Aldric’s face rose up once more. The way he’d looked at her that day when she had forced Coreto to surrender. When he had called her “my queen.” Her throat thickened. Tears beaded in her eyelashes.
A part of her still wanted to rage at him, still wanted to blame him for the loss of Mysai. But another part of her could not bear the thought of perhaps facing him one day and telling him she had chosen her own safety over protecting his sister. That she had chosen herself over the women in that cottage who had no one else to tell them about the danger lurking right outside their door.
No.
She opened her eyes. The mountains blurred at the edges of her vision, falling away as she turned the horse’s head—not west,toward safety, but back toward the faint tendrils of smoke still rising over the treeline.
Toward Goldreach.
Toward the cottage.
Toward danger.
Her fingers tightened in the reins until her knuckles went white.Please, she prayed again, though this time she knew what she was praying for—safety.
For Reyla. For Dame Florence. For Aldric, wherever he was.
For her family.
And for herself, too.
Leaning low over the horse’s neck, she nudged the creature back into a hard gallop and flew not toward the safety of the Dawnspire.
But straight back into the heart of the fire.
Chapter fifty-five
Aldric
He woke to the taste of dirt in his mouth and a ringing in his skull.
Cold earth sprawled beneath his right side. Dry grass prickled his cheek. At least his captors had the decency to dump him on the shoulder that still worked.
His left—the one he had dislocated when he fell—felt like someone had tried to tear the whole arm out of its socket while he had been out. His body ached. His face hurt. His hand burned where his own glaive had stabbed straight through it. Pressure bit at his wristsand ankles. Rope.
He flexed his fingers to judge the tightness of the bonds, sending a fresh wave of pain lancing up his arm.Good. Pain was good. It meant everything was still attached and working.
It meant he was alive.
He cracked his good eye open to a sliver.
Night pressed in on all sides, the silhouette of trees a black wall ringing their clearing. Tents hunched in the darkness. A crackling fire spat sparks nearby.
He lay just outside the perimeter of that fire—far enough away that the heat did nothing to chase the cold seeping into his bones. Far enough away that he lay closer to the treeline than he did to the tents.
Shapes loomed and shifted nearer the flames. Arathians? Wellane’s men? The witch? He could not tell. Not from this distance. Not in this light.
He ground his teeth, memory surging.“I need the dwarf alive,”the wench had said.
Well, blight that. There were many reasons his wife’s enemies would want to take him captive. But only one for why they would want to keep him alive.
And he wanted no part of it.
Aldric turned his head a fraction, taking stock of the rest of the camp. A horse snorted somewhere behind him. But nearer at hand, a shape lay in the grass, bound just like him. Limp. Unmoving.
Calix. His second’s features were a smeared mess of cuts, dried blood, and swelling. But his chest moved. He breathed.
Just next to him, a broad mound lay half on its side, half on its stomach.Rakon. Unconscious, the man resembled a boulder.
