There would be time to figure it out once everyone was safe.
30
Rowan squared off against the soldier named Kenet. He was a big man, shaggy as a bear, unkempt for a soldier no matter that his hair was tied back and he’d probably shaved that morning. Black stubble covered his jaw and his bushy eyebrows were drawn together in a scowl.
For some reason, he didn’t like her. He’d apparently decided that just from looking at her, and taken it upon himself to block her path.
It was fine. She didn’t much like him either. She remembered him from Jarn. He’d been one of the men who’d dragged her to the mayor’s house. The mean one. The kind one—Asher—was the one who was missing.
It was one of the things she wanted to talk to Casrian about. More pressing was the fact that his men had picked an awful spot to camp.
“We can’t sleep here,” she told him for the third time.
“It’s the safest place, girl. We can see anything coming and it will be easier to fight in the dark if it comes to that.”
She’d been working on Sol while the camp formed around her. She hadn’t noticed it until the fire was built, the horsespicketed, and Casrian was bent over a map with Daris, taking advantage of the last of the daylight to make their plans.
She’d cleaned up her things and made sure that Sol was comfortable before going to speak to Casrian, but she’d been intercepted along the way by this man who stood nearly a foot taller than her.
She crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin so she could see his face. The light was dimming and there was a chill in the air, the icy bite of winter closing in. And she didn’t want to be out here in the open if there were more of those things wandering around out here. There was a perfectly good patch of trees over there that would shelter them and warn her if anything approached. “Even before the woods turned, it wasn’t safe to sleep in the open.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve been a soldier for a dozen years and lived in the king’s woods before that. Who told you this?”
Toby’s father had been the one to tell her that. He hadn’t been completely reliable. His drinking problem was what had landed his family on the border, and he’d sometimes been prone to fanciful stories, but the things he’d taught about the woods—what was safe to eat, what plants to avoid, how to find clean water and the safest paths—had held up for her all these years. And she knew the trees would protect them.
“A friend of mine who was a woodsman out here in the shadow of the mountains,” she told the bear. “I’ve heard they have a gardener in the king’s woods whose sole job is to keep the trail clear from the king’s hunting cabin to the outhouse. Is that true?”
Judging by the way color rose to Kenet’s face, it was close enough. “You will speak of the king with respect.”
She smiled sweetly. “I have enormous respect for a man who knows his own limits.”
“You don’t know yours,” Kenet shot back. “You said your friend was here before the woods turned and that may have made the difference. Cursed woods are different beasts altogether. The trees rot from the inside out. There’s often no way of telling one is ready to fall on you until the wind blows, and a witch can make the wind blow. They can draw a storm out of a clear blue sky. That creature you saw today was only a familiar, but the natural beasts of the forest are just as bad. They get twisted, become diseased and unnatural. I’ve no wish to be surrounded by a rabid wolf pack in the middle of the woods where we can’t see them coming.”
“How would it be any better out here?”
“We have guards and crossbows to take them down before they get too close. We can?—”
“Kenet,” Casrian called from behind the man. “Is there a problem?”
Kenet glared at her. “She wants to move the camp, Captain.”
He stepped aside, and she could see Casrian sitting beside Daris.
Casrian looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Rowan?”
She shook her head. Maybe Toby’s father had been wrong. Or maybe he’d been right about the old woods, but Kenet was right now. Either way, she no longer felt like fighting over it. It wasn’t the battle she wanted.
Casrian hadn’t spoken to her since he’d asked her to help Sol. He’d picked up the mantle of captain as naturally as she’d fallen into the first fight she could find. The authority sat well on him, making him somehow bigger than he’d been when it was just the two of them, less touchable. He was the king’s witch hunter again and she was nobody worth listening to. A witch’s daughter. An outcast from Toam. A woman he’d once fucked in the woods.
“It’s fine.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m sure you have your own way of doing things.”
Kenet looked smug, and she was briefly tempted to kick him in the shin. She’d probably break a toe.
Casrian gestured her over. “Come take a look at this map.”
Daris lifted his head as she walked over. He was darkly handsome with black hair and copper skin. High cheekbones, a strong jaw, and a fine, straight nose. She remembered him from Jarn too, remembered all of the girls at the trial fluttering around him, trying to draw his attention.
“Have the two of you been properly introduced?” Casrian asked.
