“How did you do it?” the captain asked.
Brela’s grin turned feral as she ignored the pricking pain in her chest. “I broke all the hellthorn seals and let a celvusa in through the window.”
Valkip snarled, about to bite a response, but Serill stopped him as he stepped back and clapped his hands together. “All patched up. Now, let’s get you cleaned. A dip in the stream, some food and water, and a new shirt. I’ll make sure someone cleans up the wagon, too.”
Brela glanced down at the mended wounds, her skin barely discolored with scars from where the prince had healed her. It didn’t make sense to take her back to Aelstow alive. Severina never participated in the butchering of Veil Worshippers, only funded the raids. Why her? Why the kindness? What were they going to do to her?
“I’ll get the chains,” Valkip grumbled, hopping out of the wagon.
Serill paused at the entrance and glanced back. “The Severinian man you met…” His jaw clenched as he looked back. “Where did you pull his intestines out of?“
“I don’t think you want the answer to that, Prince,” she replied with a wicked grin, eyes darting between the man’s legs.
The prince paled and jumped to the ground as Brela’s laugh echoed through the prison wagon.
* * *
Serill’s friendwas grumbling curses as he returned from the prison wagon, plopping down on the grass with a huff. Even in the darkness and flickering flames of their fire, the prince could see the exhaustion setting in on Cason. He hadn’t had more than thirty minutes of sleep since they started their trip back to Aelstow, and dealing with the Night Terror constantly made the man radiate more heat than the fire between them.
“That woman never gives up, does she?” Serill asked.
The captain only snarled in response, glare trained on the prisoner who still wore a smug look on her face, even with the new gag around her mouth. In fact, she was still laughing at her latest scheme to annoy the captain, though her energy was nearly drained from the day.
She had tried five times to escape in the hours since they had stopped. Three of them happened when Cason wasn’t looking. Two of those ended in some sort of injury that Serill had to heal, both on her and on the soldiers she had antagonized. One of the escapes had nearly ended in a brawl between Cason and the man who had been watching her.
Serill knew some of the captain’s annoyance was directed at him. They’d traveled south through the previous night, hoping not to draw attention to the Veil Worshipper and assassin they had with them, but that exhaustion set in mid-afternoon when Brela made a point to piss off everyone in their party. Serill gave the order that they’d camp until the next morning so that the men could sleep, ignoring Cason’s request to just throw the woman over the back of his horse and drag her to Aelstow.
Cason flicked a few of his own flames into the fire, eyes glazed as his other hand flipped Brela’s knife between his fingers. Silence is what worried Serill the most about his friend. Not the quiet poise his captain possessed that made him good at his job. No, this was a different silence. The tortured silence of a man stuck with the thoughts in his head.
It was a good thing Serill knew his friend so well.
“You want to tell me what happened with her?” he asked.
Cason’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t respond.
“Gods, Case, you’ll boil yourself from the inside out if you don’t talk about it,” Serill grumbled. “What happened at the auction?”
“She helped me,” he whispered, eyes still locked on the fire. “My counting habit. She helped me when I almost lost my cool, and I can’t figure out why.”
The prince understood when Cason’s pauses were because he was gathering his thoughts, so he waited for his friend to speak again.
“I am her enemy, and she made me feel bad for her. She’s a Veil Worshipper and an assassin, but I’m an idiot because I still see Brela looking back at me.” The captain gritted his teeth. “When we caught her in the forest with Ripley… she had the chance to end her life twice, and both times she picked the option that kept her alive, even though she had no idea we weren’t going to torture her. I knew what she was, what she was capable of, and I wasrelievedthat she chose to live.”
Serill sighed. “That’s why you keep playing with her knife. The reminder that she’s a killer. That she tried to killyou.”
Cason finally lifted his eyes from the fire, staring toward Brela in the wagon who had closed her eyes. Somehow in sleep, she still had a wicked smirk on her face.
“She didn’t try to kill me,” he whispered. Serill froze as Cason looked back at him. “Serill, if she wanted me dead, I’d be dead. She threw this knife wide left, on purpose, and I didn’t catch it until it was past my ear. She gave up her freedom to protect me, she helped her enemy, and I can’t figure outwhy.”
Oh, gods. It all clicked as Cason shared what happened at the auction and in the forest, plus their conversation from the previous night. No wonder his friend had been tortured about this. But Serill had to give the woman credit. In just a few hours of knowing Cason, she’d broken through a stone wall and walked right into the captain’s burning heart.
“Two flames of the same fire,” Serill whispered. He laughed to himself before grinning at his friend. “Have you ever considered that maybe you two were meant to burn down this forest?” The prince couldn’t tell whether the glare Cason flashed toward him was crackling with lightning or fire. He shook it off. “She has a point about Severina, you know. Sitting on our asses while Rooke and Anfroy slowly drag out Valisea’s suffering.”
“Serill, she’s our enemy,” the captain hissed.
“Is she really our enemy when she gave up her life for a man she just met?” Serill countered. “You know what I think? I think she has lived a life we can’t possibly understand. She’s survived this long by the only way she could. You’ve seen the torture she’s endured—that her people have endured—and when given the chance to escape that hell, she chose to stay. A Veil Worshipper, who can’t hide what she is, sacrificed her freedom for a reason. Maybe it’s time we got off our asses and listened to what she has to say.”
He expected Cason to snap back a retort, as he usually did when talking about the Veil Worshippers, but the captain froze and held his hand up. “Serill, listen.”
