The town materialized out of the mist like something half-remembered: a cluster of low buildings, a well, the orange smear of firelight behind tavern shutters. The smell of wood smoke and boiled meat reached me before the first fence post did.
“We can stop here,” he said.
I put my hand on his arm. “Wait.”
He drew Wraith up.
“We can’t go in like this, as ourselves.” I kept my voice low out of habit, even though there was no one on the road and hadn’t been for hours. “If Arthur hasn’t already discovered that I’ve escaped by now, he’ll find out soon. And then he’ll send the Guard after me...”
Corvin looked down the road toward the tavern, then back at me. Something moved through his expression, something that looked a lot like assessment.
“Your magic or mine?” he asked with a grin.
“You can barely stay awake.”
“Yours it is.”
I swung down from Wraith first. My legs were stiff from riding, and the ground felt strange under my bare feet, too solid after hours of motion. Corvin dismounted beside me, and up close, in the thin light that filtered through the canopy, I could see the dark shadows under his eyes that hadn’t been there hours ago.
The air was damp, but it always was in the forest, moisture clinging to every surface, drinking into the bark of the trees and the soil beneath my feet. I pulled at it gently, the way you’d pull a thread from a bolt of cloth without unraveling the whole thing. It came to me in a soft curling ribbon of mist that wound between my fingers and caught the low light.
I raised my hands between us and drew a slow breath in through my nose. Corvin watched my hands. He’d always watched them like that, back in Annwyn, with focused attention, like he was trying to understand a language he hadn’t been taught.
I stepped closer as the mist thickened between my palms. Tilting my head up at him, I tried not to notice how he was smirking down at me. It was that same boyish, playful grin he wore in Annwyn when he’d been victorious in one of our many childish competitions.
“Hold still,” I scolded.
“I am holding still.”
“You’re breathing too loudly.”
“I’m breathing normally.”
“It’s distracting.”
A corner of his mouth moved. The smirk deepened. “My apologies.”
I started to work the illusion over him, and my own breath turned shallow, though not from the effort. The magic itself wasn’t particularly taxing, even if I was tired and hungry myself. No, it was the closeness between us and the amber of his eyes catching what little light made it through the branches.
“I’m surprised,” I said finally, the words coming out before I’d decided to say them.
“By what?”
“That you came.”
“It’s not good form to offend your rescuer, Guin.”
I shook my head as I kept my eyes on the working, on the shift of his features beneath the glamour that was taking shape above the surface of his skin. “I meant to say that I was surprised you’d risk your life...for mine.” And then something occurred to me. “Unless Merlin told you to come?”
Corvin looked at me, and there was still offense in his expression. “Merlin didn’t ask me to come, Guin.”
Then there was silence. It wasn’t the uncomfortable kind, but the kind that has weight to it.
“And you’renotsurprised that I came,” he finished.
I frowned at him. “I just said I was.”
“Right. Yousaidyou were surprised, but you’re not.” His voice was quiet and certain, the way he said most things. Usually, that sureness irritated me. This morning, though... it didn’t.
