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Chapter 24

When she awoke, she was on a bedroll inside a large tent, covered in a thick blanket. Daylight crept in through seams in the canvas. She was alone.

She looked around the tent uneasily. She must have been dead asleep, to have been carried off Changa and tucked into the bedding without ever waking up. Someone had removed her boots and coat and placed them by the door of the tent.

Slowly she sat up, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. Her sense of unease persisted. She didn’t know where she was or where Nero had gone.

Just as she began to get up to look outside, the tent flap lifted. She squinted in the sudden light.

Nero stood in the doorway. He quickly dropped the flap when she shaded her eyes against the brightness. “You’re awake.”

She stared at him, her eyes still stinging from the light. She might have been delirious, but with the light framing him, he had looked like a kind spirit sent by the gods. Like something too beautiful and good for this plane.

Even when he came closer, he looked only slightly less magnificent. He crouched in front of her, his dark brows knitted. “How do you feel?”

She hesitated, inexplicably ashamed. She felt awful. Every part of her was in pain.

Why was it that admitting to being treated badly always felt shameful? Why should she feel ashamed because of something someone else did to her?

“I am alive,” she said eventually. “So I am grateful.”

The muscles in Nero’s brow and jaw tensed. He was furious, she realized, but he was trying not to show it. Perhaps he didn’t want her to think he was angry at her.

He’d given her some things to eat and drink on their journey here, but he thrust more into her hands now. He knelt beside her silently as she ate, which she appreciated. She had expected him to ask questions. The period of quiet allowed her time to calm herself and gather her thoughts.

“Who did this?” he asked finally.

She glanced up at him, swallowing tightly. “Theron, of course.”

“He was the one who beat you?”

A flash of that shame again. “Yes.”

“Why?”

She hesitated again. Nero’s lips turned downward. He looked like he knew the answer and was afraid to hear her speak it.

“He found out that I hid you,” she said, and Nero’s face flooded with guilt. She added, “I think he had disliked me for a while. It was only a matter of time.”

“You can stay here,” he said. “You’ll be safe here. This will not happen again.”

Zara’s heart clenched. “Where is here?”

“My home, for now.”

Her eyebrows lifted. His home. The Varai hideout. One of the places the Paladins had been trying to find for the better part of a year. And he’d brought her here.

He held out a hand to her. “I understand if you don’t want to be here. I will take you wherever you want to go, except back to that village.”

Her heart clenched again, so hard that it hurt. A lump rose in her throat. She took his hand. A smile cracked through his perpetual frown, and he curled his fingers around hers.

He pulled her to her feet, and she winced. Unfolding her legs hurt. Putting weight on her feet hurt. Moving hurt.

He held open the tent flap for her as she pulled on her boots and stepped outside. It was foggy and cold. She guessed they were somewhere high in the mountains. They were in a small meadow surrounded by a natural wall of rock, almost like a caldera. The way it was arranged, you would not be able to see it from the outside.

“This is where you have been hiding from the Paladins,” Zara said, awed by the simple effectiveness of it. She had no idea how they’d found this place. It was no wonder no one else had found them.

She followed Nero across the meadow. There were a few other tents, and a fire pit with some seats around it, but there were no other people in sight, to her relief. He headed toward a high, narrow crack in the wall—the entrance to a tunnel in the mountain.