Mikhail didn’t know what emotions his face gave away, but Richard must have been pleased with what he saw, because a thin smile curved the edges of his mouth. Then he spun around and started toward the far side of the gorge.
Or rather, he would have started toward the opposite side, but his foot hit a stub from one of the branches, and he stumbled.
“No!” Mikhail shouted, lurching forward while fighting to keep his own balance.
Richard’s arms flailed, his boot digging into the rough bark of the tree. For a moment, it seemed like he might regain his balance. His free hand clawed at the air, and he bent his knees to steady himself. But then the stub of the branch caught his toe again, and his weight shifted, his body pitching sideways.
Mikhail surged forward, his heart pounding in his ears as he stretched out a hand. His fingers brushed the wool of Richard’s coat, but then Richard’s boot slipped clean off the wood, and the coat fabric slid through Mikhail’s fingers.
Richard’s body twisted as he fell, and his scream tore through the air, echoing off the gorge walls.
Mikhail closed his eyes and looked away, not able to watch what he knew was coming. Then the scream stopped, and there was nothing but the wind and the distant roar of the river below.
He opened his eyes, his chest still heaving as he stared down into the rushing water. He didn’t see so much as a trace of Richard, not his head bobbing above the surface or his pack floating. Nothing that indicated the river had just swallowed a man’s life.
Nausea swirled in his stomach. So much death. There had been so much death in his life.
God, what am I doing wrong? I tried to do the safest thing, tried to find the safest way to cross the gorge.
Heat pricked his eyes. Was it him? Was he cursed somehow? Was he always doomed to have people around him die?
Because that’s exactly what it seemed like.
19
Bryony stared up at the sky, the blackness so deep it seemed it could swallow her if she let it.
Flecks of ice-cold snow landed on her cheek, one after another, but she’d become so used to the sensation that she barely noticed it. It might be the dead of night, but snow didn’t care. It came and came and came again, as though it had a mind of its own and was determined to make their trip to the river tomorrow more difficult.
But whether they got a foot of snow or ten, Mikhail would find a way to get her and the rest of the team to the Iskut. She had no doubt about that. He would have gotten Richard to the Iskut too, had Richard listened to Mikhail’s instructions.
But Richard hadn’t listened. Of course he hadn’t. She couldn’t remember the last time the man had listened to someone other than his own self.
And now he was dead.
She swallowed, the memory of Richard’s scream as he fell still ringing in her mind.
The rest of them had safely crossed the makeshift bridge. None of them had come close to losing their balance once, and Mikhail and Heath had made moving the heavy trunk across the gorge look easy.
So why had Richard stopped halfway across the bridge? Why hadn’t he listened when Mikhail told him to keep moving?
None of it made sense, and Mikhail hadn’t said so much as a word about what had happened when he came back to escort her across the bridge, but his face looked ashen and his eyes damp.
All she knew was that she should probably be crying right now as her mind replayed the scene. Everyone else had certainly taken their turns crying.
But for some reason, her eyes refused to grow damp and her chest refused to feel tight.
If anything, it felt looser now than it had that morning, as though some kind of weight had been lifted...
But at the expense of Richard’s life?
That hardly seemed right. She hadn’t wanted to marry him, but that didn’t mean she wanted him dead.
So why did she feel so free now?
A low, keening wail sounded from across the camp.
She turned onto her side, surveying the campsite as the deep-red embers of the banked fire cast a faint light across her surroundings. Normally they would have set up their tents, but it had been nearly black by the time they found a campsite, and there had barely been time to shake out their bedrolls and snack on some biscuits and jerky before darkness surrounded them.
