They’d ridden for over an hour when Rilion called a halt. They were back in the wilds, little more than a rutted trail telling them where to go. The hoofprints their horses left behind the day before still lingered, bold against the mingled tracks of farmers and animals they’d followed. Those farmers and animals were long outpaced, if they were coming this way at all. Would they abandon the fortress so readily? Thea thought they might stay put after it became clear they were in no danger, but then she second-guessed herself. They’d abandoned their lives in Kentoria, Ranor, and who knew where else, and they’d held those far longer.
Thea’s sides ached when she clambered from the saddle. She held them both and stifled a groan.
“There’s a brook over there. Cuts through the rocks.” Rilion pointed toward a ridge not far off the path. So what was why they’d stopped here.
She led Molasses over the rocks so she could drink, though her muscles protested every move. The mare trudged along and her step gained more spirit when she noticed the water. Thea let go of the reins and sank to the ground, rubbing the muscles in her calves.
For a time, Rilion stood in the middle of the trail and gazed back the way they’d come. Then he sighed and led his horse to the water, too.
Thea smoothed back her hair and let her head hang.
Don’t look.
The same words had echoed ceaselessly in her head as they fled the valley. She’d fought to keep her eyes trained on the trail ahead, to guide her horse behind Rilion’s, to focus on the escape. Now she could breathe, and the voice of doubt reared in her mind a dozen times over, all at once.
She’d failed in the one thing she’d wanted to do. To ride at his side, to see things through to the end. She’d let herself be herded away, crumbled when the price was most dear. They’d abandoned him to die.
Yet didn’t he deserve it? After all he’d done, all the lives he’d taken, the life he’d been about to take—
No, she told herself firmly. He didn’t deserve that. No one deserved it.
They’d crossed rivers, mountains, had been challenged half a dozen times. He fought with care and precision, crippling, disabling, never killing. Even in the throne room, with Lucan on his knees.
He’d told her, early on, that he’d meant to kill only once more.
She’d never fathomed it might be his own brother.
A small, hiccuping sob tore free of her throat before she could catch it.
Rilion startled at the sound.
“I don’t know what’s happened,” Thea choked. “I don’t know how it came to this. Everything’s fallen apart in the last hour.”
The prince looked troubled. He studied her, then glanced away. For a time, the only sound was the rustle of the wind in the grasses and the sound of their horses as they moved along the brook and drank.
Eventually, Rilion sighed and returned his eyes to the western horizon. “I warned him, once. Said this was a possibility. I was… too soon in sharing it, I think.”
Thea lifted her head.
“There are poisons that mimic death,” he said slowly. “I cautioned him that with the extent of Lucan’s paranoia, and with Kentorian burial traditions, we couldn’t be certain. In Ranor, bodies are burned and returned to the earth.”
And in Kentoria, they were buried in hardwood caskets lined with dried leaves. She rubbed her brow. The dead kings were buried privately, somewhere on castle grounds. How hard would it have been to dig up Lucan’s body so he could be revived with an antidote? Not hard, if your replacement was seldom home. Gil’s determination to find his brothers’ killer had provided a perfect window for escape.
If only things had spun in favor of Gil’s escape this time.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before more tears could form. “He told you to do this, didn’t he? Ahead of time?”
Rilion’s brows knit. “Do what?”
“Take me. Leave him there.”
He hesitated.
Thea nodded and lowered her eyes to the water, watching as it trickled over the rocks. “I thought so.”
“If I am being honest, I don’t know why he let you come to begin with. To scare you off, maybe. He’s never…” He exhaled. “He doesn’t work with others anymore. Not often. Too many people have died because of things he’s had to do.”
Don’t look.
Her eyes burned anew. She turned away. “That’s what I’m afraid of.” And what she desperately wished she’d had a moment to ask. Lucan’s face, the wicked satisfaction it bore as he gave the order, was burned into her memory. But the king had only given the order. Execute the traitors. Another hand had swung the axe, and the executioner’s mask the man wore had haunted her dreams every night.
Now her mind blurred that memory with the moment in the woodshed, when she’d seen Gil pull that mask from his face.
She tried to force it away. No matter what she’d seen, she did not know.
If he didn’t make it out of that fortress, she never would.
“I needed to be here,” Rilion said after a time. He gazed toward the west, a tense sort of hope betrayed in the set of his shoulders. He didn’t owe her any explanation, but she sensed that he wanted her to ask.
“Is that why he brought you?” Or was he trying to frighten Rilion off, too?
He waved a hand at the valley around them. “Someone has to clean up all this. The people, that fortress. Someone will have to answer for it, and it’s closest to the Ranorsh border. He wanted me to know what we needed to expect. A favor, in his own way.”
“That favor could have gotten you killed.”
“Well, yes. That tends to happen with him. That’s why I don’t know why he let you come.” The smile he gave her this time was nervous, but resigned. “We have to keep moving.”
No sign of Gil’s escape, then. Thea dipped her hands in the frigid water and wiped her face clean, then rose. “How far?”
“As far as necessary. Back to Danesse. From there…” Rilion spread his hands with a helpless shrug. “We’ll see.”
She retrieved her horse and mounted without another word.
They rode on for another few hours before Rilion pointed out a small structure clinging to the side of the mountain. “We’ll see if that’s inhabited. Might make a good rest stop.”
The sloping trail that led to the weather-worn shack was steep and rocky and they dismounted for the last portion of the climb.
Rilion passed Nib’s reins to Thea before he knocked at the door. No answer came and with a little persuasion in the form of his boot near the latch, the door came open.
The inside of the shack had seen better days, but the presence of a bed with no mattress and a pantry with bare shelves revealed it had been empty for some time. He surveyed the interior, then stepped back to find somewhere to tie the horses. “There’s an oven of some sort. See if there’s any firewood left inside.”
Thea did as she was told. Had they arrived after nightfall, it would have been too dark to make out the cobwebbed stack of wood in the corner behind the red brick oven. She pulled the logs one at a time to put them in place, mindful of spiders, though the cold made her fingers so clumsy she doubted any hiding pests would be more nimble. She’d just finished the stack when Rilion stepped inside.
“We’ll stay here until morning,” he said. “I have a few cuts and scrapes from that fight and I think we’re far enough from the fortress for me to give them a proper inspection. There are rainwater barrels out back if you want to wash.”
“I’ll be all right. I can help tend your injuries, if you’d like.” She didn’t have a first aid kit, but she knew enough basic care that she thought she could get by. It was one of the things a lady of the house was expected to know, if only to tend the scraped knees of her future children.
“No, thank you. I’ll be all right on my own.” He gave her an awkward sort of smile, then glanced to the door. “Actually, I think I’ll do it outside. Where the light is better. Here, there’s flint and steel in my bag. See if you can get the fire going.” He left his things on the table and then slipped outside with nothing but his water skin.
Thea took the hint. She retrieved what she needed from his bag and set to work getting the fire lit.
By the time he came back inside and closed the door, the fire crackled merrily, but it did nothing to lift the morose mood.
Gil would be back. She refused to believe otherwise. But neither of them spoke of the matter—or anything else—and when she finally spread her bedroll and gave herself over to sleep, the mask she’d always prayed to forget flooded her dreams again.
Low voices woke her in the middle of the night. The fire still burned, though dimly. A new log sat atop the pile, not yet touched by the feeble flames. Rilion’s bedroll on the other side of the shack was empty.
Thea sat upright and listened close. A thump and scrape made her jump and she reached for the handle of her scissors, just in case. Leaving their horses outside made them easy to find.
The door bumped open and Rilion stumbled through with his arm around—
“Gaius,” she gasped as she leaped from her bed.
He grunted a response as she slid forward and posted herself at his other side to help support him. A handful of cuts decorated the dark shirt he’d borrowed from Rilion, but the worst seemed to be an injury to his leg. From the way the fabric clung to his skin, she knew it was in desperate need of attention.
“Good thing we tied the horses out like that,” Rilion said. There weren’t any chairs, so he helped Gil settle on the floor by the fire instead.
“I’m just grateful you left one behind.” A rueful smile tugged at the corners of Gil’s mouth. “It was not my cleanest getaway.”
“It’s a miracle you got away at all.” She tried to shift away, but he caught her and pulled her in to touch her forehead to his. His eyes closed. Her heart skipped a beat.
Don’t look.
She drew back under the guise of inspecting his injury. “This needs to be washed.”
“Laundry, at a time like this?”
“Spare me the jokes,” she muttered. “This could become inflamed.”
Rilion had already produced a small iron pan from his travel supplies and filled it from his water skin. “Won’t give you much, but at least it’ll be warm,” he said as he tucked it into the brick oven beside the fire.
“Do you still have your cloak?” She leaned back to look. He didn’t have his bags with him. Half his knives were missing, too. The sheath for his favorite, the one he kept on his right thigh, was gone. Shed when he’d sustained the injury to that leg, or cut loose during the same event?
“It’s on the saddle,” Gil said.
Rilion strode back to the door. “I’ll get it.”
Thea didn’t know how to begin. She couldn’t very well ask him to remove his pants. Instead, she scooted back and tugged the boot from his foot so she could begin at his ankle.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a murmur.
She didn’t reply, just pulled her scissors from their sheath and cut her way up the leg of his pants, peeling the cloth back a bit at a time. It stuck unpleasantly.
“Thea?”
She couldn’t make herself meet his gaze. Unspoken questions already threatened to choke her. She didn’t need tears, too. New chips in her scissors made them catch and hang and she focused on cutting.
Rilion returned and shut the door against the cold. “A little worse for wear, isn’t it?” He held the green cloak in one hand. The cloth was stained dark.
“It’ll suffice. Bring it here.” Thea held out her hand. She’d exposed the gash in his leg. “By the Light, this could have killed you.”
“And would have, if it had been much deeper,” Gil said.
She took his cloak when Rilion offered it, found an edge, and cut a piece from the fabric. Neither of the men said anything as she retrieved the pan from the oven and dipped the cloth in water.
Bit by bit, she cleaned what she could.
“It’ll need to be sutured,” Rilion said after the extent of the injury became clear. “Can you… you know…” He pantomimed threading a needle.
Thea snorted. “Of course I can.” Not that she had, but sewing an injury shut couldn’t be much harder than running a good seam.
“With magic?” the prince asked hopefully.
“Threadmancy doesn’t work that way.” She wasn’t sure any magic did. “You can’t insert power into something that lives.”
Gil didn’t so much as flinch as she wiped his skin clean. “You don’t have to stitch magic into me. Just push it into the thread and let that do the work. That should be possible, shouldn’t it?”
Thea doubted it. But the wound in his thigh was severe. If he wasn’t seen by a proper medic, she doubted it was something he could survive. There had to be medics in Danesse, but to get there required crossing a mountain. Would he make it that long? “I can try,” she said softly. Her heart cried that she had to. She couldn’t let him fight all this way, only to fall ill with a festering wound after his quest was finally complete.
Rilion provided his water skin for the injury to be rinsed. While she tended that, he dug through her bag. She’d given herself a single, tiny sewing kit, little more than a pouch with a spool of thread and a few pins and needles. It took him time to find it and when he did, he wasn’t impressed.
It would have to be enough.
“See if there’s a little block in my bag, something wrapped with paper,” Thea said as she chose a needle.
“This?” Rilion held it up between two fingers.
She took the wrapped beeswax from his hand and used it to liberally coat her thread. “This may be uncomfortable.”
“More comfortable than being stabbed by a pikeman while mounting a horse, I’d assume,” Gil said.
Despite his confidence, when she started, he flinched.
Rilion clapped a hand to his mouth and groaned in displeasure. “I’ll go get more water.” He snatched his water skin and excused himself from the shack before either of them could chide him for his weak stomach.
Then they were alone.
Thea made stitch after tiny stitch, all without speaking a word.
“You are angry with me,” Gil said softly.
“I don’t care if you killed Lucan.” If she was honest with herself, she was glad. With his death, there was justice for Ashvin.
Just not all of it.
Gil did not reply. Expectation weighted his silence, yet he asked nothing. Of course not; he didn’t need to. He already knew she was upset.
She couldn’t make herself lift her head, couldn’t look him in the eye. Even pushing the question to the tip of her tongue was enough to make her hands tremble.
His fingers brushed her cheek. “Thea, speak to me.”
How could she ask? How could she live without asking? She shook her head and made herself focus. She was supposed to be pushing magic down the needle. She’d forgotten entirely.
“Healing,” she murmured, blinking hard to clear her vision and gathering her strength. She willed power to gather in her chest, to push through her shoulder and down her arm. It prickled, white-hot, as it spilled into the needle between her fingers. “Health, wellness, whole—”
“Thea, please,” Gil pleaded, curving his hand to cradle her face. His other hand rose to join it. His hands were warm, skin callused from all the years he’d spent gripping the hilts of blades. Or the handle of…
She tried to breathe and almost choked on the air, but once she found her voice, the words spilled free like pins strewn across the floor, sharp and small. “Lucan’s headsman,” she gasped. “Were you—Did you—” And then it was tears that choked her, instead.
Understanding dug a furrow in his brow and his thumbs moved to wipe the first tears from her skin. “Yes.”
Everything within her shattered, a million razor-sharp shards of glass to cut her soul to pieces.
No denial. Not even hesitance. Just a simple answer, the brutal truth, the one thing she’d hoped from the beginning might be untrue.
Don’t look.
Why did it matter? She couldn’t see. The needle in her hand was so small it vanished as the first sob racked her shoulders.
Again, Gil’s thumbs stroked her face, sweeping away the only part of her sorrow he held power over. “At the end, I was… the only one he trusted,” he whispered, “and so I have done many things that shame me.”
“My brother,” her voice cracked. “He was all—all I had—” She couldn’t finish. All speaking did was make her cry harder.
He shifted, drawing himself up to his good knee so he could lean forward and wrap his arms around her shoulders, cradle her head so her face was nestled against his neck. “I know my apologies can never be enough, but you have them. I never wanted this, and I am sorry. I am so sorry.”
She wanted to sink into him and let herself be held. His arms should have offered comfort. Instead, they’d torn the last shred of happiness out of her life. She shook her head and pulled away.
He didn’t try to stop her.
Thea wiped her own eyes and strode out the door into the cold night.
Rilion stood beside the horses. He put out a hand and said something, but she pushed past without stopping to see what he wanted.
She didn’t know where she was going, but anywhere was better than this.
