Chapter 38 The Moors
Rami and Mrs. Van were gone.
Go with them, St. Silas had told Leena.
And miss a walk in the snow? she’d responded.
Only now they walked through a storm.
The snowflakes had built to a crescendo, and they were the only two figures making slow progress against the harsh drifts. The roads were no longer visible, so they relied on the tall blades of grass peeking through the snow to navigate the banks.
The farther they walked, the more Leena supported St. Silas—every step laborious, half stumbling in exhaustion.
They had passed Lytham in the carriage, and now walked back toward it, away from the road.
It had been only two hours since they’d started their slow progress toward the miners’ town, but already Leena felt St. Silas descending further into delirium.
She looked obliquely at him. His expression was stony, long eyelashes tipped with frost, breath clipped in pain.
“What are you thinking of?” he asked her. He was no longer able to maintain his habitual honeyed tones. Now his words were grit.
“I am thinking of you.” Leena felt his head turn toward her.
Rami’s parting words still tore through her—all for you—until they had remodeled her in some essential and unknowable way.
She could not think past them—not when she had spent so long fighting to survive, not when life found new ways to orphan her continuously.
Not when she was so exhausted from always carrying loss on her back.
That St. Silas had deliberately, willingly, met the sword for her—
She choked on the thought, felt it expand within her until she was suffused with it from the inside out.
She knew she could never adhere to Rami’s last caution—to use the inexplicable hold he thought she had over St. Silas to her advantage—and she knew her brother would likely think her a fool for not doing so. But she could not. She would not.
“Leena?” St. Silas’s voice broke her from her reverie.
Yet she could not speak of Rami’s words to St. Silas, not when she’d not had time to understand them. Not when he’d not admitted to them himself.
Instead, she said softly, “You are suffering greatly, yet you show nothing of it. I was wondering where you learned such a trick.”
He didn’t respond for a while. The growing fever coming from his skin alarmed Leena more than his silence.
“Tell me,” Leena said, thinking quickly, “how you learned to shoot so accurately.”
His response, when it did come, was stilted. “It was Hargreaves. We practiced daily when I was a boy.”
“Is that also how you learned to ride so well?”
A nod. “Though that was more Lady Hargreaves. She loved horses.”
With a choked voice, remembering the memories Lady Hargreaves had left in her of Bram as a boy, Leena asked, “Tell me what your father told the world when Bramwell Avon went missing at twelve years old.”
His words came slowly, as if dragged from a deep cavern.
“My mother’s family was not noble. My maternal grandfather was a tradesman.
My father and Hargreaves told society that I had been kidnapped by a few of my grandfather’s less savory contacts as a punishment for all the money he’d lost them.
They said that they’d thrown every resource into finding me, but they’d been told that I was likely already dead.
I think my father always intended to come back for me eventually, to ‘find’ me—”
“Because you are his son?”
“Because I am his heir,” he corrected. “Only Percival was killed before he could.”
“That was a very far-fetched story they concocted. Did anyone believe it? Surely someone must’ve gone looking for you.”
There was a frown on his face. “Society would believe anything an Avon said.”
Leena gripped St. Silas’s arm tightly, as if to show him the ache she felt for him. “Lady Hargreaves came to visit me last night. She cared for you. Deeply.”
St. Silas stiffened.
A sudden trough in the earth caught them unawares, sending them both flying onto a blanket of snow.
Leena groaned.
Ice clung to her cheeks and fell down the back of her collar. Her stockings were now thoroughly wet, and she reckoned that she had a hole through her left boot.
Beside her, St. Silas lay completely still.
She scrambled toward him, heart thudding. His skin was entirely bleached of color, his eyes closed.
“My lord!” she shouted. “My lord, wake up!”
No response.
She shook him but his muscles were limp, as if he was already dead. “St. Silas…please!”
His eyelids flickered.
She shook him harder, disturbing the snow dusting his hair.
“St. Si—Bram…Bram! Wake up. Please, wake up.”
Something shifted inside her. She could not explain it, only that his name on her tongue felt familiar, as if her body had begun to refer to him as Bram—not the Saint, not St. Silas—before her mind had.
His eyes slowly opened, pupils dilated, hazy and unfocused.
Leena let out a small sob. “Bram…please, we cannot rest here…”
The distant sound of the galloping horses was like a blow. Leena’s head swiveled, attempting to locate the noise on the quiet, dark moors, terror gripping her when she realized that it came from the direction of Weavingshaw. And they were not far off.
Had they been too slow? Had the Black Coats already caught up with them?
There was no time to ponder this; they were likely minutes away from being discovered.
“Bram—Bram, we must move!” she whispered frantically, trying to drag his body to a standing position, but he was too heavy for her to lift.
He didn’t stir.
“If you rise now, Bram, I will tell you all my secrets. Every single one.”
The sound of the racing horses intensified, and yet she still could not see any discernible riders yet.
She grasped the lapels of his coat, attempting to drag him to a more secure hiding place among the high, frozen grass.
All the while, she muttered a string of pleas: “Do you remember I once said I would never refer to you by your given name? I was afraid that I would begin to see you as something other than the enemy. But you’re no longer my enemy.
You’re my…my…” The horses were nearly upon them now.
Her breath hitched, her mind blank with animal terror. “Get up, Bram. Please.”
Something flickered in his face—awareness?
Suddenly, he lurched up, grunting from the effort. With her help, he heaved himself toward a clump of tall grasses.
Then, with a last burst of effort, Bram pulled her toward him, cradling the nape of her neck between his hands just as the horses approached.
Leena’s mind sharpened, taking in every detail around her: the feeling of Bram’s arms around her—a safety net all on their own—her own heart clawing through her chest, the taste of fear in her mouth, the sound of the horses’ rough breaths mere feet from them.
Would the horsemen notice the footprints in the snow? Would the storm worsen? Was Bram—for now she could think of him by no other name—well enough to continue?
In the silver light of the storm, Bram’s eyes were half lidded, feverish, but fully alert.
As he watched her, an unidentifiable emotion seemed to be flickering in and out of his face.
She couldn’t hide from him, not when they were only millimeters apart, so she stared back.
They stayed like that during the long, agonizing moments in which the riders approached.
She shrank down further, not daring even to pray, ears pricked for any sign that they had been discovered.
The hoofbeats came, then receded.
They didn’t move until the only sound remaining was their own harsh breaths.
With reluctance, Leena attempted to extract herself from Bram’s hold, but his arms tightened around hers.
His words were feverish. “Say it again.”
Leena looked at him in confusion. “Say what again?”
“My name. Say it again.”
His gaze was bright and unwavering from her face. Leena’s heart pounded.
“Bram,” she whispered after a long moment.
“Say it again.”
She rose up slowly, releasing his hold on her, unsure why it felt so intimate to meet his eyes while calling him by his given name. “Bram.” She swallowed, averting her flushed face. “We must go—”
“And again.”
“We cannot delay—”
“Leena.” He interrupted her, his voice a hoarse command. “Once more. Say my name.”
She stood up, her hands slightly shaking while brushing the snow from her jacket, still unable to meet his unfaltering stare.
The still moors and the thick trees were silent, as if waiting for her next words.
“Bram…”
He let out a staggered breath—as if this was the first real inhale he had taken in a long time. And yet the irony that these very breaths were now numbered did not escape her.
Leena banished that thought as quickly as it came, however, and stretched a hand toward him. With her aid, he rose to his feet with a grim determination, swaying for a moment, but then he regained his balance and took a half shuffle forward. Then another, until they set a slow pace again.
Even though it was much harder to walk among the long grass than on the route they had originally been traveling, Leena deemed it safer, as they were far less likely to be tracked this way.
The hours slipped past and night fell and still Leena was not sure they had made much progress.
Their speed was painfully slow, and her shoulder had begun to ache from where she’d supported Bram.
How far had they been from Lytham when the carriage overturned?
Four miles? Five? She’d been too distracted to keep track, and she was now paying the price.
She mourned whatever the distance was ahead, for it was clear that Bram was struggling.
She began speaking again: words and secrets and half-remembered recollections flowing from her tongue. If Bram consumed secrets, then she would feed him all of hers.
He must live.
Leena would do everything in her power to ensure it.
First came the lighthearted secrets. Those were easy.