Her Cruel Redemption (The Dark Reflection #3)

Chapter Ten

I abided by Gwinellyn’s request throughout our first days of travel, tucking my magic away and trying not to resent my inability to use it. I itched to use it. I itched to feel that staticky burn in my veins, in my hands. After so many days of long, arduous practice sessions by that lake, it felt wrong to go back to acting as though it didn’t exist. And the longer we travelled, the more persistent that feeling became.

The day after our night in Cotus’s cabin we found one of those bedraggled little villages just beyond the foothills of the mountains where people scratched out a life on the edge of danger, with the threat of the creatures in the Yawn always hanging over them, and their soil constantly riddled with blight. Gwinellyn and I were the ones who went into the village in search of horses; we weren’t willing to test the Yoxvese abilities to disguise themselves as human while we were still so close to the Yawn. They weren’t something I trusted to hold up under close scrutiny. They had varying success with playing with light and shadow to change their appearances, hiding their pointed ears and rounding their faces, but they still didn’t look quite… right. I got a queer feeling if I stared at them too closely for too long. It was nothing like the flawless, glowing glamour I’d once worn. I longed for it, especially when we were moving through a town. Not because people stared at my scars, but mostly because they didn’t see me at all. Gazes didn’t cling to me as I walked by anymore.

The villagers weren’t rich with horses—it seemed they were in short supply in war time, but we were able to purchase enough scraggly nags with the money the Elders had given us, although we had to search a few villages before we had one for everyone. We travelled quicker on horseback, but I hated riding. Didn’t trust the scruffy bay beast I’d been given, no matter how many blisters he saved me.

We slept on the road for the most part, trying to avoid spending extended amounts of time in the villages and towns we passed through. We slept in cramped little tents that hardly fit two people each. I’d hated them on sight. Hated the size, the lack of privacy, the way the dew seeped through them. When we’d camped our first night on the road, I’d stared at them in disbelief after they’d been set up, bitterly contemplating how far I’d fallen from the palace bed I’d flung myself across so long ago.

‘Who is sleeping where?’ I’d asked, which for some reason had made Gwinellyn stiffen up like an ice shard had been jabbed down her collar. I didn’t know why; I was going to be the one no one wanted to share a tent with. But while she’d been chewing her lip over her response, Daethie had surprised me by sidling up next to me.

‘We can share, if you’d like,’ she’d murmured, smiling that funny, vague smile of hers.

‘Alright,’ I’d immediately agreed, feeling a tiny lick of relief that I wouldn’t be left awkwardly lumped with Tanathil, who was sweet enough to tolerate me but also hummed and talked incessantly. Especially since Gwinellyn would surely be sharing with Elias. Well, that’s what I’d assumed. When she’d blurted a hasty, giddy offer to share with Mae a moment later, her discomfort began to make more sense, and I was reminded of how young she really was. I hoped she’d be able to hide that naivete when we made it to Oceatold.

The lands we passed through were flooded with people, the roads crammed with them. Carriages and wagons and horses passed us constantly, carrying travel-weary wanderers clutching all their worldly belongings in carpet bags and crates, hollow-eyed children crying ceaselessly for the constant rattling of the road to end. We travelled slowly, avoided the makeshift camps set up alongside the roads where these folk congregated, circling wagons around campfires in the dirt.

Gwinellyn’s face grew more and more drawn the more people we saw.

‘I’ve abandoned them,’ she whispered to me one afternoon as we watched a small family pushing a wheelbarrow down the road, two children trawling along behind on foot. ‘They’re fleeing the war, aren’t they? I can’t sneak off to Oceatold and leave them all.’

‘What could you possibly do for them?’ I demanded, yanking at the reins of my horse as he tossed his head. The beast had already thrown me twice, and my tail bone was still bruised. ‘You are one girl. You don’t even have money or a carriage to give them a ride. You aren’t abandoning them, because that would imply that you could do anything for them if you stayed.’

‘I could give them hope,’ she said. ‘I could tell them who I am and they could know that I’m going to try to help them and make everything right.’

‘They can’t eat hope. It won’t keep them warm or return their homes to them. And if you go around telling people who you are, we’ll be caught before we reach the border and then all that hope will have been false anyway. Just keep your head down and try not to draw attention.’

‘Enough,’ Elias interrupted, pulling his horse up on the other side of Gwinellyn’s. ‘There’s no need to be so harsh with her. These are her people and she’s right to be concerned for them.’

Aether’s teeth, was no one going to be realistic about what we were doing? I was fleeing a war-torn country with a bunch of idealists. ‘So long as that concern doesn’t get us caught,’ I shot back. ‘If you can’t prioritise survival over righteousness we’ll never make it to Oceatold.’

Didn’t they know what being caught would mean for them, for Gwin?

For me ?

‘She’s right.’ Mae’s voice of reason joined us from our tail. ‘We need to be careful. And you’ll be no good to anyone if you’re caught, Gwin. But—’ Mae shot me a look ‘—she could have been a little nicer in the way she said it.’

I almost argued back but swallowed the words at the last minute when I saw the misery on Gwinellyn’s face. ‘You’re right. Sorry,’ I muttered, nudging my horse into a trot to pull ahead until I was riding next to the ever-taciturn Goras. It wasn’t Gwinellyn’s fault I was wound up so tight. It was as though I could feel his eyes on me everywhere out here, like the protective ring of the mountains had been a shield I’d finally shed. I didn’t know if he could use magic to look for me, perhaps magic like the blood stones in my pocket, no matter what Daethie had said about magic-bonded humans being obscured from her attempts to see them. I just wanted to keep moving and get to the border as quickly as possible. It was a danger, me being with them. They should have left me behind. I shouldn’t have let Gwinellyn sweep me up in all her hope and fantasy.

But as I clenched the reins in my fists, I reached for that thrum of static buzzing beneath my skin. Breathing slowly, I loosed just a tendril of it, a tiny spark that flashed between my knuckles, releasing a hit of that metallic, smoky magic smell into the air. The horse jolted, prancing forward a few steps and rearing up, whinnying in distress as I clung on to the saddle, yanking at the reins as I tried to get him under control.

Once he settled down again, I caught Goras looking at me. He quickly glanced away, muttering under his breath.

‘What?’ I demanded.

‘You must stop tugging the reins so hard,’ he said resentfully, as though he was the one wearing the bridle.

‘I do not tug the reins.’

‘Then you squeeze your legs too tight.’

‘Or maybe he is just a flighty death trap and I’d be better off walking,’ I snapped. Goras only grunted in reply. As a collective, my travelling companions were going to drive me mad. But I rubbed my fingers together as my horse walked on with his ears twitching warily. I had the power of revenge sparking at my fingertips. If we wound up in trouble, perhaps I’d only get to mete it out sooner than I’d planned.