“She's been in aparticularkind of mood since then.”
“I can imagine.”
He looked at me over the fire. “I don't think you can, actually.” He poked the fire again. “When I’d calmed her down and convinced her to take them south, I came after him.” He jerked his thumb toward Nicco. “His mood wasn’t much of an improvement on hers.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I said nothing.
“You caught up to him quickly,” I said instead.
“I wasn’t trying to outrun him,” Nicco said dryly.
I almost let that go. But then I heard what hehadn’tsaid. “You think I was trying to outrun you?”
He didn’t look at me or answer. I let the silence fall once more.
Nicco hadn't looked at me since the ridge. Not directly. I caught him looking when he thought I wasn't, that steady, distinct attention fixed on me the way it was fixed on problems he was working through. But whenever I looked back, he was looking at the fire, the terrain, or something just past my left shoulder.
It was different from his usual careful blankness. More deliberate. The kind of not looking that required effort.
“Why did you come after me?” I asked.
The question hung in the silence between us and lingered. Baxley went still, as if he had decided he didn’t want to be here for this but had no choice but to be part of it.
Nicco looked up from the fire. Directly this time with no sideways glances, no careful angles. Just straight across the flames, his eyes level with mine.
“They took you,” he said.
“I went with Vorn's people. Voluntarily.”
“You weretaken,” he said again, in the same even tone, but his answer was in the way he stressed “taken.”
I held his gaze. He held mine. Baxley tried to make himself smaller.
“I was tasked to take the soldiers north, and I did that. We were on our way back, so my contract was done.”
Nicco sat back, his look assessing. “So you’re saying that you weren’t kidnapped? Larana was hurt for no reason? And that you went with them by choice? You never tried to fight them when they came for you?”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming. “I’m saying, my contract with Captain Marson was almost done. I was taken against my will at first. I am truly sorry for the hurt Larana got.” I looked at Baxley, and he nodded slightly, acknowledging my truth. “I did fight them, just as I fought Marson when he tried to strong-arm me too.”
Nicco scoffed. “I wasn’t aware Marson had bound your hands and carried you over his shoulder.”
How did he know that? “How do you know that?” I demanded.
“We’retrackers, bunny. Anyone worth their salt would know that.”
Oh. I licked my lips and looked away. If that were true, he’d have known… I looked back, and he was watching me with hard eyes.
“Yeah, I know when they cut you free. I know who you lay beside at night.”
That was the second time he’d looked at me with that gleam of disgust. “Fuck you.”
“Like you fucked Vorn?”
I was on my feet, and so was he. Our little shelter wasn’t big enough for this fight.
“Is this necessary?” Baxley asked reasonably. “Amarya, sit. Who you do or do not sleep with is not our concern.” He glanced at his friend. “Is it, Nicco?”
“Of course not.” He sat back down and resumed glaring out at the terrain.
