Amarande turned her back on him and scrambled over the edge and onto solid ground. “Come on.”
CHAPTER36
WHENLuca opened his eyes to the indigo of morning in the Warlord’s camp, everything smelled of smoke. The Warlord letting her power linger over her people. Reminding them with every breath who held their fate in her hands.
Exhaustion deadened Luca’s limbs, as did his injuries: the wound in his chest, courtesy of Taillefer; the bite from the Harea Asp that had nearly killed him. He hadn’t had enough sleep in the last few days. Not enough for the healing he must do. Not for the night he would have to survive.
Yet he knew he slept—crammed into a diagonal on the carriage floor; Ula crunched onto her seat bench, blade hugged to her chest—because he’d dreamed of Amarande.
Of the night they’d fallen asleep at nearly the same site, side by side, under the stars. She’d insisted he sleep in the tent. He wouldn’t, though. Not because she was a princess but because it was the right thing to do. And when her stubbornness had led them to both sleeping in the open night, they’d drifted off, hands laced together.
He’d told himself he’d never let go. Not literally, of course, but that he would fight for what they had as long as he was still standing. Today would bring not the last step, but a big step.
That morning, Amarande thought she’d awoken first. But what she didn’t know was that despite his exhaustion and comfort next to her, his body ran on its usual stable schedule, his eyes fluttering open in the cold blue before dawn—just as they had this morning.
The horses had to eat, and his body knew their rhythms better than his own.
And that morning, he lay under the brightening sky, watching each ray touch her face. He never saw her off guard like that. Sweet, and silent—no one would call her that while she was awake.
In the night, Amarande had kept her hold of his hand but tossed herself from her back to her side, her cheek pressed into the mostlyflat crook of one arm. She was left facing him, knees pulled up toward her stomach, boots crossed just so.
The sun illuminated the cut of her jaw, the sunburn atop her cheeks, her nose, the crest of her forehead. The fine hairs running to her hairline, auburn blazing along with the new light. Her eyelashes were as dark as her coloring would allow, and a fine spray of freckles had been raised by the Torrent’s sun, something one could only see so close.
Before Amarande woke, her breathing shifted and she tossed herself back onto her spine, her knees staying twisted toward him, their twined hands dragging through the dirt as she shook herself from sleep.
Luca had closed his eyes then, embarrassed by the utter amount of time he’d watched her. This person he knew so well but had never seen like that.
On the pirate ship, she’d slept next to the bed in the captain’s quarters, holding his hand from her spot on the floorboards. He would’ve lain there, too, if the pain weren’t so great. Her stubbornness won out yet again.
When this was all over, he wanted nothing more but to fall asleep with her hand in his and wake with the horses, pausing just long enough to watch the light cross her face.
Always, Princess.
Rustling came from Ula’s side, and the swordswoman sat up—braid abandoned and hair everywhere, kerchief slipping, the sword flung across her lap. “Urtzi? Did you—”
She blinked at Luca and immediately swiped at the canvas, unfastening it as much as she dared to get a good look at their surroundings. Then she cleared her throat. “We need to start a breakfast fire soon. We must look like them. If we hide in here, they will become suspicious.”
Luca had meant what he said to Tala—he did not come on this journey to sit in relative safety. To hide. Yet he hesitated. He did not come on this journey to fail either.
This was reconnaissance, not the actual mission. That would come the next night. What if… it went wrong?
Luca had lived his life with his destiny literally written on his skin and had been safe. Now somehow, even with the wolf tattoo nestledunder layers of gauze and two tunics, it seemed as if the moment he stepped out of the carriage everyone would know.
Even with the disguise, the fictitious name, the cover of hundreds of boys around the same age, some with similar coloring and height, the fear he’d been driving down deep since the night before ran roughshod under his skin. “We’re one carriage of thousands.”
Ula stood. “Yes, and if every single other carriage and tent has a cook fire, we will be noticed. Come. Let us try out our disguises before full light.”
CHAPTER37
DESPITEthe exhaustion, Amarande’s blood and breath sang with her plan as she and Taillefer edged into the boundary of the Warlord’s camp.
Cloak. Food. Horses. Head straight for the plateau where she’d been taken captive by the man with the black wolf. Find him, find the resistance, find Luca.
Then all would be right—together, they could survive anything.
But first she had to survive with Taillefer.
Their agreed-upon approach was this: If an easy target for clothing and supplies made itself known on the way to the horses, they would confer before taking action. They needed horses more than anything else and getting to the corral—on the extreme northeastern side of the camp, at least a mile from their starting edge—was priority number one.
