For Saela’s sake.
My breath huffs out in a sigh. “Okay, don’t be an idiot.”
“I don’t follow,” comes his dry response.
“You’re not going to get any sleep like that. Come on, the bed is big enough to fit both of us.”
The words are like pulling teeth, but even as I say them I know that it’s definitely the right thing, no matter how much I hate it. I pointedly push the blanket down, move to the far side of the bed as far as I can go, and then beckon at the other edge of the bed.
He stands smoothly, and then hesitatingly sits on the bed before swinging his feet over.
I almost laugh at the way he makes his tall, muscular body compress as small as possible on the bed across from me, as if I carry some kind of carnal disease that is transferred by touch. Yet there’s also a strange pang in my chest at the thought.
Annoyed with him and the situation and also with myself, I roll over and blow out the wall-mounted lamp, leaving us in darkness, my nose just an inch from the wall. Behind my back, I can hear him breathing, rustling the pillow under his head, adjusting the blankets.
Despite my exhaustion, I’ve suddenly never felt so awake.
My back tingles where I swear his eyes linger on me in the darkness. Unbidden, that time in training comes to my mind, when he yanked up my shirt and pressed his fingers against my belly, my ribs, into each and every bruise. But this time instead of feeling pain at his touch, sparks shoot through me at the thought of every press of his fingers.
I clench my jaw and squeeze my eyes shut tighter. I must be delirious from travel. It’s been a long day.
Desperate to take my mind off of the handsome psycho an arm’s reach away—close enough to do dangerous or debauched things to me—I focus my attention on reciting Saela’s favorite legends from memory. I think about Killian on the couch in my mother’s home, reading Sae the story about the goddess who had to save herself.
Then I think about Killian, how he’ll have gotten my note by now, how by the next time I see him I might have my sister back again…
Still, it’s a long time before I finally succumb to sleep.
I findlittle rest in my dreams. They’re broken, disjointed, and filled with anxiety. Images of the Faceless Goddess haunt me, morphing into my mother, blood pouring from every feature. She speaks to me in an immense, ancient voice both alien and familiar, but I can’t understand what she says.
I wake the next morning with gritty eyes and travel-stiff limbs, like I barely slept at all. The sky outside the window is dim and gray. Not quite sunrise. And the snow has stopped. Good.
Stark is already up and dressed for the road, packing his things with practiced efficiency. He glances over when I rise, gaze flicking to my legs, but he doesn’t say a word.
On the way out of the inn, he picks up a small cloth-wrapped bundle from Alisa.
“Eat,” he says, thrusting it into my hands. “I’ll get the wolves.”
I’m not hungry, but the command in Stark’s voice brooks no argument. If I don’t eat it by choice, he might shove it down my throat by force.
When I start to unwrap the bundle, he leaves me on the stoop of the inn and takes off toward the direwolf stables. Inside the waxed cloth, I find a day’s rations of bread, cheese, and dried meat.
I eat a few bites while I wait for him to return, thinking of the day ahead. In just a few hours, we’ll reach the front. Then Anassa and I will investigate the outpost where Egith said the children have been sighted.
Saela. Hold on. I’ll be there soon.
We’re on the road again in short order. This time, there’s no talk at all. We ride hard, crossing miles and miles of rolling wilderness before we reach the border city where the bulk of the kingdom’s forces are camped.
Grunfall. The border fiefdom has changed hands back and forth between the Siphons and the Bonded countless times during centuries of warfare.
The city center is farther away—spires rising off the horizon, though even from a distance there are gaps and gashes in the stonework, as if a giant has taken big bites out of the city, evidence of centuries of constant battles. Grunfall is spread overthe banks of the River Sonnstrom. Eons ago, the fiefdom was shared between Nocturna and Astreona, with everything north of the river part of our country, and everything south of the river belonging to the Siphons.
It was the perfect place for war to break out.
We’re on the northern edges of the fiefdom, though, in Nocturna’s war camp. Astreona has control of the city itself currently. The few remaining buildings up here are ancient—squat, crumbling structures of stone that have been patched together with salvaged wood.
Newer structures have been erected—utilitarian huts made primarily of waxed canvas. Beyond that, the dirt ground is packed with hundreds of military tents. Soldiers bustle everywhere, dressed in dusty uniforms stained from countless battles. The smell of woodsmoke and unwashed bodies chokes the air.
Under that—almost too faint to identify—wafts the sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh.
