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‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Thea replied, her words hard.

Wren cleared her throat. ‘What are you going to do?’ There was no mistaking the fear in her voice, or the disgust.

‘Interrogate the bastard,’ Torj told her matter-of-factly.

The monster recoiled, his broken body twitching on the ground. He rasped, choking on his own blood while he scanned their faces madly. When his wide-eyed gaze met Wilder’s, his expression flared in recognition.

‘Please —’ he groaned.

And Wilder thrust his sword through the monster’s heart.

The creature rasped a final breath and looked at Wilder, not with pain or shock, but with relief.

‘What the fuck, Hawthorne?’ Torj shouted, shoving him away.

Wilder didn’t budge, staring at the poor creature before them. ‘He had nothing to tell us.’

‘Horseshit,’ Torj snapped. ‘He could have given us information on the unit heading for Tver, he could have —’

‘No, he couldn’t have.’

‘How do you know that? You speak to two of them at Harenth and now you’re suddenly a fucking expert?’

‘Yes,’ Wilder said simply, withdrawing his sword from the half-wraith’s corpse and wiping the red blood on the grass.

All the while, he could feel Thea’s eyes on him.

She’d noticed him flinch as the creature hit the ground. He wondered if she’d seen the recognition between them too…

‘Do you think someone is sending them after us?’ she asked, brows knitted together.

‘It certainly looked like it,’ Torj replied thoughtfully. ‘It was heading right for us.’

‘Burn it,’ Wilder said to no one in particular, sheathing his sword at his back and leading Biscuit away from the corpse. His stallion had been unsettled since leaving the ship… Was that how long the creature had followed them? How hadn’t Wilder seen him? Had he been trying to relay a message? Wilder had been so wrapped up in thoughts of Thea that he’d let his guard down, his keen observation skills lost in worry for her. It wasn’t the first time…

He passed a hand over his face with a quiet groan of frustration. There was no way he’d heard the end of this from Torj, and he knew Thea was simply biding her time before she attempted to corner him. She knew he was keeping things from her. And if there was one thing he knew about Thea, it was that she didn’t give up easily.

He rode ahead, putting some much-needed distance between himself and the others, his mind aflame with everything he knew and didn’t know. He felt sick, the gratitude in the half-wraith’s eyes flashing before him. He had known he wasn’t going to make it, his body too broken to put back together, the pain too great. Wilder couldn’t bear the thought of more agony inflicted upon him before he drifted off with Enovius. Had the wraith been quicker, he might have escaped with his life, and Wilder still wasn’t sure what that would have meant.

The acrid scent of burning flesh tickled his nostrils and he glanced back to see a thick column of smoke drifting up into the afternoon sky. The others had done as he’d bid, at least.

Wilder waited on the crest of a ridge for them to catch up. No one spoke to him as they did.Probably for the best, he tried to convince himself.

‘We ride till nightfall,’ he commanded.

Though Torj was the more senior of the two Warswords, he didn’t object. Perhaps he didn’t trust himself to speak after Wilder had already undermined his authority.

The company rode in silence for what felt like the longest time. Usually, Wilder likedthe silence; preferred it, in fact. But these past few months, with Thea by his side, with Torj and now the rest of their crew slowly weaselling their way between the cracks in his armour… All the silence did now was remind him of his failings. And there were many.

Malik, Talemir, Thea…Perhaps the midrealms themselves… All suffering because of him. When the quiet grew too loud, he was transported back there, to each one of those moments he’d failed the people he loved most. Malik thrown against the rocks at Islaton, talons piercing Talemir’s flesh and reaching for his heart, the same happening to Thea in the Bloodwoods…

‘Stop!’

Wren’s urgent voice pulled him from the spiral of flashbacks and he almost sighed with relief. She was jumping down from her saddle without so much as an ounce of her sister’s grace.

‘What is it?’ Thea called, halting her own horse alongside the other, frowning.

‘If she needs to relieve herself, how about we give her some privacy?’ Wilder said, starting away.