“Simple place to take over, great place to lay low,” Ben offered. “Next to no imports or exports. He could easily hide there without notice.”
In the two years she had served in the Red Sentinel, Helspira had neither heard of Stow’s Peak nor had visited it. She sent the banneret an inquiring look. “Has the R.S. ever looked into—”
“No.” Rowan swiped his nose and rounded his shoulders. “There’s never been any indication that Vessik is holed up in Stow’s Peak. How do we know this bastard isn’t lying?”
Helspira rested her hands on her hips. “With respect, sir, if it’s all we have to go on, shouldn’t we at least try?”
From the ground, Catseye grunted, propping himself onto his elbows, as his head lolled loosely between his shoulders. “Did we get the information?” he asked, words slurring. “We’ve only one or two days before this guy decomposes. Five days tops before putrefaction sets in and he really starts to smell.”
Ben gave Catseye’s shoulder an affectionate pat. “Lay back down before I make you lay back down.”
Catseye obliged, a puff of dust kicking up from where he collapsed, but his garbled speech still flowed from his lips like a thick syrup. “Is he gonna be our sherpa? Lead us to Vessik? Pack some essential oils, Benjamin. Sandalwood is a personal favorite, but I also carry lavender and patchouli should anyone need to borrow some.”
“We’re set, pal. Just rest.” Ben’s skull twisted between Helspira and the banneret. “That’s it, then? We’re leading a company to Stow’s Peak?”
Banneret Rowan scoffed and stormed away, but not before uttering in an authoritative tone, “I’ll discuss the finer details with the queen. We leave at dawn.”
Fixating on the banneret as he ascended the stairs helped distract Helspira’s scattered thoughts, but when he disappeared through the castle doors, she was left only with the chilling order he had given. Her gaze shifted to Ben, who loomed over Catseye like a worried mother hen, and it only made her knees weaker. Under the guise of inspecting the fallen necromancer, she knelt, but if she were being honest, it was merely a convenient excuse to take the pressure off her shaking legs.
It didn’t help when Catseye looked at her and managed a weak grin. “I see that look of dismay. Don’t worry. If we stand upwind of him, the smell won’t be so bad.”
Helspira attempted a smile. Catseye seemed entirely unaffected, emotionally at least, for someone who just killed a man and ripped his soul back from Enos two minutes ago. Perhaps, for as detached as he already was, losing Ben wouldn’t break him entirely. He’d recover. People lost loved ones all the time.
But Ben wasn’tjustCatseye’s companion. Not anymore.
He was one of the precious few people who had offered her an olive branch—one of the only people who treated her like a person and not a demon. A man who offered her an alliance, a friendship, from one abomination to another.
Which was more important? The kingdom that had taken her in or the first person to have made that kingdom feel like a home?
Helspira’s head spun, and she pressed her fingers into her temples. It wasn’t just her life on the line but her mum’s and da’s as well. Dire circumstances in Chthonia had already stolen so much from her mum. If Helspira wanted to protect the precious mental clarity her mother managed to keep, it was imperative that she never enter that wasteland again. And the banneret wasn’t the type to spout threats that he didn’t intend to follow through on. He would exile them to Chthonia at the drop of a hat.
Two years out of that nightmare of a landscape, and for the first time since leaving, she felt just as trapped as she had when the magma lakes and the monsters of her childhood had surrounded her.
Chapter Eight
Helspira
