“Okay. Well. That literally is magic,” Miles said.
Magic or not, the antidote still took its time to work, so I pushed my way out from under the willow and headed toward the edge of the grotto, where a small inlet of the Markson sat still and dark. I pulled off my mud-caked boots and hunkered down by the water’s edge, stretching my feet out so the water lapped at my ankles. It was cold, but the cold felt good right now, soothing even. I closed my eyes and just felt the icy water, the crisp air, the slight breeze blowing through my hair. Exhaustion grabbed me like a clenching fist. I felt like I was going to pass out. How long had I been awake? Had it seriously been a day and a half?
I leaned back on my arms and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. There it was. Hello, old friend. As badly as I wanted to lie back in the dirt and fall into the deepest sleep of my life, I probably had to deal with this first. I scooped a handful of water out of the river, washed away the dried blood, then, with a wince, began pulling out the tiny slivers of glass still poking through my skin.
“That’s probably going to need some stitches,” Miles’s voice called from behind me, and I craned my head back around. Even though he’d been like this for a good six hours, my brain still refused to accept this gaunt, bearded, bald man as Miles. He sat down next to me, holding a small leather bag in his hands, its clasp sealed with a beaded tassel. “I found this in one of the mercenaries’ packs. All kinds of surgical supplies.”
“Yeah, well, if my stitching is anything like my embroidery, I’m probably better off without it.”
Miles smiled. There was something different about him, an air of confidence that hung over him like Lyriana’s glowing light. “Believe it or not, I’m actually a fairly proficient medic. I can do it.”
I blinked. “You know how to stitch up wounds?”
Miles opened the pack and took out a skin of alcohol, a tightly wound spool, and a pointy black needle. “Mother insisted I be trained in it. She said that if I ever found myself on the battlefield, I’d need something useful to do, and it certainly wouldn’t be fighting.”
I was starting to think that Miles’s mom was a huge bitch, but that wasn’t really the point.
Miles scooted over to me and gently took my arm, turning it so he could look directly at the cut. I stretched it out and turned away. I did not need to see this. “I have to warn you, it might sting a bit.”
It did.
We sat there for a while in silence, as he sterilized my wound with some alcohol, picked out the last shards, and then delicately sewed it shut. Every now and again I glanced back at him, at his determined expression and his shockingly steady and capable hands. I had to admit, he was actually really good at it. Hell, he was good at a lot of things we never gave him credit for. He’d been the one who knew how to get the antidote. He’d been the one who kept Timofei from blowing our cover. And he’d been the one who saved my life.
I felt bad. Bad for all the ways we’d teased him over the years, bad for all the things we’d said behind his back, even bad for how I’d stormed off when he’d told me about our parents’ plan. Yeah, it was wrong of him to have kept the truth from me all these years. That still stung. But did it really matter anymore? Did it matter after everything we’d been through? The people we’d been back at Castle Waverly were strangers now, and their mistakes weren’t ours. I might resent the pale, curly-haired boy in the ill-fitting tunic who’d lied to me all those years. But that wasn’t who had just finished stitching up my arm.
I needed to say something, anything, to lift that guilt. “Miles.” I turned to him. “What you did back in town…the way you played Timofei…that was incredible.”
“I know, right? I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never done anything like that in my life. I didn’t even know I could do something like that.” His face lit up with a huge grin. “And you want to know the funniest part? I don’t even like Mercanto!”
“That was all bullshit?”
“Total bullshit!” Miles laughed. “And then later, with the mercenaries, us fighting them in the street, when I knocked that guy out, when I saved your life, I mean…I just feel like we’ve become these completely different people overnight. Like my entire life up until these last few weeks was just a dream I’ve finally woken up from, and for the first time ever, I felt like myself. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Miles turned away. I wondered if I looked as different to him as he did to me. “My whole life, Tilla, I’ve thought of myself as…I don’t know. Weak. Soft. Lesser. Guys like Jax and Zell, they were the guys who got to have adventures and be heroes and get the girl. And me, well, I’d sit in my room and read books and maybe be lucky enough to one day help them out.” He looked more alive than I’d ever seen him. “But now I think that was all just insecurity and fear. I think…I think maybe I could be that guy, Tilla. I think I could go out there in the world and have adventures. I could take risks and face my fears and all that, you know?” His smile was so infectious I couldn’t help but smile back. “Do you think I could be that guy?”
“I do,” I said.
Then he kissed me.
I didn’t jerk away or gasp or anything. But I didn’t kiss him back, either. I didn’t do anything, couldn’t do anything, because I was too stunned and flustered. I just sat there, his lips to mine, his breath against mine, and did absolutely nothing.
He pulled away quietly. “Tilla?”
And what was I supposed to say to him? That as happy as I was to see him come into his own and find his confidence, it didn’t change the fact that I just wasn’t attracted to him? That I wanted to support him going out and getting the girl, but I wasn’t the girl? That even though I’d forgiven him for hiding the truth about our betrothal, it still left an icky aftertaste in my mouth, one that might never go away? That even though I was grateful he’d saved my life, did he feel that entitled him to this, that I’d have to be his out of gratitude? That as much I was coming to like and respect and care about him, I still saw him as just a friend, and probably always would?
That the feeling of his lips against mine didn’t make me burn with even a hundredth of the yearning I’d felt with Zell’s arm around my waist?
I couldn’t say any of that. I just couldn’t. Not out here, with our lives still on the line, where we still needed to depend on each other. And not tonight, with him feeling so good. I just couldn’t crush him.
So I stalled. Okay, maybe I lied. “Miles, I can’t,” I said softly. “Not right now. Not here. There’s just too much going on right now. We’re still in so much danger, I can’t…I can’t be distracted. You understand, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“When we get out of this, when we get to Lightspire…we’ll come back to this, okay? We’ll talk about it. That’s a promise.”
Miles nodded. And maybe this was just wishful thinking, but he didn’t look all that hurt or disappointed. “Okay. You’re right. We’ll revisit this later. When we’re safe.” He turned away and cleared his throat. “Ahem. Right. We should probably get some rest while the antidote does its work.”
“Those are the best words you could have possibly said.” I flopped back into the grass and curled onto my side. It was weird how I used to sleep in beds. “I’ll sleep out here. You guys wake me up if you need anything.”
Miles smiled, and I could tell just looking at him he was still thinking about the kiss, his heart still fluttering inside his chest. “Good night, Tilla.”
“’Night, Miles.”
He turned and walked off, pushing back through the canopy of the willow tree. I lay alone on my side, the cool grass against my cheek. Above me, the clouds parted to show a clear sky, lit up by a thousand million stars. I could very faintly hear my friends’ voices and could just barely make out Miles volunteering to take the first shift.
I’d done the right thing, hadn’t I?
I really hoped so.
IT TOOK MILES SHAKING ME with all his might to snap
me awake. “What is it?” I swatted vaguely at his head. “Go away!”
“It’s Lyriana.” He was out of breath with excitement. “She’s awake!”
I pulled myself up from my resting spot on the water’s edge, and Miles led me by the hand back to the willow tree. Lyriana was resting against the tree’s trunk, still cradled in Jax’s lap, while Zell stood protectively overhead, and it was amazing how much better she looked. Her skin no longer had that horrible translucent sheen, and she wasn’t shivering or sweating or any of that. Her legs were folded under her, but I could see that most of her veins had gone back to normal. Sure, her hair was a poufy mess and she had bags under her eyes like a ninety-year-old swamp seer. But she looked alive, very much alive, and like she was going to stay that way.
“Tillandra.” Her voice wavered, and her eyes glistened with tears.
“Lyriana.” I settled down next to her, and I realized I was kind of tearing up, too. “It is so, so good to see you like this again.”
She reached out with a trembling hand and touched the fresh stitches on my shoulder. “They told me what happened. The risk you all took riding out to Bridgetown, how you put your lives on the line for me….” She looked up at Jax and ran a weak hand along his cheek, causing him to actually flinch in surprise. “And you, Jax. Staying back and taking care of me. All by yourself. I…I…” She couldn’t hold back the floodgates anymore and clutched a hand over her mouth, overwhelmed by emotion, full-blown crying. “I owe you all so much. I can’t even begin to think how I’ll repay you.”
“We didn’t do it for repayment, silly.” Jax wiped away her tears with the back of his hand. “We did it because you’re one of us. You’re our friend.”
“Friend,” Lyriana repeated, as if tasting an exotic spice for the first time, then looked up with a weak smile. “Titans’ breath, Jax. Can it be for once you have no crude jokes? No lewd remarks?”
“Oh right!” Jax grinned. “Uh, let’s see here. Ass, tits, balls, and whores?”
Lyriana laughed, she actually laughed, and Jax laughed with her, and then we were all laughing together like a bunch of idiots. I didn’t care. I didn’t think I’d ever been more relieved in my entire life. I hugged Lyriana and she rested her head on me, and then Miles hugged me, too, and Jax joined us, and Zell even put his hand on my shoulder. We were together. We were alive. We were going to make it, going to get to Lord Reza, going to be saved by a big damn army of mages and stop the war and go to Lightspire.
We were going to live.
A few minutes later, Jax laid out the map of the Western Province, and we huddled around it, our rough position noted by a round green pebble. When we’d first looked at this map, Lord Reza’s castle, the Nest, had been impossibly far away. But now our pebble was more than halfway there, closer to the Nest than to Castle Waverly. It didn’t seem far at all.
“What do you think?” Jax asked. “Another ten days, maybe? At the rate we’ve been going?”
Zell shook his head. “No. We can’t keep riding like we have been, now that they know we’re here. We need to push as hard as we can if we’re going to have any shot at escaping my brother.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Your brother’s locked up in a Bridgetown dungeon.”
“And if even a single one of his men escaped, he’ll be free by nightfall. Your jails can’t hold us. Your men should have killed him the second they had him captured.”
“That’s not really how we do things…” Jax tried.
“It’s not just Razz,” I chimed in. “Timofei, the apothecary, recognized me. If he lived through that fire, it’s only a matter of time before he tells the City Watch.”
“Or hires his own band of mercenaries to claim us himself, visions of fifty thousand Eagles dancing in his head,” Miles grumbled. “Never trust a man who loves Mercanto.”
Lyriana didn’t even bother responding to that. “So we’ll have to ride hastily, then. Our only hope is to outrun them.”
“Exactly.” Zell turned to Jax. “Riding our hardest. What do you think?”
Jax laid his hand down on the map. “A week. Five days, if we’re really pushing it.”
“Five days it is,” Zell said.
So we rode, and we rode our hardest, driving our way across that last stretch of the Western Province. The forest grew thinner around us, densely clustered trees giving way to wider plots and farmsteads, to rolling fields of grain and hilly pastures dotted with cows and sheep. The land here was more domesticated, broken in, branded with wide roads and dotted with bustling towns. We traveled through the countryside in the early evenings and mornings, and took to the roads at night, riding four abreast, our horses’ hooves pounding through the dirt, the wind whistling through our hair. We’d pass other travelers here and there, came within spitting distance of the occasional merchant caravan, but it didn’t faze us. The real threat was at our backs now. And our goal was so close we could taste it.
Lyriana recovered quickly. The first day, she was still so weak I had to hold her as we rode. The second day, she was able to hold herself up. And the third day, she was back to her usual self. No, actually she was better than her usual self. Coming back from the brink of death had somehow left her more comfortable and relaxed, more willing to ignore the strict rules of her upbringing, more willing to open up. She and Jax started trading dirty jokes, and she taught me how to braid my hair Lightspire-style. When Zell caught us an incredibly juicy and tender boar, Lyriana even ate a bite, before spitting it out in disgust and using magic to Grow us the biggest, plumpest peaches I’d ever seen.
We camped less and spent more of the day riding, talking and resting less than we had before. Despite that, it felt like we were closer to each other than ever. Sometimes while we tore down those night roads, I’d just take a moment and look around, at Lyriana pressed against me, at Zell boldly leading the way, at Miles riding at my right and Jax riding at my left. And I’d feel safe. We didn’t feel like random companions thrown together by fate. We felt like one of those companies of soldiers who had fought a hundred battles together. We felt like friends who’d known each other since we were born. We felt like family.
And with Zell I felt something else. Ever since Bridgetown, there was an easiness between us, a shared, silent understanding. I caught him smiling at me a few times as we rode side by side, and I found myself smiling back.
Four days of hard riding later, we camped out in a small thicketed birch grove, its spindly white trees doing their best to block out the morning’s bright sun. As far I could tell, we were on the border of the lands of House Reza. The Frostkiss Mountains loomed, tall and vivid, in front of us, and I could make out dark, forested foothills giving way to stony crags and white-capped peaks. There they were, the borders of the West, the wall that cut off everything I knew from the rest of the world. Beyond those mountains lay the Heartlands and the Eastern Baronies and the Southlands and the Red Wastes. Beyond those mountains lay Lightspire, and mages, and the King. Beyond them lay salvation.
Lyriana and Miles napped while Zell had gone off to hunt, which left me and Jax to gather kindling. We walked together along the muddy banks of some unknown river, orange-and-red leaves crunching under our feet, a chill fall wind making us pull our ramskin cloaks tight. It was nice, actually. Between the hard riding and all my training with Zell, I’d spent barely any time with Jax in the last week. I’d missed him.
“So…” he said casually, bending down to scoop up a handful of brittle bone-white twigs. “You hook up with Zell yet?”
Okay, maybe I hadn’t missed all of him. I shot him a glare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” He grinned. “Come on. I can see the way you look at him during those ‘training sessions.’ You’re totally smitten.” I hurled a twig in Jax’s general direction. “Hey, I’m not judging, sis. I know I said some dumb shit about Zitochi back in Castle Waverly, but I was wrong. Zell’s a good guy. I’m rooting for you two.”
“Ye
ah, well, there’s nothing to root for, so…” I started to reply, and then I saw the look on Jax’s face that meant he wasn’t going to let this go. I tried to hide my smile. “Look. Okay. Maybe I do feel something for him. Something I…I haven’t really felt for a guy before.”
“Ooooooh,” Jax squealed, and he sounded like a little girl who’d just been told she got to play the part of the princess in the Midsummer’s Play.
“I just don’t know,” I continued, and okay, it was kind of a relief to actually be getting this off my chest. “I like him. A lot. And I think…I mean, he’s pretty tough to read, but I think he’s into me, too. There’s this tension between us that’s getting hard to ignore.”
“Oh, I know,” Jax said. “Why do you think we all look away awkwardly when you two are grappling with each other in the dirt? The real question is, are you gonna take it to the next level?”
I shook my head. “Not now. Not while we’re on the road, with everything going on. I don’t want…anyone to get distracted.” I felt a pang of guilt as I thought of Miles kissing me, his expectant, yearning eyes.
“Well, not now, sure,” Jax offered. “But when we get to Lightspire and are kicking back in our fancy manors, drinking sparkly wine and eating honeycakes all day…”
I couldn’t begin to picture Zell drinking sparkly wine and eating honeycakes, but that wasn’t really the point. What I was really picturing was the two of us walking together down along some dazzling Lightspire promenade, his arm around my waist, my face nuzzled into this shoulder. I was picturing us training together, not in the mud, but in some fancy sparring hall, and then retiring together, laughing, to the baths. I was picturing his lips on mine, his hands on me, his breath, his smell….
Royal Bastards Page 19
