“Nice kill,” says Grey.
The word makes me shiver. “Thank you.”
He walks toward the clearing where the animal fell. It’s no wonder he was able to slip through the woods without detection. When he’s alone, he moves like an assassin.
I sling the bow across my opposite shoulder and hurry to follow. The buck is larger than I expected. From a distance, it was beautiful, but up close, its eyes have already gone glassy. I shudder.
Grey yanks the arrow free and wipes it in the grass, then holds it out to me. Bits of blood and other things glisten at the tip.
I swallow, then jam it into the quiver, thinking of that trapper and his daughter, the ones my sister condemned to death. “Shall we—” I have to clear my throat. “Shall we drag it?”
“We don’t want to ruin the hide. I’ll find a branch.”
He does, then strips tiny twigs from the length. We use our dagger belts to lash the legs to the wood. I feel jittery and unsettled inside, especially when Grey hoists one end onto his shoulder and the head flops to the ground, antlers dragging.
I must be staring too long, because Grey says, “It’s heavy. I can fetch Jacob.”
“No—no, I should be able to manage.” I get my shoulder under the branch and use my legs to lift, and the weight nearly takes my breath away. Each step is more of a stagger.
Mother would be mortified. Anything requiring brute strength would be seen as lesser—a burden relegated to a man. Being quick and lithe and agile are valued in women. Being thoughtful and decisive.
Not hauling animals through the woods. Maybe I should let him fetch Jacob.
The thought feels like a slap to the cheek. I was not worthy of being queen. Perhaps I am only good for hauling animals through the woods.
I’m not even good for that, because I’m about to drop this branch. I gasp, “Grey—one—moment—please.” Without waiting, I shove the weight off my shoulder.
Grey eases his end to the ground, then turns to lean against a tree. Darkness thickens the air, and I can’t make out his expression in the shadows. I wonder if he’s disappointed. Or possibly exasperated. I shouldn’t care, but I do.
“My apologies,” I offer.
His eyebrows flicker into a frown. “No need.”
The buck’s head is cocked sideways on its antlers, the dead eyes staring at me judgmentally. I grimace and glance away.
Grey is studying me, but he seizes his end of the branch. “Ready?”
No, but I nod.
He takes more of the weight this time, but I barely last two minutes. The buck flops to the ground again. I’m panting.
“Can we not drag it?” I gasp.
“You think it will somehow weigh less on the ground?” He’s not even a little breathless.
I scowl at him ruefully and drag a hand across my forehead.
“We need the skin,” he says. He stretches his arms overhead, flexing his shoulders, the only sign that this is an effort for him as well. “The fur will give us a good story if we’re confronted in the woods. Trappers and fur traders will grow more common as we head north.”
The mention of trappers and fur traders makes me frown. I take hold of the branch. “I’m ready.”
This time I barely make it twenty-five paces. I’ll have a good bruise tomorrow. I lean against a tree and breathe.
“You have exceptional aim,” says Grey. “Where did you learn to shoot that way?”
“We have competitions every year,” I say, and my breathing is ragged, but I welcome the distraction. “The Royal Houses of Syhl Shallow all send entrants. Archery, mounted games, things like that. Have you nothing similar here?”
He shakes his head. “The guardsmen would sometimes fight to entertain the nobility, but nothing so official.”
“What a shame. The Queen’s Challenge is quite a spectacle.” I smile, remembering. “It is a time of celebration.”
He doesn’t smile. “It is unusual for me to think of times of celebration in Syhl Shallow.”
I flinch, thinking of Tycho’s comments about my mother eating her victims.
“I meant no offense,” says Grey, but there’s a note in his voice that makes me wonder if he truly means that. Before I can ask, he seizes his end of the branch and hoists it onto his shoulder.
I grit my teeth and follow suit. The buck feels heavier each time. I speak in broken phrases, panting in between. “My sister, Nolla Verin—is the best. She always—takes top prize. In—in the mounted games.” I pause to catch my breath. “I’m good with an arrow, but she is better. Many are better. Some of the contests—are brutal. I do not like—I do not like the violence. Even still, I look—I look forward to it each year. The food, the parties. I’m told—I’m told—”
“Lia Mara. Set it down.”
I drop the branch, then brace my hands on my knees. The woods are very dark now, and I can barely make out Grey’s form. He’s a large shape in the darkness. We’re making very slow progress, and I wait for him to tell me he’ll ask one of the other men to help him. After Mother’s announcement, I felt incapable at home. Like someone lesser.
After failing with Rhen, and now, in a different way, failing with Grey, I feel incapable here.
But Grey says nothing more about fetching Jacob. He’s quiet for the moment, and I don’t mind, because I’m trying to rub knots out of my shoulder. Eventually, he says, “We’re less than two hundred yards from camp. Can you make it?”
Two hundred yards might as well be two hundred miles, but I brace myself and lever the branch onto my shoulder. “I think so.”
“I know so.” He says it like it’s something I should be proud of. I sweat and stagger and try not to fall.
“In the Royal Guard,” he says conversationally, as if I’m not gasping with every step, “we were trained to be skilled at weaponry, but that was never our primary lesson. We were taught to see ourselves as different from the people. As a group. Every day came the call and response. Who are you? We are the Royal Guard.”
“My mother’s … my mother’s soldiers”—I draw a ragged breath—“are trained similarly.”
“If one guardsman failed to follow orders, the entire unit would be punished. It bred unity—and obedience—quickly.”
“I’m sure.” I nearly stumble over a rock.
“After a while,” he says, “a guardsman begins to recognize anyone outside the unit as a potential threat. As a target. It makes it easy to follow orders when you’re in a constant state of evaluate-and-disregard or evaluate-and-act.”
I’m barely listening to him. My focus is squarely on the placement of my feet in the dark, and the weight of the branch on my shoulders. “I need to put this down.”
“We’re almost there. Keep your eyes on the fire.”
I blink sweat from my eyes, and I can see the glow through the trees. I force my feet forward.
“After your mother invaded,” he says, “anyone from Syhl Shallow was a threat.”
I brace sweat-slicked palms against the branch to try to give my shoulder a reprieve. Part of me wants him to move faster. Another part of me wants to pitch face-first into this underbrush.
“So when I say that it is odd to think of times of celebration,” he continues, “it is because I had forgotten that your people may be our enemies, but they are still people.”
“Yes.” We will never reach that fire. “They are people. We are people.”
“Indeed.”
I clench my eyes shut. “I cannot—I cannot—”
“You’re stronger than you think. Another step.”
I step.
“Another.”
I lose track of how many steps are left. My eyes no longer track the fire, and instead track the movement of his body in the darkness. His voice has become hypnotic. Another. Another. Another.
When he finally stops, it’s so unexpected that I nearly walk right out from under the branch.
“Silver hell,” says Tycho. “Is that a stag?”
“Finally,” says Jacob. “Something with some real meat on its bones.”
“Lia Mara is quite the shot,” says Grey.
“Quite the brute, too,” says Jacob. “How much does that thing weigh?”
Quite the brute. I don’t know if I should blush or frown. I yank the quiver off my back and busy myself with putting everything back with our accumulated supplies. “It was luck.”
A hand catches my arm, and I turn, ready anger on my tongue.
Grey’s easy expression is gone. “Strength and skill are not matters of luck.”
“You carried most of the weight.”
“I did not. That animal is easily three times your size, and we carried it over half a mile.” He pauses. “Could your sister do that?”
I think of Nolla Verin, with her easy smile and yards of dark hair. She can put an arrow into a dark target on a cloudy night, and no one will ever get her off a horse, but like our mother, she is slight, all fluid grace.
“No,” I admit. “Physical strength is not a point of pride in Syhl Shallow.”
“You did not think you could do it, and then you did. That is more than just physical strength.” His eyes glitter in the darkness, and his voice is low. I’m not sure how, but he’s taken the sting out of the moment, turning it into something warmer. Better. Maybe Mother would frown on this, but for the first time in a while, I suddenly feel … capable.
A blush finally finds my cheeks, and I glance away. I think of what he said when we were walking. My people, his people— it should make no difference. I didn’t expect such a revelation from him.
After days of feeling at odds with the men around me, this moment feels meaningful. I want to cling to it for a while, to share a few more words. To hear the echo of pride in his voice that I haven’t heard in so long.
“Your Highness,” calls Iisak. “If none of you humans have claimed the heart, may I do so?”
Grey’s eyes flick skyward, and he turns away. Whatever spark existed between us burns out to nothing.
“Have no worries, Iisak,” he says. “The heart is yours.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
GREY
The fire dwindles, but the others are drifting into sleep, so I do nothing to bank it. On the opposite side of the burning embers, Lia Mara is awake as well, her eyes distant and fixed on nothing. She surprised me when she forced her way through the fireplace into my room at Ironrose. She surprised me again tonight. She’s so quiet and unassuming that I didn’t expect her to handle a bow with such assurance. I didn’t expect her to put a shoulder under that branch to carry the stag.
I am not used to people surprising me.
As if she senses my scrutiny, her eyes lift from the fire to meet mine. “You should sleep,” she says. “I can keep watch until Noah wakes.”
Noah is always the first to sleep, but always the first to wake, well before the sun breaks across the horizon. He says that his training as a doctor allows him to sleep anywhere, at any time. He can lie down and find sleep in seconds, a talent I envy.
When I try to sleep, I lie in the darkness and watch the stars shift overhead and think of all that will be lost if Emberfall tears itself apart in a civil war. I think of Syhl Shallow and how far we have yet to travel and whether we will be any safer there than we are here.
I prefer watching the flames die as the night stretches on.
“No,” I say. “Thank you.”
A hint of stubbornness flickers in her eyes. “Do you think me incapable of waking you?”
“Hardly. I think I am incapable of sleep.”
“Ah.” She glances away, into the darkest shadows, where Jacob, Noah, and Tycho lie in the softer leaves beneath a pine tree. Iisak is somewhere overhead in the branches, or possibly out hunting.
Tycho’s lash marks have scabbed over heavily, with mottled bruising to fill in the spaces between. He still moves stiffly throughout the day and looks grateful every time we make camp.
“He is healing,” says Lia Mara.
“I should be able to help him.” I flex my fingers and shake my head. “This magic seems useless if it only works when my life is at risk.”
“Surely you did not pick up a sword and expect to be proficient on the first day.”
“No, but—but that is different.”
“Why?” She uncurls from where she sits, then claims a short dagger from our stash. When she returns, she sits beside me. “Here. Practice.”
“Practice?”
She takes my hand, her fingers small and cool against mine. She turns my wrist over, then lifts the dagger.
My free hand snaps out to catch her wrist. “What are you doing?”
“You let Iisak tear your arm open when you practice, but you fear a little dagger?”
“I do not fear the dagger.”
Her eyebrows go up. “You fear me?”
No. Yes. Not so much her, but who and what she represents.
When we started this journey, I was so sure she’d be demanding and domineering, much like Karis Luran. I expected her to force an oath from my lips in exchange for safety, or for her to display some trickery or guile. I keep thinking about the first night, when I thought Iisak might kill me. The way she got down on her knees in the underbrush to hold my hand and whisper my name.
I’m not sure anymore.
I release her hand. “I’ve seen what you can do with an arrow.”
She smiles ruefully. I brace myself for the bite of the blade, but she is quick. Blood wells before I feel the pain. Those stars wait, tiny flickers of light under my skin. They scatter when I pay attention to them, like trying to gather bits of dust in a sunbeam. A drop of blood trails down my arm to vanish into the dirt below, and I give an aggravated sigh.
“Not everything can be accomplished by force,” Lia Mara says.
“Clearly.”
“I know you can be gentle. I saw you with Princess Harper.”
A new note enters her voice, one I do not fully understand, a mixture of uncertainty and longing and disappointment. I look up, seeking her eyes, but she keeps her gaze on the stripe of blood on my skin.
“There was nothing between me and the princess,” I say.
“There was something between you and the princess.”
“Never. Truly.”
“I have a dagger, Grey.” She finally looks up. Her words are taunting, but there’s an element of truth in her eyes. “Do not lie to me.”
“I could disarm you.”
“You could be honest with me.”
“The princess …” My voice trails off in a sigh. But of course there are no secrets. Lia Mara knows of the enchantress. She knows Disi was a sham.
“To understand my relationship with Harper,” I say, “you must understand what happened to Prince Rhen. He was cursed by the enchantress Lilith. He had one autumn season to find a girl and earn her love, or he would become a monstrous beast that would terrorize Emberfall.”
Lia Mara’s eyes are wide. “The monstrous beast that drove out our forces?”
“One and the same.” I pause. “At the end of the season, if he failed, he would become human again and the season would restart. Only … the dead remained dead.”
She studies me. “The royal family was supposedly killed in Disi.”
I look back at her and wait for her to figure it out. Speaking these words still feels too much like treason.
“He did it himself,” she finally says. Her voice is hardly more than a whisper. “When he was a monster.”
“Yes.”
She shudders. “For the first time, he truly has my sympathy.” Her eyes fix on mine. “What about you?”
“I was trapped similarly. I was charged with finding girls to break the curse.”
Lia Mara frowns. “How long did it take for you to ‘find’ Harper?”
“Time in the castle did not
pass at the same rate as time in Emberfall. I have no real way of knowing. A few years passed here, but within the walls of Ironrose …” Now it’s my turn to shudder. “It was interminable. Harper was our final chance—and she was not even the girl I chose.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She saw me attempting to take another young woman and attacked me with an iron bar.”
Lia Mara snorts with sudden laughter. “I knew I liked her.”
“She wanted nothing more than to go home. She fought for it so fiercely. But when she could not, she turned her attention to Emberfall. She renewed Rhen’s faith that he could save his people.” I pause. “She became a princess by her words and actions, if not by blood.”
“Ah,” says Lia Mara, her skepticism clear. “So it is merely admiration between you.”
“We endured much together, but fate did not put me in her path for anything more than friendship.”
“Is that because you felt nothing for her, or because you were sworn to obey the prince?”
Lia Mara is too clever by far. “Does it matter?”
She meets my eyes boldly. “Yes.”
“Because I was sworn to obey the prince, I could not have feelings for another,” I say. “If you are seeking sordid secrets, you will find none.”
“I saw the way she looked at you, behind the inn.” She pauses. “She allowed you to escape, even knowing it would put Emberfall at risk.”
“She allowed me to escape because she knows I will not put the kingdom at risk.”
“She would have come with you, if you’d asked.”
“Jacob asked, and she refused.”
“Jacob is not you.”
I flinch and look away. “Regardless. I would not have asked.”
I expect her expression to turn cynical, but maybe she hears the truth in my words, because she frowns, her eyes sad. “You were very loyal.”
Yes. I was. I look away, into the fire.
She squeezes my hand. “When a man no longer deserves your loyalty, it is not a failing of yours, Grey.”
I do not know what to say. Does Rhen deserve my loyalty?
Her fingers brush against my wrist, feather light. “Perhaps you needed a distraction.”
I look down. Beneath the blood, the wound has closed.
A Heart So Fierce and Broken Page 19
