Page 63

Gillian stared at him, as if she hadn’t expected that, when Kit thought it was the most obvious conclusion he had ever seen. “You’re a fighter,” he told her, the words spilling out of him even as he tried to hold them back. But found that he couldn’t anymore. “A survivor. I know; I am one myself. The world tells you that you don’t belong, that you should crawl off somewhere and die, that it doesn’t need you.

“So, you decide that you don’t need it. You make your own world, one that fits you better, with your rules, and bounded by nothing but your drive and talent. That’s what you did when you took up highway robbery, despite knowing that the gibbet awaited you, if you were caught. That’s what you did when you organized a prison break, and freed hundreds of your people from almost certain death. That’s what you did when you dared to speak up against the entire Circle, in front of a queen.

“There are times for gentleness, for kindness, for goodness. These are not those times. Not if they also sap your will to fight. People like us fight or we die. We remake the world in our image, or it crushes us.” He turned her face up to the light, and was amazed that she didn’t see the strength in it, when it was the first thing about her that he’d ever noticed.

“I do not think that it will crush you.”

Chapter Eighteen

Gillian looked into intense brown eyes, and for the first time in a very long time, didn’t see blue. That had been the problem every time she looked at Kit, or at a couple of the other men who used to be in her little band of thieves and who had made their interest known. She’d seen her husband’s eyes instead, staring accusingly back at her.

It was stupid, stupid! She knew it was. Never once had Randall looked at her like that in life.

On the contrary, as wracked with pain as he’d been, he had nonetheless treated her with compassion. He’d tried to lean on her as little as possible, knowing that she was pregnant and vulnerable herself. He had even volunteered to be left behind when the Circle’s men were closing in and his condition slowed the group down.

They had all refused to leave him, even to consider it, despite having to fight off one ambush, and then two. Followed swiftly by a third attack that had almost finished them, causing them to scatter wildly in all directions. And resulted in her being separated from Randall in the firefight that followed.

That might have been the end for them, for they were badly outnumbered. Except that the Circle underestimated her husband, thought he was as good as done for. They had flooded by him as he lay in the dirt, trampling him with their boots as if he was nothing, all while Gillian fought to return to him.

Her clan had held her back, three of them on her, pressing her against the ground in the woods under a cloaking spell, while the Circle thundered by on the trail. She’d stared through the glittery mass of the spell, past trees and leaves, and wanted to scream her hatred to the skies. And then her shock, when the last mage passed, and Randall stood up behind them and uttered his final, powerful curse.

It had been like nothing she’d ever seen, and she’d known what it meant as soon as he spoke it. The others with her were staring in awe at the line of mages, now on fire and shrieking on the path, dozens of them. And those were the lucky ones, the ones too far away to get the main blast.

Those closer were simply gone, like the ground underneath them, lost in a blackened, smoking trench yards deep and lined with ash. As if a bolt of lightning a hundred times more powerful than usual had carved it. But it hadn’t been lightning, although it had stood Gillian’s hair up and crackled around her skin in the same way.

She knew what it had been, and screamed then, when there was no one left to hear. Screamed and ran, fumbling through the trees and skirting the trench, and finally found Randall on the other side. And gathered him in her arms, crying and begging every god she knew, because no wizard was that powerful.

None could be, not even one who had used none of his magic in weeks, his disability crippling him. Not unless he had pulled it all at once, combining it with every other bit of magic in his body, all that was needed for him to live. And flung it outward, in one last, final stand to give his people, his wife, and his child a chance at freedom.

She held him while he writhed in agony, while he gasped, and while he died. And then carried out the funeral with her heart like ice, her lips numb with curses she wanted to speak and didn’t dare. She wanted to throw them at the remaining members of the Circle’s force, to see them writhe and beg and bleed as he had done. Wanted them to know the hell they had visited on a good man, a man who had helped to save the country that they now claimed as theirs.

Wanted it badly enough to be afraid of it, for fear that she would lose herself in hate and never come back.

She had memorialized him instead. Pursued as they were, with reinforcements coming from the surrounding countryside to bolster the Circle’s numbers, she had nonetheless insisted on it, telling the others to go ahead without her. But they had stood with her as they had stood with him, and so it had been done, in defiance of the Circle and their new laws, as her people had stood against the Romans and countless other invaders over the years, who would have subdued and changed them.

She had said the words, conducted the rituals, slaughtered the sheep and ox and placed their fat on the body and around the pyre, along with jars of honey and oil. Had lit the fire and watched it flicker ever higher, a beacon to all their enemies as it had been done on a mountaintop, as tradition required. And the Circle had seen it.

The men of the coven had watched them come, slowing them down as best they could with curses and snares, while she and the other women called Randall’s name, warning the skies that a warrior and a wizard was coming to them this night, and begged them to welcome him and expect him, before wailing their grief in mourning. And, finally, when the flames had leaped so high that it had looked like the mountain itself was erupting, like the world was spewing forth its anger with fire and lava and ash, when the Circle’s men were close enough that the flames had lit up their hateful faces, too—

Her people had spiraled into the skies on broomsticks, riding the lightning flashing across the sky as the Circle had yet to learn how to do.

There had been no one left to pour wine on the smoldering remains of the pyre the next day, no one to collect the bones. But he had been a druid of an age-old coven who had loved the land he had walked on since he was a boy, and where she had brought him back to die. It would take him in, would welcome him, and would see him home.

She knew it would.

But although he had been at peace thereafter, she had not. His child had stirred in her belly as she flew away, and tears and soot had burned her eyes. Not tears of sorrow, but of rage, and a fiery hatred for the Circle that had all but consumed her in the years that followed.

Looking back, it had tainted every good and beautiful thing in her life. When she saw her newborn daughter for the first time, all she had been able to think was that she would have to grow up in a world where the Circle ruled. When she thought about her husband, it wasn’t with memories of the love they had shared, but of the pain with which they’d parted, pain caused by one group.

There had been no love in her life because there was none in her heart, and no room for it with the vengeance that lived there. It had grown with every friend she’d lost; with every injustice she and her people had suffered. Grown and festered, yet quietly, so much so that she hadn’t realized the full extent of it until today.

She had told Kit the truth: Randall wouldn’t have known her, this vengeful person she’d become. She barely recognized herself sometimes. Kit hadn’t meant to, but he’d held up a mirror showing her all the ways that her experiences had scarred her.

And now she wondered, could someone come back from this? From years of hate and bitterness and fear? Could she?

She didn’t know. She had grieved for six long years, and not just for her husband, but for herself. For the life she was supposed to have had and the girl who had been so optimistic and happy, for the future that she’d clung to so hard that, despite everything, she’d been acting like it was still a possibility. As if Randall was just away on an extended trip and would be back any day now.

But he wouldn’t. He was dead, and it was over. And those childish dreams needed to die and be buried, too. Or else what was the future? Growing ever older, lost in a dream that would slowly turn into a nightmare as the years went by and she realized that she might as well have died with him for all the joy she had anymore?