Page 28

Bracing herself against the early morning chill, Thea eased into some stretches, whimpering at the pain lancing through muscles she didn’t even know existed. If she was ever going to train as a shieldbearer and graduate to a Thezmarrian warrior, she’d need to harden up.

As she ate an apple, she set about readying the horses for departure. Splitting the core between the two beasts, they withstood her clumsily cinching their girths and securing theirbridles. Another lesson learnt from Evander. At least he had been good for something. Now, she remembered their time together with sinking embarrassment. Her eighteen-year-old self had thought the stable master’s apprentice handsome and knowledgeable, but in hindsight, he’d been nothing more than a narrow-minded prat. She still carried a piece of hurt with her, not hurt that it had ended, but that her dreams somehow made her a pariah: unwanted, ugly and ridiculous —

‘You’re awake.’ Hawthorne was striding towards her, one of his swords unsheathed in his hand.

‘Observant of you,’ Thea replied before nodding to his gleaming blade. ‘A little early to be slaying monsters, isn’t it?’

‘I was training,’ he said, voice clipped. ‘A discipline you’re unfamiliar with.’

Thea finished attaching her saddlebags to her mare. ‘I train.’

‘Fumbling in the Bloodwoods while you spy on the shieldbearers is hardly training.’

Thea whirled around. ‘I don’t fumble, and how do you know about that?’

‘Not much goes on in the Bloodwoods that I don’t know about, Alchemist. Your pitiful excuse for a sparring session being the least of it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

‘Not worth my time.’

‘But reporting me for my dagger was?’

The edge to his voice returned when he spoke again. ‘That was different. That dagger didn’t belong to you. You insult and risk all of Thezmarr by wielding it. Not to mention —’

‘Who else saw me in the Bloodwoods?’ Thea asked, changing tact.

‘No one.’

Realisation dawned. ‘Then it was you… You shot the arrow at me!’

Hawthorne mounted his horse in one effortless motion. ‘Figured you needed a warning.’

Thea gaped at him, outraged. ‘You could have killed me.’

‘Not with my aim,’ he said and started forward, his stallion’s tail swishing.

Thea scrambled to mount her mare, muscles protesting. ‘You’re unbelievable,’ she said to him when she caught up.

Hawthorne simply raised a brow at her. ‘You have no idea.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

The day was already long and Thea watched her escort with the same resentful fascination as before. The two great swords sheathed across his back were enormous and, like all Warsword weaponry, forged with Naarvian steel. But since the fall of that kingdom, no new warriors had passed the Great Rite and thus, no new blades had been presented. Was that why Hawthorne had called her dagger sacred?

Thea studied the way he sat in his saddle, how with a subtle movement of his knees, he could steer his horse as though it were an extension of him.

‘Who taught you to ride?’ she asked, deciding that it was an innocent question in the face of all she truly wanted to know.

He actually groaned.

‘This would be a lot less painful if you got over yourself and just answered.’

‘I don’t owe you answers, Alchemist. My only task is to get you to Harenth in one piece, though with the rate you pry, I make no promises on the latter.’

‘Is that a threat?’

‘Is that another question?’