“Yes. Perhaps.” Byron shakes his head. “The knight said that someone—a girl—was in trouble. Perhaps she was his traveling companion. I think he would rather we see about rescuing her before we do anything with his body.”
I shake my head, ripping up more wildflowers which I scatter across his chest. Perhaps if I bury him in flowers, I can hide the jagged hole in his armor in his chest. I know that doing so won’t bring him back or make the empty hole in my own heart go away, and yet, I can’t help but try. I want to run and hide, disguise the death, do anything but accept the truth that this man is dead. He’s a complete stranger, and yet that doesn’t change the finality of it all or how horrible it was.
This man died in the company of only strangers. We don’t even know his name and yet we are the only ones who even know to mourn him right now. I sniff loudly, afraid to wipe at my face and leave a trail of blood there although it has mostly dried into a sticky paste on my hands. “If we leave him like this, the wild animals will feast on him.”
“It’s only a body now, Willow.” Byron pushes to his feet. “If there is indeed a person in trouble, that’s more important.”
Marvin chuckles, nervously. It’s a tad out of place in this moment, but I know that Marvin can’t help it. When he gets nervous, he laughs. “We’re forgetting that something killed this knight. If it killed a highly trained knight, then how do we stand a chance?”
“There’s three of us,” Byron says as he pats the sword at his side. “And we’re knights-to-be ourselves. We aren’t exactly helpless.”
Byron, I know can hold his own in a fight, and I’m actually pretty flattered that he thinks I can too—indeed I’d like to believe that I could— but he is mad if he thinks of Marvin as anything other than a liability.
As if reading my thoughts, Marvin chuckles again. “That sounds like a completely solid plan that won’t wind up with us dead on the side of the road just like this poor knight here.”
Byron’s mouth is pressed into a hard line. “What sort of knights would we be if we walked away from saving someone at the first sign of trouble?”
“The kind of knights who were forced to become ones because of their father’s lofty expectations.” Marvin glances between us, and his smile slides off his face. “But those aren’t the kind of knights you are.”
“You’re the only one herewitha father, Marvin,” I say in a low tone. “Surely you could have come up with a more compelling argument than that. One that would actuallyapply.”
“I’m nervous, Willow. You know that I can’t think when I’m nervous!”
“Byron is right,” I say with a shake of my head, even though that’s honestly the last thing I ever wanted to hear come out of my mouth. I push to my feet, forcing my face to become impassive. I’ve had a lot of experience doing that. Spending my life living under other people’s roofs and off their kindness I’ve seen a lot of things—families sometimes fight like wildcats behind the safety of their walls—and I’ve always had to keep a neutral party in family feuds for fear of getting thrown out on my bony tailbone. “We’re knights-to-be, best we act like them. If someone is in danger, then who else will save them? We’re here, we’re capable.” I side-eye Byron. Some of us are more capable than is rightly fair, but then I guess that we can’t all be blacksmith’s grandsons born with an unholy amount of magic. I swallow and rest my hands on my hips. “It’s up to us.”
“You know, you two are more similar than you think,” Marvin says with a groan, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “You have savior complexes, the both of you.”
I definitely don’t appreciate Marvin telling me that I’m like Byron, and if I remember this insult when we’re in a slightly less perilous situation then I’m going to give him an earful.
He releases a heavy groan and presses his eyes shut before jerking his head up in a nod. “You’re going to be the death of me. Let’s do this.”
I nod and turn to Byron who has already moved to that crevice between the boulders. He has to stoop to enter. I race forward and slip into the shadows behind him. Immediately the air becomes cooler, and a slightly musty smell of moist dirt reaches my nose. I can make out Byron’s silhouette highlighted by the sunlight that manages to trickle into the narrow cave, but it’s impossible to tell how deep this cave is. For all I know it ends where the light does and I could wind up wandering into a wall.
Well, more likely Byron walks into the wall since he is in front… which would actually be kind of funny to watch. But I doubt it because there is no sign of this missing girl or whoever took her, and unless the dying knight was delusional with pain, which is always a possibility, they should be in here.
“Hey, could you provide some light?” Marvin’s voice is a shaky whisper behind me.
To be honest, it’s all I’m good for, but since my magic is actually coming in handy for once I decide not to complain. Instead, I lift my hand. Just as a small glow begins to appear above it, Byron raises his own hand. Sparks dance across his knuckles, blue light flicking across his fingers, moving like lightning and providing plenty of light. Unlike actual lightning it doesn’t disappear after a second.
Instead, it gathers in an orb near his hand, far more violent than the one I would have created with the lights sparking and crackling with a dangerous energy. But also providing enough light that my own magic is rendered unnecessary.
I drop my hand in disgust.
See, this is what I hate about Byron. It isn’t just that he has a powerful offensive magic that causes everyone to automatically respect him, it isn’t even that he has that magic despite not having a drop of fae blood. It’s that his power can do exactly what my magic can do and so much more.
He is not limited, and it isn’t fair.
I can create light out of nothing. Which may seem exceptional until a person meets the boy who can make lightning. Bright, deadly, mesmerizing lightning. After that, who has any need for a little bobbing orb that emits a glow?
Byron’s handheld lightning reveals that the cave extends much farther than I would have expected. It continues as far as the glow of Byron’s light can go and then darkness enshrouds how much deeper it is. I can hear a faint dripping, and maybe if I strain my ears, I can hear what sounds like the low murmur of voices over the electrifying crackle of Byron’s magic.
Byron glances back, his eyes flicking from me to Marvin standing behind me. “Why don’t you guard the entrance?”
“What?” Marvin hisses.
“It won’t do us any good if someone comes in behind us and traps us in here,” Byron says, keeping his voice low. “Someone needs to stand lookout.”
“I mean, if you think it will help…” despite Marvin’s words, I can hear the stark relief in his voice.
