by Page Morgan
“I’m her brother,” he finally said. “I’m supposed to take care of her.”
And I was just a girl he’d met a couple weeks ago. I wasn’t bitter about it. How could I be? It was true. I was just a girl—Lael was his sister. She was his flesh and blood. If the situation was skewed, if I had to choose between Tobin and my father, it would hurt…but I’d choose my father.
“I understand,” I said. I truly did.
“I can’t get to the emperor.” Tobin came a few inches closer. The floor beneath me dipped. “I can’t get to him without being killed myself.”
Had he ever really held any hope that he could?
“I’m not afraid of death. But now that I know she’s still alive, everything has changed. If I were to kill the emperor and then die with him, what would become of Lael? She’d be passed around the warriors, she’d live in squalor, in shame.”
Tobin checked his voice and took a few breaths to calm down. The space behind me warmed as he knelt on the blanket.
He leaned his head against the back of mine. “But how am I supposed to give you to him?” His breathing was fast and hot against my neck, fluttering under my collar, along my spine.
I leaned back slightly, wanting to be closer. “Your duty is to your sister. It should be, and I know it.”
And I would have to take care of myself. I didn’t think you would fight so well. I’d nearly whipped a trained assassin. If I could spar that well with Tobin, who was to say I couldn’t defend myself against Frederic?
He probably expected me to be afraid. He probably expected me to submit as my mother had. Had she submitted so easily though? Or had she fought? She wouldn’t be at the fortress in Yort. I knew that with certainty now. When I’d asked to see Mara’s killer, he hadn’t appeared in the loft mirror because he’d been dead. That thick, gray haze matched the one that filled the mirror whenever I asked to see my mother. Which meant she had to be dead. Gone. But in the beginning, when she’d been first taken, if only she’d had a weapon hidden on her somewhere. If only she’d known how to use it.
I shifted my head to the side. Tobin’s lips brushed my temple. “Give me your knife.”
He pulled his head back. “What?”
“Your knife. I’ll take it and when I’m alone with Frederic, when I’m close enough, I can—”
“No.” Tobin backed away completely. “Ever, he’s older but he’s not frail. He’s not stupid. He’ll never let you that close to him.”
“He must let his mistresses close.” I heard Tobin hiss but kept going. “If I could lead him to believe that I—”
“No!” He latched on to my shoulders and squeezed. “No.”
He let go of me just as brusquely and sat back on his heels. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t give you to him.”
My plan would work. I was sure of it. As terrifying as it would be to meet the man my father had been hiding me from my entire life, I knew that I could kill him. I wanted to kill him. It would let Tobin and his sister, my father and me, live in peace. Without fear.
“You don’t have to give me to him.” I pried his fingers from where he’d tangled them into his hair and pressed my lips against them. “I’m going to go to him myself. Tomorrow.”
He pulled away and paced the darkened shed, kicking a log. “Let me figure a way around this. Let me just think.”
“It will give you a chance to get Lael and run. If I’m distracting the emperor and his warriors, who is going to be watching after Lael? No one. You can get to her, you can take her and go.”
And the emperor would never need to know his enemy huntsman had been there at all. Perhaps he’d just assume Lael had escaped on her own. It was perfect. Except for the fact that I would have to face Frederic. Alone.
Tobin crossed the shed and took hold of the unbuttoned sides of my shirt, my red sash still exposed. Without making any response to my plan, he slipped his hands inside. Holding me tightly, his palms traveled from my lowest ribs where the sash began, and up my sides, grazing my breasts just enough to send a rash of heat through me. The way he held me made me feel so small and fragile, and yet powerful. Like I mattered.
I wanted him to kiss me again, but knew he wouldn’t. That moment had passed. Tobin released me and tugged my shirt closed. He secured the first button then the second and third, and when he’d finished with all of them, he brought me down to the blanket. He wrapped us in the top blanket and nestled me to him, my back against his stomach and chest, our legs curved together.
“I’ll find a way,” he whispered into the crown of my head. I wanted to believe him, but it was all too clear: Our time was up.
The incessant yelping of a dog and the high-pitched cries of a woman entered my dream, and roused me to consciousness. Weak morning sunlight filled the wood shed. Then came the clanking of metal. I jolted up and felt the empty, cold space behind me. Tobin. He was gone.
“I saw the boy in here!” a woman outside shouted.
I threw off the blanket, panicked, and leaped to my feet. Something rattled around in my boot. With the sound of metal getting nearer, my pulse a clawing monster in my throat, I reached down and felt inside the lip. My fingers brushed the bone handle of one of Tobin’s knives. I held my breath.
The drape covering the doorway slung aside, and I straightened my back. The massive armor of a warrior filled the entrance. A second came in behind him, but it was the first I stared at with dread. His eyes, visible through the gap in his helm, squinted with recognition. He took his arrowhead and pointed it at me conversationally.
“You’re the tavern boy from Rooks Hollow,” Grigory Karev said. “What the devil are you doing here?”
His eyes traveled from my bare head and exposed neck, to my rumpled shirt, no longer tucked in.
“I want to see the emperor,” I managed to say. I didn’t bother to change my voice. Karev lowered his spear.
“On what grounds?” the warrior behind him asked. I was parched and nervous, and when I swallowed, my tongue didn’t immediately work.
“I want him to stop his invasion.”
Karev snorted as the old woman outside the shed demanded to know what was happening.
“Why should Emperor Frederic hear anything you have to say, boy?” Karev asked, but his mind—however slow and cruel—was figuring things out. I saw it when his eyes lingered at my hips.
I was alone. I had no one to defend me but me. No father. No Tobin. My heart fractured and burned.
“Because I’m not a boy,” I answered, slightly woozy from a rush of terror. “I’m the girl he’s been searching for.”
Karev and his mate stared at me.
“You? A girl?” Karev pondered this with a twirl of his spear. “I’d be flogged if I turned you over to the emperor without proof of it first.”
Color singed my cheeks, and his fellow warrior smirked. “She’s a wench all right. Look how she blushes.”
The old lady made to get into the wood shed, but Karev shoved her out. In a silver blur, his spear was at my throat once again.
“The emperor was called back to Rooks Hollow on report that a huntsman had taken up a room in the tavern. Your tavern, boy.” I felt my skin freeze over. “Where is the huntsman, eh?”
I called upon all my years of lying to forge my way through this interrogation. “I don’t know. We fled together, but I woke one morning to find myself alone. He’d gone off.” I lowered my eyes for effect. “I’m certain I was a burden to him.”
Outside, the old woman was screaming for her neighbors to come witness the warriors’ injustice. There was a growing sound of metal armor and murmuring voices in the yard and street. Seemingly unbothered by the commotion, Karev dragged his arrowhead from the center of my throat down to the top button of my shirt. The sharpened point left a puffy red scrape.
“You’re what the emperor’s looking for, are you?” Karev grabbed me by the arm with such force I feared for the bone.
Out in the yard, a throng of curious faces and gl
eaming metal helms met us. The old woman shouted curses down onto Karev as he dragged me through the crowd. My feet stumbled along, the rattling of Tobin’s gift in my boot the only source of comfort—and it was slim at that.
Mud sucked at my heels as Karev steered me roughly along the narrow road. Doorways and windows filled with curious faces, children poking their heads over fences to stare at me as I was jostled past. Karev jerked me to a halt just outside a building. I could only read a single word on the sign before Karev forced me into a deep bow: Ale. A tavern.
All around us, chatter died off. Karev’s heavy arm kept me bent over, his mesh and steel hand on the back of my skull, holding it down. Footsteps sounded on the alehouse’s porch. They dropped into the mud and squelched toward us.
“Rise,” a stalwart voice commanded. Karev closed his fingers in the short curls that had grown out on my head and heaved me up. Tears sprung to my eyes, and my first sight of Emperor Frederic—outside of the mirror—was fogged. But even through the distortion, I saw his shoulders stiffen, his chin rise.
“There you are.”
He drew each word into a sigh. I was the image of my mother. Father had told me that plenty of times, but not until that moment did I believe him.
Frederic didn’t order Karev to release me, and the warrior kept his metal fingers clamped, stretching my scalp. The emperor’s clothing was far from royal; his black leather breeches and red tunic top looked commonplace. It was his stature and presence that set him apart from the horde of clerics and attendants and footmen surrounding him. In person, the emperor exuded something he had lacked in the mirror. Authority. Importance.
He took off one of his suede gloves and ran his hand down the point of his beard.
“You’ve managed to be apprehended quite easily,” he said, his boots taking him around a mud puddle, and closer to me.
“I wanted to be found,” I replied. Karev pulled on my scalp until I was looking up at the sky.
“Don’t address the emperor until you’re bid to do so.” He thrust my head back down. Frederic stood directly in front of me now, so close I could see the creases on his forehead, the etchings of age around his eyes.
“Curious indeed,” the emperor said. “I have been under the impression all these years that you and your father were hiding from me.”
He lifted his ungloved hand, and wiped my tear-streaked cheeks with his thumb.
“Where is my mother?” I asked, even though I suspected…knew…the truth.
Karev again inflicted his wrath on my scalp, but the emperor called for him to back away. I felt the warrior’s anger at the dismissal as he gave my head a final thrust and released me.
“We have much to discuss,” the emperor carried on. “But first, I should like to know your name. Your mother’s refusal to relinquish it cost her dearly.” Frederic set his jaw, his nostrils dilating. “Your name. Tell me.”
If my mother had refused to hand over my name and suffered for it, I most certainly could as well.
“Should you like to be punished as she was?” the emperor asked through clenched teeth.
“Her name’s Everett,” Karev piped up from behind me. I wanted to take his arrow and spear his tongue with it.
“I didn’t ask you,” Frederic replied. Karev’s humiliation was palpable as he retreated a few steps, armor creaking. The emperor’s eyes were still riveted to me when he tried out my name for himself. “Everett, Everett, Everett.”
The way he played with my name was tenfold worse than when Bram had. Bram. He was dead because of me. And yet, he was also dead because of himself, and his jealousy of Tobin.
I let my eyes wander through the crowd of onlookers while the emperor inspected me. Had Tobin already found his sister? Was he gone yet? Of course he was. He was the huntsman, stealthy and fast. My gaze rested on Frederic’s face. But even huntsmen like Tobin had their weaknesses. They had their tipping points and limits. They had their priorities.
“Come with me, Everett,” the emperor finally said. “I am very pleased to have you at last.”
28
Tobin
At the edge of the Melinka, I collapsed to my knees.
“Tobin.” Lael crashed through the saplings, their green leaves mottled with splotches of red and yellow. “Tobin, please. We need to rest.”
I cupped a handful of water from the rushing river and gulped it.
“We’ve rested plenty,” I said, wiping the edge of my mouth with my sleeve.
“Three hours of sleep each night is not rest. A few minutes twice a day while traveling is not rest.”
I got back onto my feet. My sister had only just started complaining about the pace we’d been keeping. I told her what Ever had done for her, and Lael had been respectful enough the last two days as we slogged our way back through the borderlands forest toward Rooks Hollow.
“I won’t rest,” I said, walking east along the river in search of the ford. “You know why better than anyone.”
Lael followed me along the Melinka, silent. I’d found my sister in the tavern soon after the tip I’d given a ragged old woman about a strange boy being in the woodshed set off a commotion in the streets. It had drained the alehouse of warriors, and most importantly, of Frederic.
I’d thrown doors open along the second story in search for her, until at last I recognized the startled occupant inside one. Lael had burst into inconsolable sobs before I’d even taken her into my arms. In the five seconds I’d held her before fleeing, I’d watched from Lael’s window as Grigory Karev dragged Ever in front of the tavern. I’d made my decision then.
I would bring Lael to safety, and then I’d return to Yort, to free Ever. I would do it even though I knew I would most likely fail. That I would most certainly die.
“He might not treat her the way he did me,” Lael whispered as the ford across the Melinka came into view.
I flexed my hands into fists and wished I had something to hit. Lael hadn’t elaborated on what Frederic had done to her. The one time I’d asked, the first night in the forest, she’d been quiet for minutes, and then asked me to never ask her that question again.
“Especially if he wants her for what you say. That mirror magic.” Lael threaded her fingers through mine as we balanced on the thin strip of rocky ledge and sand across the river.
“I can’t think about what he might be doing to her.” I lifted Lael over the last few feet of the ford. “I just need to think about how to get to her.”
It was why we had returned to Rooks Hollow. I had to face Ben Volk and tell him his daughter had been captured by the person he’d sacrificed everything to hide her from. I had to admit to Ben that I’d failed, and then, if he didn’t kill me himself, get him to trust me one last time.
“Why are we in here?” Lael whispered from the open window. Ben’s room had been easy enough to climb to. The woodshed lean-to had been built against the back of the building, just below his bedroom.
“Because everyone in this village now knows I’m wanted by the Morvansk emperor. And if Ben or any of them see me in the tavern, there’s sure to be a problem,” I answered. I pressed my ear against the wood of the bedroom door. The sound of oboe and horn music drifted from the barroom.
“He’ll suffer heart failure if he walks in here and sees the two of us waiting for him,” she said.
Lael. I’d missed her sarcastic wit. I’d always wondered if she’d gleaned that attribute from our father, though I didn’t remember him being anything but cruel. Our mother had been kind and soft, her spitfire reserved for when dinner overcooked or when mice fell through the cheesecloth and into the cream jug. I closed my eyes. Lael and I hadn’t yet spoken of mother or Kinn. It was too enormous a thing to approach.
“That’s why you need to go down there and get him for me,” I replied. Lael spun me around with a yank on my elbow.
“Go down into the tavern? I can’t!”
“You can, Lael. It’s just like any other tavern.” I was about to say it was n
o different from the alehouse where I’d found her, but her lower lip trembled, and I stopped myself. She was only fourteen, and yet she’d already seen her share of taverns and the kind of men who often filled them.
I held her shoulders tightly. “Forgive me, Lael. I’ll go down myself and try to—”
She shook her head, blinking back tears. “No. I’ll do it. You’re right. Just…just tell me what he looks like.”
I described Ben, assuring her she wouldn’t be able to mistake him.
“He’ll be the one behind the bar in a bad mood,” I said.
Lael breathed deeply and twisted the doorknob. Before she got out into the hallway, I called to her. “Just tell him it’s about Ever. Make sure no one else hears you.”
She nodded, and closed the door behind her. I paced the small room, my mind slipping and floundering over all the things I needed to tell Ben, and all the tactics I might use to gain his trust. But I couldn’t focus on any of them.
All I could think about was Karev and the way his hand had been knotted in Ever’s short curls. How I’d woken before dawn, unsheathed one of my boot blades, and then slipped it into Ever’s boot without rousing her. I’d left the woodshed quickly so I wouldn’t have to say goodbye.
I wouldn’t have been able to do it.
The plodding of feet on the staircase snatched me back to attention. I faced the door and waited, my heart too fast. It’s only Ever’s father, I told myself, not a target. Not Frederic.
The door swung wide, and Ben Volk filled the frame.
“Where’s Ever?” he growled.
I forgot every word I’d planned to say.
“When I tell you where she is, you’re going to want to kill me. But if you do, I promise you will never see her again. If you listen to me, if you trust me, then I think we can get her back.”
Ben hesitated in the doorway, each muscle in his face sagging. “Frederic has her.”
He came inside with Lael behind him, and she closed the door. He crossed the room, dragging himself to the bed as if the muscles in his body were giving up. He sunk to the edge of the mattress, his hands crumpled in his hair.
