What would it be like to feel that again? To love someone and know they loved her back. To know she could trust them. To see them and see her future.
Keely pulled her cloak tight against the sudden cold and nudged her horse forward, following the Hawks. She had seen too much to think of love in terms of certainty. Loving a person didn’t keep them safe. Having your love returned didn’t protect you from their loss. She’d learned that the hard way.
Niall had broken her heart on the day he left for war. And then he’d died on the battlefield and shattered her completely. She couldn’t risk that kind of destruction. She never wanted to haul the broken mess of her heart and her life back together, one mangled piece at a time, ever again.
Except… except that Val and Alanna were meant to be together. They were meant to take the risk of choosing each other. She knew it with every fiber of her body. Their love was worth it.
Keely closed her eyes for a long moment and accepted the truth. That kind of love was worth the cost.
She was thinking about Alanna and Val, but for some reason, when she opened her eyes, they settled on Tor as he rode through the woods beside her.
Chapter Four
Why wasthe camp so quiet?
Tor abandoned oiling his sword—the Bar-Ulf sword he had somehow managed to hold on to despite everything that had happened—and looked around the circle of neat tents. Everything was peaceful; they’d been on the road long enough to settle into an easy rhythm even with three new, female, squad members.
Nim and Alanna were peeling carrots and chatting about how much they were looking forward to the famous hot spring baths at Eshcol. The rest of the squad were doing chores. The small tracks leading away from the clearing, overhung with autumn trees bright with reds and golds, were quiet and empty. All was as it should be… but it still wasn’t right.
There was noise. Nim and Alanna laughed, Jeremiel and Garet called out as they came back from patrol, Reece grumbled loudly about something, yet again, and horses nickered. But there was no singing.
Keely had a surprisingly low singing voice, full of depth and emotion. And she sang everything from heartbreaking laments that reminded him of all the grief of the frozen battlefields of the north to ribald tavern ditties that would have been perfectly suited to the Kaerlud docks. She even murmured love songs to whichever horse she was riding that day for the long hours of their relentless march toward Eshcol.
Her songs followed him everywhere. He would look up and see her—her vibrant hair tied back into a fiery braid, her jade-green eyes sparkling as she met his gaze—and it felt as if she was singing directly to him. His days had come to revolve around those moments. Those flashes of brilliance among the gray.
They would reach the temple soon—within the next two days—and the knowledge scratched like a thorn inside a glove. He wanted to reach Eshcol. Something new and primal had been stirring within him and he needed Keely to be safe. Keely and the rest of the Hawks, now including Nim and Alanna. But he didn’t want to think about what would happen when the journey ended. Didn’t want to imagine what it would be like when she was gone, and his days went back to foggy numbness.
Andthatwas the problem with the camp. Keely wasn’t singing. In fact, Keely wasn’t there at all. Where was she? Why wasn’t she sitting with Alanna or chatting to Rafe, helping and offering her usual witty observations?
Frankly, it was some kind of miracle that Nim was still there; by now he would have expected Tristan to have whispered in her ear and for them to be off in the woods together. Those two really needed their own house—somewhere well out of hearing distance—and about a hundred years alone together. Although, given the way they looked at each other, maybe a hundred years wouldn’t be enough.
As for Val and Alanna. Gods. Val spent all daylight hours in the air as far away from everyone as possible, while Alanna spent all day checking the skies, and then she spent all night in Val’s tent without him realizing. Alanna needed to tell Val how she felt, convince him that what they had meant something, before Val left for good.
Tor wouldn’t blame him. Val had been clear that he loved Alanna—how much clearer could you be than sacrificing your entire life? But she’d told him to leave. And if there was one thing Tor was intimately acquainted with, it was exactly what it felt like when the people who were supposed to love you told you to leave.
He pushed the rising swell of confused emotion away. He wasn’t going to think about what he’d lost, or what it had felt like to be disowned. If he didn’t think about it, he didn’t have to experience that blinding misery, could ignore the barbed pain in his heart where he used to have a family. Where he used to have some sense of certainty.
He had been brought up not to show his feelings. Or even acknowledge that he had any. And, for the first time, he understood—ignoring the pain made it all go away.
Which was exactly why Keely was dangerous. She was the flame that should not be touched. She was too bright, too vivid. With every day that passed, every song she sang, every twinkle of her intelligent eyes, every time she went out of her way to help his squad or take care of Alanna, she climbed further under his skin.
Tor looked around the small clearing again. Where the fuck was she?
He stood, stretched out his stiff legs, and slid his sword into its scabbard. The Hawks were trickling in to help make dinner and finish their chores—all except Val, who was probably doing yet another long sweep of the surrounding woods. Everyone who should be in camp was. Which meant she was alone. And it wasn’t safe, even for someone as capable as Keely.
Alanna grinned over at him and then gestured behind her with her thumb over her shoulder, pointing toward a lighter stretch of woodland a little way from their camp.
Was he that obvious? He paused, wondering whether to pretend he hadn’t been looking for Keely after all, and then decided that was ridiculous. They had spent many hours together. They were friendly. Friends, even. Of course he would wonder where she was. Exactly the same as he wondered where Mathos was. Or Tristan.
Specificallywhenhe might have wondered where Mathos or Tristan had gone was irrelevant. He’d definitely done it. At least once.
Anyway, all the Hawks, including Keely, fell under his protection. It was merely his duty to check on where she was. The fact that he spent half his waking hours remembering what her bare skin felt like under his hands was beside the point.
He grumbled under his breath as he shoved his hands in his pockets, but it didn’t stop him from following the path Alanna had indicated.
He found Keely in a small glade, the pale afternoon sunlight streaming around her. The ground was littered with fallen leaves, muffling his footsteps, but she still spun to face him before he’d fully entered the glade, lifting a crossbow, and pointing it straight at him.
He stopped instantly. Her grip was firm and confident, and if she released, he’d have a bolt through his heart in an instant.
