“Yes, and I’m fine now,” the princess huffed, jerking out of my reach and throwing on her coat.
For several long seconds, the patter of rain was the only sound between us as my mind flashed back to the Demon Woods. “That’s why you were in such bad shape after leaving the in-between. It wasn’t the vampire attack. You’d been bitten!”
Sorsha’s jaw clenched, but her silence was answer enough.
“This bite could have killed you,” I said, my voice shaking with horror. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“There was nothing to be done,” she muttered, yanking her coat tighter around her and hauling on her pack. “And I didn’t want him to leave me behind.”
The hiss of rain roared in my ears as her words sank in.
Him.
Adriel? Leave her behind?
“You can’t truly believe he would have done that,” I said, stomping after the princess. “Or that I would have let him!”
Her shoulders hunched as she shrugged. “You heard him. He already considers me a liability. Injured, I would have been even more useless.”
Catching up to Sorsha, I grabbed her by the arm, wrenching her around to look at me. “Nobody thinks you’re a liability,” I said fiercely.
Something flickered in the princess’s expression, but she quickly tucked it away.
“And I don’t think Adriel sees you the way you think he does,” I added quietly.
Sorsha blinked, her bottom lip twitching, but she fixed her stoic gaze on the bruised, weeping sky. “I’ve known Adriel for five centuries, and in that time, he’s made itveryclear what he thinks of me.”
I swallowed, unsure what to say. I felt I needed to saysomething, but before I could, Sorsha turned and continued along our winding path up the mountain in silence.
We didn’t speak again for more than an hour, and by early afternoon, I began to yearn for the distraction of conversation again. My feet ached from traversing the rough terrain in a pair of boots that were not my own. The backs of my heels throbbed where new blisters had formed, and I could feel the shredded skin sticking to the inside of my socks.
I was relieved when I saw bands of chimney smoke rising over the ridge and Sorsha announced that we were nearly there.
I hissed as my foot rolled over a loose rock the size of my fist, and the princess climbed up ahead. A few rays of anemic sunlight cut through the clouds as she crested the mountain and stopped dead in her tracks.
When I finally came up behind her, I understood why.
The plumes of smoke I’d seen rising over the mountain weren’t coming from chimneys. The village had beenburned to the ground, and the charred skeletons of a few crumbling structures were all that remained of Körkis.
My stomach twisted as I took in the wreckage. Not a single home or shop had been spared.
As the wind kicked up, huge flakes of ash floated up like snowflakes, carrying the smell of charred wood and scorched flesh.
Sorsha didn’t speak as she approached the village, coming to a stop in the middle of the street. Her boots crunched over broken glass. Scattered throughout the burned shells of homes and shops lay the bodies — females and younglings, the old and infirm, lying facedown in the dirt.
The villagers lay everywhere, modest clothing stained and torn, some sprawled in pools of their own blood. One old fae still had a battle axe lodged between his shoulder blades. Others looked as though they’d been run through with a sword.
Birds of prey circled overhead, a few already pecking at a corpse whose entrails were spilling onto the dirt.
I tried not to look at their faces. I knew I would see them all the instant I closed my eyes.
“Alfrigg’s army did this,” growled Sorsha, her voice trembling with the force of her rage.
“How do you know?” I couldn’t help thinking of Semphrys’s demons scouring the mountains in search of Kaden.
Sorsha pointed up ahead, and I saw what had filled her with such immense fury.
A red banner fluttered from a metal stake, which had been driven through the corpse of a tiny fae boy.
