“When am I leaving?” That was really the only information still missing.
Khayrivven’s throat bobbed. “Tonight.”
Twenty-Six
No one cameto see Lory off as Khayrivven guided her out the back door of the academy, his pace clipped, once more blindfolding her until they were right at the exit. This time, however, they stood in a small yard lined with stalls.
Horses lifted their heads from stacks of hay, chewing idly as they observed Khayrivven pulling saddle and bridle from a roofed corner and putting them on a tall, sand-colored stallion.
“Have you ever sat on a horse?” he asked without looking at her, ignoring the stomping of the stallion’s elegant hoof.
“Not since I was a princess and had a whole herd of race horses at my disposal.” She gave hima fake smile, and Khayrivven rewarded her joke with a half-hearted chuckle, his eyes flashing in the torch-lit night as he glanced at her over his shoulder.
“You’ll ride with me, then. We’ll take a second horse to carry supplies.” Handing the stallion’s reins to Lory, he walked over to a shed on the side, pulling out a second saddle and bridle.
The beast tilted its head in a fashion so similar to Khayrivven, she was certain the two of them spent lots of time together.
Patting the horse’s nose, Lory watched Khayrivven saddle a smaller, brown mare with viscous black eyes. The beast nibbled at Khayrivven’s shirt as he bent down to fasten the saddle straps, and he gently swatted her away as if this were a frequent ritual.
“Not yet, Princess,” he chuckled, the tension in his features softening for a fleeting moment. “We need to get beyond the walls first.”
“Is that her name?” Lory asked instead of the hundreds of other questions swirling in her mind. She didn’t even know where to begin, but most of all, she was afraid that Khayrivven would fall back into his silence. Slowly, she picked up the pack he had extracted from a wooden crate in the shed and dropped it next to the horses.
The young captain nodded, his expression grim and his eyes distant as he tightened the mare’s bridle and tied the reins to the stallion’s saddle. “And that’s Caramel.”
A small, awkward laugh escaped Lory as she sized up the proud stallion. “Sweet.”
For a heartbeat, Khayrivven seemed to forget why they were here, and a smile tugged on the corner of his mouth, but his back remained stiff, and his movements those of a soldier preparing to ride into battle. “Literally.”
With one hand, Khayrivven took the pack from her fingers and strapped it onto the mare’s saddle, then picked Caramel’s reins from the other and swung himself onto the stallion’s back. Before Lory could ask how she was supposed to get onto the horse, he held out his arm. “Put your foot into the stirrup and give me your hand,” he instructed, back to the tone of the hand who’d trained her with brutal efficiency.
Lory had barely followed his order when he hauled her up with one strong pull, his fingers tight around her palm. The air nearly left her lungs as she landed behind the saddle, her front crashing against his back, and she instinctively wrapped her free arm around his waist, cheek resting against his shoulder blade.
“Much as I enjoy when you put your hands on me, Lory, I’d rather you wait until we’re out of the gates and out of sight. The Triad might not have come to bid their farewell, but they will certainly know of whatever is going on in this yard.”
Shifting a few inches back on the stallion’s warm fur, she lifted her cheek and let go of Khayrivven’s waist, but he didn’t free her hand just yet.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered without looking back. For what, he didn’t tell, digging his heels into Caramel’s flanks instead, and the horse darted toward the opening gate at theother end of the yard, where two sentinels in deepest black inclined their heads at the passing captain.
They didn’t restuntil the sun stood high in the sky the next day, and the horse needed to replenish at a small, hidden well along a path Lory was certain no tradesman had ever seen. Khayrivven hadn’t uttered a single word the entire time, his body taut as a bowstring and his silence deafening, while Lory had mulled over her questions in her head countless times, her mouth opening to ask them nearly as often, but the barrier Khayrivven had built around himself was near-tangible, and whenever she thought she was ready to break through, words dried up on her tongue.
Khayrivven never asked if she was hungry or tired. He never peeked over his shoulder to check if she was all right. Like a shadow flitting through the sand, he navigated the horses through the darkness onto that path like he’d never done anything else in his life, and Caramel and Princess both seemed to trust him not to lead them astray, even when the howls of desert predators made Lory shrink against Khayrivven’s back, wishing she’d been handed a blade to defend herself.
At least, his two sabers were within reach from where she sat behind him, her ass sore from bouncing up and down like a complete idiot. At some point after the sun came up, she’d fallen asleep from exhaustion, and when she’d opened her eyes, Khayrivven was lifting her from the horse, dark bruises beneath his eyes and sweat beading his forehead.
“We’ll rest for two hours,” was all he said as he set her down in the shade of a rock formation blocking out the worst of the sun. A few bushes lined the front of the stones, and when Lory’s feet touched the ground, she nearly gasped at the soft carpet of half-dried grass. She’d heard about places in the world where the soil was covered in green, had spotted some artworks displaying the vast greenery of one of the southern regions and the Northern Continent. But this—feeling the grass beneath the soles of her boots—brought her wide awake.
Khayrivven cocked his head, studying her warily as she kneeled, digging her fingers into the scratchy blades.
“Wait until you see the Amrin Mountains.” His gaze wandered to the horizon beyond the rocks, where the outline of a mountain ridge cut mercilessly through the blue sky, and his chest heaved as if from a quiet sigh.
“Did you grow up near there?” Lory didn’t know why the question popped out after hours of avoiding prompting him about what was to happen from fear of his answers, but she didn’t pretend she wasn’t curious to the marrow of her bones, either.
Much to her surprise, Khayrivven didn’t requite her words with more silence. “I’ve lived in Dunai for the most part of my life, but before that, my home was in Criu. That was when the capital of Criulias hadn’t been soaked by the blood of the Criulian people.” The bitterness in his tone made Lory want to reach out and comfort him, but the way he turned to the horses, shoulders stiff as he led them to the corner where water was trickling from the side of the rockinto a basin carved from limestone, told her he didn’t want her pity, just as he hadn’t wanted it the day before.
“How old were you?” Lory followed behind the horses, rubbing her aching backside. Independent of what awaited her at the end of it, the next leg of this journey would be torture.
Khayrivven sank onto the thick green lining the ground along the rocks, gesturing for her to join him while the horses were already glutting themselves on the fresh water. From the pack on Princess’s saddle, he’d extracted a canteen of water, offering it to Lory after taking a long drink.
