Page 50

As the warm glow of the dying fire flickered, she felt the fear in her grow a little bigger.

Had the rope stolen her magic?

Had it eaten it up?

She choked back a strange sound that wanted to escape from her throat and rocked a little, comforting herself.

Although what comfort could she find in movement?

Even in her darkest days; hungry, thirsty, wishing for just a glimpse of blue sky, she had had her magic in Herron’s dungeons.

It had been her only companion. Her only hope.

She was bereft without it.

Behind her, a horse stamped its hoof, and in front of her, the wood feeding the fire collapsed into coals.

Time was passing, and she had less than a hand’s length of rope finished.

Sometimes, when she embroidered, she hummed. It helped the magic.

She couldn’t risk humming aloud, but she forced herself to remember a song and sing it in her head as she worked.

And she thought of regaining her strength, of healing her spirit of the terrible damage she felt that the rope had inflicted on her.

But as the fire died, leaving her in deeper and deeper shadow, she lost the thread of the song more times than she cared to count, and her thoughts scattered, fear and loss and missing Luc and fear again spinning through her head instead of thoughts of strength and health.

Her eyes drooped and she jerked awake many times. The rope slid through her limp fingers to the ground often, and she had to unbraid it and redo it to keep it neat.

When the old man woke with a hacking cough just as dawn broke, she still had a short piece of unbraided hair left.

He looked at her, surprised, as he stood, scratching his stomach under his rough cotton shirt, and then he staggered off behind the horses to relieve himself.

While he was gone, terror at the lack of time left spurred her to finish the last bit. She wrapped one end around her waist, looping the bag across her chest and stuffing the rest into it.

It wasn’t as long as the other rope, but as most of it would be in the bag, she wasn’t worried about that. She was only concerned that it wouldn’t look exactly like the one she’d burned.

The one way to keep Sirna’s eyes from focusing too much on the rope was to make sure he found her where he expected to find her, so she staggered to her feet, almost crying out at the shooting pain of pins and needles in her legs from sitting for so long in one place.

She limped to the hay bed and found it was dew-covered and cold.

She forced herself to lie back down in it, and lay, shivering, waiting for the sun’s rays to touch her and warm her a little.

When it finally did, she closed her eyes against their bright light and let herself fall into exhausted sleep.

Chapter 13

Luc saw the smoke first, rising above the trees, black against the pale blue of the autumn morning sky.

He rose up and twisted in his saddle, giving a short, sharp whistle to warn the rest of the unit.

As they’d moved closer and closer to the Jatan border, he’d taken front scout duty more and more.

Of everyone, he was the one with the most protections. Not that anyone knew that. They kept arguing he needed to be protected for the negotiations with the Jatan.

Massi suspected Ava was a spell caster, but Ava had never openly admitted it to her, and even so, Massi’s suspicions hadn’t stretched as far as thinking Luc was covered in her spells.

But he was.