The Biggest Threat
SERAPHAE
The ride back to Twilight Court was nothing like the ride out.
When we left, I had been cataloguing ways to kill Caelan once the bond broke. Methodically. Sorted by category.
The ride back, I was thinking about other things that involved Caelan. Things that were significantly more inconvenient and that I was not going to examine in any detail.
Leaving Verdant turned out to be considerably easier than entering it. We walked out through the main path, and the fae soldiers at the gate waved us through without looking up from their card game. Apparently, leaving a kingdom unannounced was not something that raised alarms. Only arriving.
Maelor had suggested finding a stable for more horses, which was practical. Four people on two horses was not a dignified arrangement by anyone's measure. Caelan had vetoed it immediately. Too risky to go into the city, he had said. Which was true.
I should not have been pleased about this.
I was absolutely pleased about it.
I told myself it was because watching Maelor suffer was one of the few reliable pleasures handed to me on this trip.
That was the only reason. It had nothing to do with the way sharing a horse meant my back pressed close enough to feel every breath Caelan took.
Or the way his arms came around me for the reins and his hand rested on my thigh like it had every right to be there.
Nothing to do with that at all.
The Hollow was next on the itinerary. Another location that sensible people avoided, like the Mourning Wild, like everywhere we were going. I had made my peace with the fact that we were not sensible people. It was a process, but I was through it.
Twilight came into view as the last of the daylight faded, which was to say that it looked exactly the same as it always did.
Dark sky, floating lanterns trailing gold and amber along the market roads below.
Vendors calling out prices. Children somewhere laughing.
The smell of something spicy drifting from a cart that had no business still being open this late.
The inn sat just before the woodlands north of the Hollow.
Not a bad inn. Not a Primorian-standard inn either.
Thick beams crossed overhead, dark with age.
Candles along the walls in amber clusters.
The air smelled of bread baking somewhere close and old wood smoke.
It felt less like an inn and more like a large house that had decided to welcome anyone who knocked, which was a quality I respected in a building.
Three long wooden tables with mismatched chairs occupied the center. The other two were taken by what appeared to be mercenaries, based on their weapons and physique. Fae, probably. In Primoria, it was a reasonable assumption.
Caelan was at the counter talking to the innkeeper. Elbows on the wood, expression easy, laughing at something she'd said. She was a round woman with rosy cheeks and dark hair escaping loosely from where it was tied back. On her face was a smile that warmed a room without trying.
I watched him for a moment. The way he laughed with her like she was the most interesting person in the room. Genuinely, without performance in it.
I looked away.
Maelor was already at a table, polishing a blade that had done nothing to deserve this level of attention.
I sat across from him and reached for the bread basket in the center.
“Do you have to do that right now?” I asked.
“You always have to be prepared.” He didn't look up.
“The bread is not going to fight back.”
His mouth curved before his eyes went to my dagger.
“Give me your dagger.” He nodded toward my belt. “I’ll sharpen it later.”
I tilted my head at him.
He raised his brow and stuck out his hand expectantly when I didn’t give it to him.
I reluctantly unclipped my dagger from my belt and handed it over slowly.
He took it and placed it on the table for later.
“I’m not going to take it.” He continued polishing his sword. “I gave you the dagger. It’s yours.”
A wine bottle appeared between us.
I looked up.
Riven was standing at the table with four glasses and an open bottle. He poured without explanation.
I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms. “Well. Look at that.”
He threw a glance at me, said nothing, finished pouring, and set the bottle down.
I looked up at him. “You actually drink.”
He picked up his glass and took a long, unhurried drink without breaking eye contact. Expression unchanged. Entirely unbothered.
My mouth curved.
I had assumed Riven operated exclusively on discipline and judgment and the quiet satisfaction of intimidating people without technically doing anything.
I had not accounted for wine. I was going to have to revise my entire understanding of Riven, which admittedly was built on limited information to begin with.
I picked up my glass and raised it.
“To the Captain of the Guard,” I said. “May you one day look like you're attending something other than a funeral.”
Maelor laughed, loud and genuine, turning heads at the next table. He set down the blade that had been polished past any useful purpose and raised his glass.
“To Sera,” he said. “Who saves us the trouble of carrying torches.”
We drank.
I didn't notice I was smiling until my cheeks started to hurt.
Riven looked dangerously close to actually smiling. It stalled the second he caught me looking.
“So how did you two meet Caelan?” I asked.
“Military family.” Maelor winked. “House of Halvarn. Loyal to the crown for generations. When you’re born into that, you’re expected to grow up around the royal children. Caelan saw me for me and not a noble beneath him. Told me to call him Caelan. Been following him since.”
“So have you been with Caelan since he was first sent to the border?” I asked.
Maelor snorted. “You mean quietly exiled?”
Riven gave him a look.
“Caelan was sent there at twelve years old after they stripped his title as crown prince.” Maelor took a drink and set the glass back down hard enough that the wine sloshed over the edge.
“Too unstable to be king, they said. You can’t exile a prince for something he can’t control.
So you dress it up as a military assignment instead. Defending the borders and whatnot.”
My fingers pressed into the glass.
Riven had lowered his eyes to the table and did not comment.
Maelor drew a long breath and finished his glass in one gulp.
Caelan returned holding two keys.
We looked up.
“Two rooms,” he said, and threw one to Maelor. “That's all they had.”
I looked at him. “You're all sharing, correct?”
“Maelor and Riven have one.” He smiled. The one that had learned to arrive slightly ahead of trouble. “You and I have the other.”
I opened my mouth.
“You’re my personal guard,” he said, raising one finger. “Naturally, you should be close by.” Then he added with all seriousness, “We aren’t in the city, safe behind walls. The assassins may come back. We have to be careful.”
I closed my mouth.
It made sense. Technically. Logically. It was just a room.
Rooms had beds in them, and beds were for sleeping.
I was a professional who had shared considerably worse accommodations than whatever this inn had to offer, and it was absolutely fine.
Xander and I shared rooms all the time. We even shared a bed once. It was absolutely fine.
I looked at Caelan.
He smiled.
This was not fine.
Maelor and Riven disappeared down the corridor, with Maelor saying something about sleeping on something that wasn't dirt for once.
Caelan and I walked to our room at the other end. He turned at the door, expression shifting into something I couldn't immediately categorize.
“I have to warn you,” he said.
“About what?” I asked carefully.
“There's only one bed.”
I stared at him.
He held my gaze with the gravity of a man delivering genuinely terrible news.
One bed.
The gods had carried me through assassins and haunted forests and ancient trees with a personal grudge, and this was where they had decided to collect.
One bed. I was not a nun. I had never claimed to be a nun, and I had been exercising what I considered to be extraordinary restraint given the circumstances, but one bed was—
He laughed.
I stared at him.
He turned and opened the door.
Two beds. Perfectly ordinary. Side by side.
He walked in looking like a man who had won something significant.
I was going to kill him in his sleep. I had decided. I would die happy having done it, and the cursed magical bond could take that information and do whatever it wanted with it.
The room was small. Two beds with dark wool blankets, a hearth on the far wall, an end table between the beds. A door to the attached bath, slightly ajar. The floorboards had opinions about where you stepped. The window looked out to the woodlands.
It was fine.
It was a room.
I had slept in worse places.
Caelan set his bag down and moved through the space, taking inventory of it.
I sat on the edge of the nearer bed.
“There were mercenaries downstairs,” I said.
“There usually are.” He moved to the window and looked out. “This inn sits close to only one thing. Everyone here is heading to the Hollow, or coming back from it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “People choose to go there?”
“The Hollow has resources worth coin. Magical flora, mostly. People go to the edge for it.” He turned. “They don't go far in.”
“How far in is veil ash?”
He looked at me. “The center.”
I pulled my arms around myself. The room was cold in a way the hearth hadn't fixed yet.
“How many people make it there and back?”
“Half,” he said factually.
Fantastic.
He crouched in front of the hearth and lit it with a gesture, fire catching instantly, which was the kind of thing I was going to have to stop noticing or start pretending not to notice.
“So what actually lives in the Hollow?”
He settled back on his heels. “Things nightmares are made from, mostly. Creatures of shadow. Things with too many legs. Mouths too wide.” He continued in the same pleasant tone he might use to describe council reports. “The worst of them is a creature that wears your face.”
I looked at him. “Wears it?”
“Like it's theirs. Your own family couldn't tell the difference.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “I could be that creature right now, and you'd never know.”
“Helpful,” I said. “Thank you for that.”
He grinned.
I looked at the fire.
I had been afraid of very little over the course of my life. Fear was a liability, and I had worked diligently to minimize it. But the idea of something wearing my face in front of Caelan sat wrong in a way I couldn't immediately categorize and wasn't going to try.
When I looked up, he was watching me.
“Don't worry,” he said with a calm smile. “I'll protect you.”
He crossed the room toward me.
I snorted. “That's my line.”
His smile spread. “Say it, then.”
I stared at him and waited.
“Say you'll protect me,” he said, standing close enough that I had to look up.
Heat bloomed on my cheeks.
“I am not giving you the satisfaction.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then his eyes dropped to my arm, where the cut from the Mourning Wild had dried into an angry red line I had forgotten about.
He reached for my arm.
I let him take it.
He turned it over in his hand, examining it with focused attention, and then he sat beside me on the bed.
“This needs to be cleaned properly.”
We hadn't stopped long enough for me to think about it.
Shallow cuts like this, I had collected them for years and learned to ignore them.
My arms were largely unmarked for it. My torso was a different matter.
People who wanted to kill you went for places that would actually do the job. The arms were incidental.
I pulled back slightly. “I can do it myself.”
His grip tightened.
“I know.” He didn't look up from the cut. “But you don't have to.”
He went to the bath. The sound of running water drifted from the door. He came back with a damp cloth and sat beside me again. Then he took my arm and cleaned the cut with a gentleness that had no right existing in the hands of a man who was feared by two realms.
I watched him do it.
I was staring, and I knew I was staring, and I made no plans to stop.
He went downstairs and came back with clean dressings and a small dark bottle. He applied it to the cut, which stung once and then stopped entirely.
“Let yourself be taken care of,” he said, wrapping my arm carefully, “once in a while.”
I didn't answer.
Since the first night in Primoria, he had been taking care of me. He still hadn’t asked for his cloak back, and I was not going to remind him about it.
Nobody had taken care of me the way he had.
Which was deeply inconvenient, considering I had done nothing to deserve it.
He hadn't had to be kind. The bond didn't require it. The arrangement didn't require it. He had been kind anyway, quietly.
He tied off the dressing and let my arm go, and I looked at his boots and thought about nothing in particular.
When I looked back at him, he was watching my face. I hadn't registered how close he was. His knee against mine. Our shoulders brushing. Close enough that I could smell the bergamot and the specific warmth of him I had learned against my will over the last several days.
“Goodnight,” he said quietly before saying a string of Primorian. I caught only the last word when he said it in a way that felt deliberate.
I frowned. “What does veyra mean?”
He gave me nothing but a small smile.
Then he stood and moved to his bed, got in, and pulled the blankets over himself. He stretched once, settled, and exhaled as if he had decided the day was finished.
He closed his eyes.
I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.
My fingers moved over the dressing without meaning to. The hearth had settled into a low burn. The room was warm now. The floorboards quiet. The window dark with woodland beyond it.
Caelan was in the other bed. I was aware of him the way you were aware of something you were trying not to be aware of.
I had thoughts I had no right to be having.
Crawling into his bed, for one.
I had been careful. I had been so careful, from the first night in the cell to the forest. I had maintained a distance that was structural, deliberate, load-bearing. I was a professional. All of those things were true.
All of them were failing and in mid-collapse.
The biggest threat going into the Hollow wasn't the creatures with too many legs or the thing that wore your face. It wasn't the Mirror Lake, or the veil ash, or the fifty percent odds of making it to the center and back.
It was this. The careful restraint I had built, maintained, and was now watching develop cracks.
And it was getting harder, with every passing day, to pretend I couldn't see them.