That didn’t mean they weren’t out there though. He circled their camp quietly, checking sight lines, mentally mapping escape routes. When he returned, he stood over her. Looked for longer than he should. When was the last time she’d really slept? Since before she’d been sent after him, probably. Since before her entire world had turned upside down. He returned to his spot against the tree, settling back into position, the hot spring hissing softly in the dark. She was a mistake. A distraction. He told himself that. Over and over. It unnerved him, how easy it was to speak with her, easier than with anyone else. He’d already told her more about his duties – about himself – than he’d ever meant to. The words had slipped out. As if she understood him without effort, without trying.
He leaned his head back against the tree, every muscle tense, fingers flexing against his knee. He tried to summon the distance, the practicality that had kept him alive this long.
It didn’t come.
Not when she was lying so close he could hear the quiet rhythm of her breathing, still feel the ghost of her pulse racing under his thumb from this morning. Not when he knew with absolute certainty that if she shifted closer in her sleep, reached for him in the dark, he wouldn’t move away. So he stayed on watch to protect her from threats in the forest. But who was going to protect her from him – the danger that followed him, the violence inside him, or from the impossible choice she’d made by staying?
Sleep wasn’t going to come easily – if at all – not with Kara Hale in his head and under his skin. Not with every instinct screaming at him that somewhere in the dark, the net was closing.
And the growing fear that when it did, he wouldn’t be able to protect her at all.
CHAPTER 22
SO CLOSE
The hand that reaches first is the braver of the two.
–Lyran proverb
They woke early, the three moons still visible overhead, and readied the valmares in silence. They were going deeper into Fatàn today, and it was clearly putting Sebastian on edge. He kept scanning the forest beyond their camp, his hand drifting to his sword hilt.
Finally, Kara said something. “You’re pacing.”
“The villages mean more people,” he said shortly, adjusting his saddle strap again. “More eyes.”
They avoided the busier market streets where they could. Sebastian led the way, directing her onto the quieter roads. He talked far more than Kara expected, the conversation flowing easily. He asked questions. Perhaps it helped him forget how much danger they were in – but he seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say.
“What was training like in Hale? For healers?”
“Why do you want to know?” she asked, surprised.
“You talk about it like it was endless. What did they make you do?”
“Endless is about right,” she smiled. “Long nights in the infirmary – winter storms always filled the beds. And when you weren’t treating, you were buried in the library. You can’t just tell your magic to heal something – you have to understand what’s wrong, down to the smallest part. Seven years of that.”
He gave a low hum. “Sounds relentless.”
“It was,” she admitted fondly.
I still miss it though.
“Don’t think I’d have had the patience for that.”
“Oh, please,” she shot back. “And Thorne training was what, exactly?”
“Organised cruelty,” he smirked.
She laughed, bright in the cold air. “I knew it. I can actually picture you – scrawny, awkward – being barked at by drillmasters.”
“Not far off,” he conceded. “Drills at sunrise, blades in our hands before we could even lift them, running until you dropped. Nothing you couldn’t get through if you kept moving.”
She stared. He made it sound simple, as if brutal years in Thorne were just something to be endured, not survived. But she saw the shadow in his eyes, the kind that didn’t come from drills alone. He was downplaying it. He always did.
“Though for the record, I was never scrawny,” he added dryly.
She grinned at that. But then a memory stirred and before she could think better of it, she said, “Before all this, when you were a Thorne Commander.”
“Yeah?”
