Chapter 12
Twelve
Sorcha
We left the next morning before dawn. It was still pitch-black.
None of the corpuscular birds and animals were even stirring.
It felt wrong. More than twenty years I’d lived in these hills, my whole adult life.
Nokona wouldn’t be coming. My parents’ bodies would stay in the New Mexico dirt—baby brother’s too.
I took a deep breath to steady myself, straightened the bodice on my hard-wearing, woolen riding dress, and got on the horse.
At least I was still riding Chuckles. Ansel had insisted she was ill-suited to trail work, that she would slow us down.
Neal countered that I was likely pregnant, young enough to need a full eight hours of sleep every night, and unused to long hours in the saddle, and so letting me keep my preferred horse wouldn’t slow us down any more than my presence already did.
I couldn’t help the flush of attraction as Neal argued against Ansel on my behalf.
I stroked Chuckles’s soft, velvety ears as Ansel finished loading up.
“Remember what I told you about keeping your weight balanced?” Neal said as he edged my foot forward in the stirrup.
His hands lingered on me, voice patient.
He’d spent the last seven hours dutifully letting me curl up in bed beside him and murmuring into my hair when dreams of Iksura’s emissary returning with a blade and taking it to my throat startled me back awake again and again.
That didn’t mean I was ready to forgive him.
“I know how to ride a horse,” I insisted.
“For fourteen hours a day?” Neal countered. “In the mountains?”
“I’ll be careful,” I said, “and I’ll try not to slow us down.”
“We’ll handle it,” he said gently, pressing the reins into my hands.
We’d been on the trail for three days, and I was hating every minute. I used to love riding in the foothills—picking berries, going to see the animals, relaxing. This was nothing like that. We’d been covering brutal distances every day—more than thirty miles yesterday—and I was lagging.
“We’ll stop after this ridge,” Ansel instructed. “Horses are tired anyways. And I don’t like that sky.”
I glanced up at the clouds. Snow was threatening—even though it was already April.
I really didn’t want to camp in a blizzard.
We didn’t even have tents. Ansel insisted on bringing every single Outer Court document and history book, which had severely depleted the space and weight we had available for supplies.
He was entirely nonplussed. Then again, he was also four hundred years old, and while not one of the ancients like Iksura, he was still of a generation who needed less sleep and less food, who didn’t feel the cold and the heat as harshly, whose innate dexterity rivaled a trained acrobat, whose immune system had fought off the plague and smallpox and won.
“You’re shifting around a lot,” Neal noted, pulling up next to me.
“I’m sore,” I replied curtly. I didn’t mention the hot flashes or how badly my hips were throbbing for no apparent reason. I didn’t mention that my stomach hadn’t felt right since before we left Santa Fe.
Chuckles was proving far more trail competent than we had feared, and she cleared the ridge easily enough. I dismounted and nearly fell flat on my face. She snorted, nudging my shoulder. My back felt all kinds of wrong and my balance was utterly shot.
Neal caught my arm.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, trying to shake him off.
“You’re definitely not,” Neal said firmly. He kept his hold on my arm and coaxed my chin up with his free hand until I was looking at him.
“Your balance seems like it’s deteriorating, lass,” Ansel said. “Think this is the start of something?”
I didn’t respond—I still wasn’t ready for that particular conversation, not until I was properly sure—so I just grabbed my canteen and took a swig.
The water tasted like metal and leather and suddenly my stomach couldn’t handle it.
I tried for an instant to fight and then was profusely sick on Neal’s feet.
“Well I think that’s the confirmation we were waiting for,” Ansel said casually. “Go clean up. Both of you. I’ll start dinner.”
I picked up my discarded canteen and walked far enough from camp that the residual smell of washing wouldn’t attract anything while we slept. I crouched, my hips and back barking in protest, and poured water into my hands.
“Were we foolish to leave?” I asked as Neal knelt beside me.
“Cormac was foolish to keep the Court isolated for so long,” Neal said. I nodded agreement as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped my face, hand behind my head. I fought the urge to lean into the gesture.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, trying to push him off.
“I’m helping,” Neal said. “I want to.”
So I sighed and let myself enjoy his touch. Close. I was close to forgiving him, to moving forward, to letting myself love him, like it was clear we both so badly wanted.
“And I know baby will slow us down, but Ansel seems to think it provides some sort of political insurance policy?” I said when he was done.
“It does,” Neal replied, rinsing his boots clean. “Dynasties with no heirs are a target. And right now it’s just you. Best I understand, there’s one distant cousin? But the claim is tenuous.”
“I thought I’d be excited,” I said quietly as he got to his feet and helped me up.
“About?” Neal asked, brow furrowing.
“The baby, you idiot,” I snapped, but there was no real venom in it. “Your baby.”
Neal froze, expression somewhere between embarrassment and concern.
“I didn’t expect it to feel lonely like this.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
And I just nodded, took his hand, and followed back to camp.
I sat down by the fire, wincing. “I’m getting dizzy.”
“I figured as much when you couldn’t successfully get off your horse,” Ansel put in.
Neal handed me a canteen as he sat down. My hands were shaking. I willed them—unsuccessfully—to stop. He unscrewed the cap and put a hand on my back. “Drink.”
“Didn’t I literally just throw this up?” I asked.
“It’s what we’ve got.” Neal shrugged, apologetic expression flickering across his features.
“I’ll grab some pine needles and boil them for you,” Ansel suggested. “Some babies hate plain water.”
I nodded.
“It’s just the altitude and the hormones,” Ansel said. “I’m sure you’re perfectly fine.”