Page 13 of Her Cruel Redemption (The Dark Reflection #3)

Chapter Thirteen

I gingerly touched Rhiandra’s face, gnawing on my lip as I watched her eyes flickering behind her eyelids.

‘It’s alright. Don’t frown. She’s not fever struck. Look, she’s coming out of it now,’ Daethie said, bending a little closer to Rhi’s face with a faint smile. ‘But she could be more careful next time.’

‘There shouldn’t be a next time,’ Elias said. He was standing in the entrance to the tent with his arms folded, strung tight with tension. ‘This can’t happen again. It’s dangerous. She could have hit anyone, any of us, and she was supposed to be keeping her magic hidden.’

I met his eyes. ‘I know. But she was in trouble. I doubt she would have thought she had any other choice.’

The lightning strikes had been loud, and they’d brought our whole party running. Kelvhan had been the first to reach the spot, finding an unconscious Rhiandra lying near an injured Tanathil and our terrified horses. A nearby tree had been smouldering and flames had licked the charred ground where other bolts of magic had struck, but Mae had extinguished them quickly enough as Kelvhan had scooped Rhi off the ground and bought her back to camp. Daethie had checked her for injuries and found nothing, attributing her unconscious state to magic poisoning.

‘Will this happen to her every time she uses it?’ I asked.

Daethie cocked her head to the side and stared into the distance, like she was listening to something far away. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe not. Her body could come to tolerate it better. But when her body is in poor condition from hunger or exhaustion or illness—or travel—she’ll fare worse. The limits will change.’

The sound of heated cursing cut through the stillness from a spot just outside the tent. Rhiandra’s eyes snapped open, and she choked on a gasp, her body going rigid right before her arms started thrashing around. Daethie immediately planted hands on her shoulders and held her down, making soothing noises and quickly murmuring a narration of what had happened as Rhi frantically scanned her surroundings, her gaze falling finally on me. She managed to take a deeper breath and closed her eyes again before letting it out.

‘Are you alright?’ I asked her as she pushed herself into a sitting position.

She pressed a hand to her head. ‘Sensational. Is Tanathil--?’

‘He’ll be fine. Mae is fixing him up.’

‘Did they get anyone else?’

‘No. I think you scared them all off before they had the chance.’

She drew her hand away from her head as another string of venomous insults and curses reached us. ‘Then what’s that?’

‘Goras caught one of them,’ Elias said. ‘He’s tied up outside.’

She raised her eyebrows, peering around Elias as though to catch sight of the prisoner. ‘Have you got any information out of him? We need to know if they were here because they were looking for us, or if they just found us through luck and coincidence.’

‘He’s not willing to talk.’

‘Then make him talk.’

Elias stared at her blankly.

‘We can’t hurt him,’ Deathie said, stroking at her braid nervously. ‘That isn’t what you mean.’

‘Oh you must be joking,’ Rhi muttered, staggering to her feet. I stood with her and caught her when she wobbled, but she shrugged me off. Elias stepped out of her way as she brushed past him, and I followed quickly behind her as she immediately narrowed in on the angry prisoner bound in the boughs and roots of a yarrow tree.

He eyed her as she approached. He was a bristly, hairy man, with a scraggly beard streaked with lines of grey. His expression was wary.

Goras climbed off the log he'd been sitting on to draw closer as Rhi stood before the prisoner and examined him. There was something sharp in her manner that sent a shiver of premonition down my spine, something glittering in her eyes that I didn't know how to describe, something that made me wary.

'So, he hasn't told you anything?' Rhi asked.

'Mostly insulted me,' Goras muttered. She moved closer to the bearded man, slowly raking him with her gaze. He was completely immobilised, with tree roots snaking up his legs and winding around his wrists, holding him with his limbs splayed out.

'What's the matter? Run out of insults?' she asked as she leaned in to examine his face.

'If you're gonna try something on, better be getting around to it soon. I'm getting tired of hanging here,' he replied with a leer. 'But yeh won't, will yeh? Won't bend your principles to draw pain. Not a bunch of Yoxvese purists and a couple of human girls.'

Her hand darted out and caught his shirt front, pulling him closer. 'You talk big for a man without the use of his hands and legs. Why did you attack us?'

He gave an exaggerated shrug. Without warning, Rhi drew her hand back and smacked him hard across the face. I jolted forwards, as though to stop her, as he grunted with the impact, his mouth twisting with hatred.

'Bitch,' he spat.

'Here's how this is going to work,' Rhi said, and the way she spoke set me on edge. There was so much violence in it. 'We’re going to ask you questions. You are going to answer them. If you have trouble answering those questions, then I'll find painful ways to loosen your tongue. Are we clear?'

He continued to glare at he before finally he spat, ‘Clear as glass.'

‘Excellent. Then let’s try this again. Why did you attack us?'

He shrugged. ‘Got lucky I guess. Just happened to stumble across a princess who is supposed to be dead and a queen who soon will be.'

We were silent, the implications falling on us all at once. They had known who they were attacking. They’d been looking for us.

Rhiandra's mouth twitched, and her hand was clenched tightly at her side. ‘Who sent you to find us?'

He sniggered. 'Who do you think sent us?'

With a crack, Rhiandra hit him across the face again, snapping his head back. I launched forwards and caught her wrist before she could do it again. 'Rhi...'

She turned on me. 'What? Do you want to hit him instead?'

'I don't think--'

'No, you don't,' she snapped, yanking her hand away. 'How do you think they found us? How did they know where to look? No one should have known we were on this road. If you had kept quiet, no one would. Now we get to spend the rest of our journey running for our lives.’

‘Then we need to pack up and go,’ I said firmly. ‘Not take out our anger on him.’

‘And you think we can just leave him alive for someone else to find? What a grand idea. He can report on everything he‘s seen and heard and Draven will have even more information to help him hunt us.’

‘Then what do you want to do?’ It took me a moment of holding her gaze to realise what she was implying. ‘We can’t kill him,’ I said, aghast to even say it, hoping she would immediately correct me. That couldn’t be what she was suggesting. She wouldn’t want to kill an unarmed man.

‘What do you think they’ll do to us if they catch us?’ Rhiandra said, her voice low. ‘Do you think they’ll repay your mercy? Do you think mercy is going to win you back a throne and end a war?’

I shrank beneath the burn of her fury, but behind all that rage glittering in her eyes I could sense something more.

Fear.

She was afraid of being caught. Of course she was. I didn’t know what had happened to her in the palace, but of course whatever it had been would make her mad with fear at the thought of winding up back there. Of course it would make her suggest things that were this extreme. ‘I’m not going to be a queen that kills unarmed prisoners just to protect myself,’ I said, my voice wavering. ‘If I was, then I don’t have any right to take back the crown. I’d be just as bad as the man who currently wears it.’

She was shaking her head before I’d finished speaking. ‘But it’s not just your neck you’re risking with your idealism. I’m not—’

‘Rhiandra,’ I said, raising my voice enough to cut her off. She stopped, watched me expectantly. My mouth was dry, but I swallowed down my discomfort. ‘If you’re here, then you’re… under my leadership. You chose to follow me. So that means… I make the decisions.’ I took a steadying breath, trying to hold firm in my resolve. I was giving orders . I had to believe in my right to give them, didn’t I? ‘We are not going to kill this man. We’ll bind him and hide him, and Daethie can give him something to knock him unconscious, so by the time anyone finds him we’ll be long gone.’

She folded her arms, looked me up and down. ‘I see.’ Briefly, a smile flashed across her face. Then it was gone. ‘But someone’s going to have to get their hands a little dirty if we’re going to get you to Oceatold.’ She spun around and smacked the prisoner across the mouth again with a speed and violence that made me flinch. He barely had time to spit a line of blood onto the ground before she grabbed him by that grey-streaked hair and yanked his head back.

‘Does he know we’re here,’ she snarled, ‘or were you just chasing rumours?’

He leered up at her, exposing crooked teeth. ‘I’m looking forward to the Blood King getting his hands on you.’ He sprayed her face with spittle as he spoke. ‘Watching him kill you will be so satisfying .’

Rhiandra flinched, releasing his hair and thrusting him away to hang heavily from his bonds once more. But his eyes didn’t leave her face, narrowing as they searched her, some sort of realisation settling in that widened his mouth.

He started to laugh. I bit my lip as I watched his shoulders shake, bewildered and uncertain of what to do next. Rhiandra seemed just as disoriented by his mirth, standing frozen in place, staring with unblinking eyes.

‘You don’t think he’ll do it,’ he wheezed. ‘You don’t think he could bring himself to do it.’ When he caught his breath again, he had sobered enough to bare his teeth at her. ‘The king would flay you alive after what you’ve done. He’d relish in peeling the skin from your flesh. There’s no mercy in him. Not for anyone, and definitely not for you.’

Rhi seemed to waken from her trance. In a flash of movement, she slammed her hand against his chest. Sparks leapt around her fingers and surged into him.

He screamed.

And then Elias was yanking her backwards, breaking her contact with the prisoner, who continued to spasm, his eyes rolling into the back of his head, before he went limp, hanging heavily against the tree roots binding him. I rushed to him, touching his face gingerly.

‘Daethie,’ I called, and she was by my side in a moment, helping me hold him up so he wasn’t hanging by his arms.

‘He’s alive,’ she murmured. The tree loosened its hold on him, and we lowered him to the ground, leaning him up against the trunk. When I turned on Rhi, she’d shaken Elias off and stood rigid, glittering rage still focused on the prisoner.

‘That was too far.’ My heart pounded as I said the words, as I fronted up to her and held her wild stare. ‘You went too far.’

‘You didn’t say he needed to be unharmed.’ She was panting, her dark hair sticking to the damp of her forehead, and there was something haunted in her eyes as she stared back at me.

I shook my head. ‘Enough. I’ll see him bound and hidden, and then we’re going to get back on the road as quickly as we can manage it.’

She released a shaky breath. ‘Fine,’ she agreed, dropping her gaze to the ground. I was relieved when she walked away from the unconscious man and disappeared into the trees.

‘Are you alright?’ Elias asked, drawing close to me as Goras and Mae dealt with the prisoner, lowering him to the ground to re-bind him. I didn’t know where we’d hide him, whatever I’d said to Rhiandra. I didn’t know how to hide him to make sure he wasn’t found. We would just have to do our best.

‘I just… sometimes she scares me,’ I admitted.

He touched a hand to my back. ‘That makes sense. She can be scary.’

‘I’m not scared of anything she’d do to me,’ I amended quickly, catching the flicker of frustration that passed across his face. ‘But I am scared of what she’d do to protect me. Or to protect herself.’ I tried to force as much confidence into my voice as I could to repair the damage that little admission of my fear had done. I knew the moment I wavered in my conviction to keep Rhiandra with us, to trust her wholeheartedly, our group would fracture, because my faith in her kept the balance of their willingness to trust her. But in that moment, my unease at the violence in her was stronger than my sense.

I could see that he wanted to say something more. He worked his jaw, like he was trying out different words. I was grateful when all he said was, ‘I’ll finish packing up. Let Goras and Kel find a place to hide him. Then we can put as much distance between us and this place as we can before nightfall.’ He placed a kiss to my hair and returned to the tent to begin untying lines and pulling up pegs.

We hid our prisoner in a hollow that Daethie had sung into a tree, packing the opening with branches and foliage until the man within was invisible as well as immobilised by roots that had grown up from the ground to capture his wrists and ankles. By the time that was done, the others had packed up the camp and strapped everything to our horses. We mounted, but didn’t leave yet, sitting still and scanning the surrounding trees, waiting to see if our eighth horse would be going unridden. The lump in my throat threatened tears as I stared at the empty saddle and tried to think of something to stall for a little longer. If she thought leaving was the only way forwards, then so be it. But it still made my heart ache to think she would abandon us, abandon me, after everything we‘d been through together. Abandon me without even saying goodbye.

‘It’ll be getting on to evening soon,’ Gora grunted, head ducked between his broad shoulders as he scowled down at the dirt. ‘We’ll be riding through the night if we wait much longer.’

‘What do you want to do, Gwin?’ Elias asked.

I bit my lip. Swallowed, trying to dislodge that lump in my throat. Delayed a few moments longer by taking a deep breath. ‘Alright,’ I said quietly. ‘We should go.’

As I collected my horse’s reins, the crunching of leaves underfoot warned me someone was approaching. Fear froze me; had the people who’d attacked earlier come back? But that fear quickly turned to relief as I recognised Rhiandra’s figure emerging from the gloom of the underbrush, eyes downcast as she approached. She took her horse’s reins from Mae without a word and swung up into the saddle, though the creature pranced and tossed his head when she did.

‘Nice of you to join us,’ Tanathil said.

‘Glad to see you’re alive,’ she replied. ‘Shall we get going before someone else comes along to change that?’ She shot me a look, and I smiled tentatively. Her answering smile was faint, but still a smile.

‘Let’s go.’ I nudged my horse with my heels, and we were on the move again.