“Can you walk?” Jos asked gently.
She shrugged.
His face crinkled with worry. “Shall I carry you?”
No. She could manage. She pushed herself up, leaning heavily on Jos when he put his arm around her, and tried to keep control of her trembling limbs.
They made their way slowly into a large farmhouse and down to the kitchen, where he nudged her to sit on a long wooden bench.
It was achingly similar to her own lost home, with its wide hearth and scarred kitchen table. Dried herbs hung from the rafters and filled the room with the soft scents of lavender and thyme.
It hurt something inside her to know that the place that she’d grown up, the homestead that her parents had built and nurtured, was gone. Sitting in the warmth of someone else’s kitchen reminded her of just how much she’d lost.
Jos interrupted her melancholy thoughts by asking her to hold her arm over the table as he pulled out a slim blade and slipped it into the lock on her manacle. His eyes narrowed as he probed and wiggled the long blade. Nothing happened.
She rested her free arm out across the table and then laid her head down on it, watching Jos frown as he twisted the blade inside the manacle, muttering about breaking the tip.
“Is this why we had all the drama with the ax? In case it doesn’t open?” she asked quietly.
“Nah, I’ll get it, but it’s much easier to do in the light. And we wanted Keely to go straight up and see Rafe while Tor opened her manacle, the ax was the quickest way to get you apart.”
His eyebrows scrunched together. “Just about—” There was a loud grating click and the lock opened, “—there.”
Jos gently pulled the manacle away, and finally, she was free.
Having the iron away from her body was like stepping out of the rain. The sudden relief almost made her cry. She blinked heavily, working to keep it together.
Jos seemed to sense her struggle and her need for space. He turned to take the manacle away, fiddling with the kitchen dresser as Nim took a set of slow breaths.
“I need to see V-Val.” Her lips felt numb with cold.
“Sure. But get changed first. You can’t stay in those soaked clothes.”
He led her up a flight of wooden stairs down a short corridor and into a cozy room with a small fire lit in the hearth and a soft-looking bed covered in yellow blankets.
“Can you get your clothes off?”
Honestly. No. Not with her numb fingers. She shook her head.
Jos sighed. “Captain’s going to kill me. Turn around.”
She turned, faced the wall, and lifted her wings out the way as she tried to ignore Jos’s friendly grumbling as he tugged at the wet and tightly knotted laces of Alanna’s jerkin.
She heard a snick of a knife and then the sudden relief of air filling her lungs as the wet leather fell forward and she caught it against her chest.
“Can you do the rest?”
She nodded, not looking at him.
“Look in the wardrobe, there might be something. I’ll be back to check on you.”
Two minutes later, wearing a long shirt that she had found in the decidedly male wardrobe, she was standing next to the fire and slowly trying to take stock. She still felt completely dazed and weirdly dissociated. She needed to get to Val. But she also needed her fingers to thaw enough that she could pull on some trousers. Then they needed to somehow get back to Alanna.
And mostly, above all of that, she wanted Tristan.
There was a quiet knock at the door, and Jos was back. She should have felt embarrassed, but she was too far past exhaustion to think of it.
“Can you help me put on some trousers so I can go to Val?”
