compete with the full moon’s brightness; its light broke through the shadows gathered around the crying woman.
She knelt in the mud by the raging river where a man with sightless obsidian eyes lay.
Her long, dark tresses brushed his pale, unmoving face, and her tears washed blood from his scarred cheek.
A black owl took perch on a tree branch at the edge of the woods.
‘Save him!’ the crying woman screamed at the nocturnal bird.
The owl took flight, its form folding and distorting until, in its place, a woman cloaked in bird feathers appeared. ‘You know the price?’ Her voice was scratchy, and her long talons clicked.
‘Anything!’ the woman begged.
Scratch. Scratch. ‘Put him in the river, and it will be done.’
‘He will live?’ She grabbed the man under the arms, her swollen belly hindering her efforts.
‘No, but you will see him in the next life.’ The owl-woman’s talons clicked impatiently.
The woman paused at the river’s edge, holding her lover desperately.
‘It is all I can offer you. Your immortality for a second chance in the next life.’ The owl-woman did not wait for a reply, as she knew what the woman would choose.