“So we’re stuck here for now?” Her voice trembles slightly. I watch her throat bob as she swallows hard. “Together?”
The wordtogetherhas my britches tightening, has my blood roaring, and I need to get out of this cave again. I’m not even sure if I manage to answer her question before I stride away to find my belt on the cave floor. The familiar weight of my blades eases some of thevulnerability I feel without my sword and vials. I let my palm rest over the hilt of one while I rush back to the mouth of the cave.
“Where are you going now?” Inana asks, throwing her hands in the air.
“You need to eat,” I say, pausing near the opening. I turn halfway to look back at her. “I’m going to take care of you. All right? I promise.”
Her bewildered expression remains trapped in my mind as I march through the snow toward the river.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Inana
It’s only after Dominic leaves that I realize how long it’s been since I’ve been well and truly alone. When I lived in Nalheim, my hours were devoted to working, performing, or sleeping in the barracks. Always near others. Never a moment of complete silence, for even the lavatory was a shared space. The textile mill was similar, though most of my days were spent in a haze, still recovering from shock after escaping Henry.
I suppose the last time I was alone for an extended period…was back home.
Henderson’s taunting words come back to me now, sending a chill through my blood.
The woman who destroyed an entire village with her actions.
What did he mean? Who does he think I murdered, and in what way did I destroy Dunway?
I pace around the fire, anxiety simmering in my chest with every step. Now I’m desperate for Dominic to return. If anyone knows what Henderson meant, it’s him. He knew who I was at the Wretched Lair. He knows of my crimes. It was never a subject I wanted to discuss with him before, especially since he was giving us amnesty. A clean slate not as outlaws but as Summoners. But if there’s some fabricatedtale going around regarding what happened in Dunway, I need to know what it is.
And if it isn’t fabricated…
What the hell happened to my village?
I curse under my breath and stalk over to a pile of pine branches, pushing them aside to reveal my mask and one of my fabric hearts. I found them here when I was getting dressed and nearly wept with relief that at least one of my creations wasn’t lost or destroyed during my dunk in the river. My patchwork heart is the only one that remains, but it’s something, and the creation I labored over the longest. It’s still damp, the threads severely tangled, but now I have something to do with my hands. Something to take my mind off the questions swarming inside my head.
I take up the patchwork heart and begin brushing through the threads. It’s daylight and the fire has brightened the cave well enough, so there shouldn’t be much harm in working on this. I’m not making art; I’m fixing something. It’s practical—
My hands go still over the damp crimson threads. The Incarnate’s voice fills my mind, followed by a vision of its bloody fingers scraping against a bone.
It’s not art, it’s just a tool.
Shame burns molten in my gut. What the hell is wrong with me? I was feeling anxious and my first instinct was to handle art and call it mending? It’s logic like that that got the carver killed. Just because it’s daylight doesn’t mean it’s safe to flaunt my art. There’s a reason Dominic hid my heart under the pine boughs.
With a sigh, I return it to where I found it and sit by the fire.
And wait. And wait. And wait.
Dominic returns what feels like hours later, though it’s still daylight. The sky is as blinding white as it was when I awoke, the snowfall just as incessant. He marches in, trailing chunks of packed snow, then sets down an armful of cedar leaves and what looks like sprigs of wild rosemary, upon which he rests two filleted fish. I blink in surprise, all the anxious questions I’d been storing up in his absence now fleeingmy mind. He caught fish in that horrifying, freezing river? With no pole or net? Perhaps he crafted a spear or sent Sloth out to snatch them up in his muzzle. Before I can ask, he storms back out.
When he returns, it’s with an armload of thick branches that must be meant for firewood. Then he leaves again and returns with another armload. And another.
Gods, how much work did he do?
“We’ll need to keep the fire burning during every hour of darkness,” he says by way of explanation. He adds a log to the fire, then sets about carving several sticks, removing the bark and chiseling them into points. He then notches them together until they create a cross. I furrow my brow, unsure what it’s for, until he drapes the two fillets on them.
“It’s for cooking them,” I say as he props them just outside the fire. I’m amazed by how quickly he worked, how expertly he set this up with minimal tools at his disposal. Nowthisis practical craft. Necessary art.
That dampens my mood, reminding me of what I want to ask him.
I open my mouth to ask, but when I turn toward him, his back is to me.
And his shirt is sliding over his head.
