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She scoffs, defiant and protective of her mentor until the last. “Maybe an incident that occurred while I was gone made him fear an impending attack. Maybe he couldn’t tell me because he didn’t have time. After all, you were with us. He wouldn’t want just anybody knowing about his secret escape route.”

Her devotion is commendable, but I know better than most where blind loyalty can get you. “You had time to talk alone in the kitchen. I heard you whispering in there. You’d think he’d take the opportunity to mention that some group wants you dead.”

The silence between us stretches, broken only by the river and the whisper of wind through the pine branches. Esme’s displeasure rolls off her in waves. Listening to accusations about a person you trust is never fun, but she still needs to hear it.

As I wait for Esme to come to her senses, my muscles cool off and begin to ache. My skin feels disgusting from the layer of grit stuck under my clothes.

Finally, Esme sighs. “I left him to fight those people alone.”

The guilt in her voice is thick enough to choke on.

I want to tell her Veradin will be fine, that everything will work out. But I also don’t want to feed her a bunch of comforting lies.

Maybe I can at least soften the blow. “You didn’t have much choice.” I let that sit for a moment so Esme can feel the weight of it, then add, “But he seems resourceful. There haven’t been any additional explosions. There’s no smoke coming from the other side of the mountain. Those are all good signs.”

Esme turns red-rimmed eyes to me as she bites her lower lip.

I scramble to come up with more reasons to placate her. “Your mentor clearly knows how to handle himself in a crisis.” I shrug, wincing when my ribs protest. “He had plans for intruders, so I’m sure he has ways to get rid of them. Otherwise, he would have come with us.”

A surprised laugh escapes Esme. “That is the worst reassurance I’ve ever heard.”

Grinning, I chuck her under the chin. “And yet you’re laughing.”

She shakes her head, but the tension in her shoulders eases.

My hands stick when I flex them. Liquids of different colors have dried in smelly smears over my skin and clothes, mixed with soot, blood, and gods know what else. On top of that, we both reek of smoke.

“We need to bathe.” I push to my feet, biting back a groan as my ribs once again remind me they hate me. “Some of those concoctions were probably toxic. Otherwise, Veradin wouldn’t have bothered to neutralize the spills he saw.”

Esme peers down at herself and finally notices that her clothes are soaked in unidentifiable liquids and her hands are stained three different colors. “Oh.”

After she accepts my help getting up, I head toward the sound of the river. She follows without argument, steady on her feet for the first time since the attack began. She touches the pouch at her hip as if reminding herself her shadow spinners are alive and well.

The river snakes sluggishly through the trees, with no rocks or rapids to impede its flow.

It’ll do.

Knowing the river will be cold, I gather wood for a fire, while Esme hovers at the water’s edge. A few minutes later, I’ve started a small flame that should be nice and hot by the time we’re done cleaning up.

Esme glances up as I join her at the riverbank. “I, um, I want to get clean, so I’m…”

I point to a large rock on the bank about ten paces upstream. “You can go behind that rock if you need privacy.”

She nods, picks up her boots, and shuffles upstream.

I strip off my clothes to clean them but leave them nearby. An abundance of caution and the ability to kill anything that moves has kept me alive this long, and I have no inclination to change that anytime soon.

I rinse the potion and soot residue off my clothes with a few quick dips, then I trek back to the fire. Using branches, I create a makeshift clothesline to dry my garments and then plunge into the water.

The initial shock from the frigid temperature knocks the breath from my lungs. Cursing, I wade in until the level reaches my mid-thigh and use wet moss from the shoreline to scrub myself.

The cold still isn’t enough to calm my flush body, which has other ideas about what it wants right now.

The battle lust that kept me sharp and focused during the violence redirects itself into good old-fashioned lust. I’ve learned to manage the extra energy over the years, channeling it into training, running, or anything that burns off the excess before it becomes a problem.

I didn’t have a chance to do that in this situation.

Which is a big issue since Esme is bathing twenty feet upstream. Naked.