Page 34 of Her Cruel Redemption (The Dark Reflection #3)

Chapter Thirty-Four

I paced between the tents where the ground was already turning slushy with footprints of the hundreds of soldiers camped here, watching the tree line. It had been a while since the last couple of Port Howl’s soldiers had appeared; they’d been dishevelled, wet with rain, and nursing injuries from the battle they’d lost a few days ago. They were all being checked over by the team of physicians and nurses Daethie had made herself such an integral component of, and as far as I’d heard there’d been no sign they’d been tortured or treated unusually badly. But that didn’t mean Leela wouldn’t have been. She’d been his captive for months . What version of her would be walking through those trees? What if he’d taken his revenge on her when he couldn’t get at me? How would I live with myself if she had suffered because I’d abandoned her to his mercy?

And where was she?

Finally, I spotted a lone figure picking their way through the trees. A figure in skirts instead of trousers.

My breath caught, and then I ran to her. My heart was in my mouth, so big and thumping so fast I could barely breathe around it. I collided with her and wrapped my arms around her, hugging her tight, my eyes squeezed shut, relief pumping through my whole body.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I shouldn’t have left you.’

She rubbed my back. ‘It’s alright.’ And the sound of her soft, familiar voice, so full of compassion and empty of resentment, sent some of those tears spilling down my cheeks. I swiped them away as I released her, pulling back, turning her this way and that to examine her. She was bright eyed, clear skinned, well-groomed and healthy-looking enough, dressed in a thick cloak with a hood lined with soft brown fur.

‘Are you alright?’ I asked, because I needed to hear her say it.

‘I am.’ She smiled. ‘Especially now that I‘ve seen you and know you’re alright.’

‘I’d hoped you’d made it out of Lee Helse. When I heard you were a prisoner—'

‘You did what you had to do,’ she said firmly. ‘You got Princess Gwinellyn away.’

Her ready understanding didn’t make me feel any better, but there seemed little point in lingering on yet another of my litany of wrongs. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of this rain. The mess tent will likely give us something hot to drink.’

Not long after, we were settled at a table in the mess tent, both clutching hot cups of tea. It was between meal times, so there weren’t many others around, which served me just fine. As soon as Esario and the council knew Leela had been returned, they would want to interrogate her. I wanted her to myself before they swept in to steal her away.

‘When were you caught?’ I asked her as I warmed my hands on my mug.

‘Before I even realised you’d run.’

‘Where did they keep you?’

‘In the palace. I had a suite of rooms all to myself, actually. No chores or work to do, just lots of milling around trying to occupy myself. I read a lot. It would have been lovely if it weren’t for the guards at the door keeping me from leaving.’ Her tone was so light, her smile careless, but it made me even more anxious. Was she trying to hide the horror of her imprisonment behind her levity? What was she not telling me?

Taking a deep breath, I braced myself to ask the next question. ‘Did he hurt you?’

She scanned my face, some of the levity falling away. She seemed almost reluctant to answer me. And she didn’t ask me who I meant. ‘No.’

I stared at her, as though I could see behind her unruffled facade if I stared hard enough. ‘Not at all?’

She steadily held my gaze. ‘He mostly asked me questions.’

‘Then he used magic to compel you to answer them.’

‘No. Though I think he often wanted to.’

‘What sort of questions?’

Again, she hesitated as if she didn’t want to answer. ‘Well, mostly he asked about you.’

I burned my mouth taking a gulp of too-hot tea, and it scorched all the way down my throat, hitting my stomach in a blaze of warmth. When I set the mug back on the table, I stared at its murky surface. What had he asked her? What had she said? Why hadn’t he tortured her? It would have been such an easy vengeance to wreak on me. She’d been right there, completely at his mercy, and he knew she mattered to me or he wouldn’t have offered her in exchange for my attending the negotiation.

‘So you essentially lounged around in a fancy room for a few months and the only torture he subjected you to was conversation?’ I summarised, because surely that couldn’t be it.

‘Yes. He had tea with me every day.’

I frowned. Was she joking? Was that code for something else?

‘Don’t look so puzzled, I mean exactly that.’ She blew on her drink, then sipped it. ‘But I think my days of tea drinking are perhaps less interesting than what you’ve been doing since Lee Helse. Will you tell me what led you to fighting with Oceatold’s army?’

‘That’s a long story.’

‘My drink is hot. I’ve got time.’

‘What have you heard?’

‘Some wild things. That Princess Gwinellyn is fighting to retake the throne.’ She sipped her tea again. ‘That you’ve joined her in that fight.’

‘Then you already know most of it.’

She cocked her head slightly to the side. ‘I have a feeling that’s not quite true. And I’ll beg your pardon for the imprudence, ma’am, but I’ve been held prisoner for months on the crime of being your handmaid. I think you owe me the full story.’

I laughed softly. ‘Well, as it turns out you were just lounging around and, I’m quoting you here, drinking tea…’ Then I sighed, gathering the story together around me. I told her of what had happened at Lee Helse the night I’d fled, of Gwinellyn’s sudden appearance in the palace and my decision to jump on the back of a wyvern with her and hide her away in the Yawn. Of the connections she’d made with the Yoxvese and my decision to follow her to Oceatold. I didn’t tell her of my part in Gwinellyn’s disappearance from the palace in the first place, though. I was sure she’d already guessed I had a hand in it by now anyway. She listened without speaking, her expression as mild and unruffled as it ever was.

When I’d finished speaking, she was quiet for a while, carefully sipping her tea. ‘Where did the scars come from?’ she asked after a few minutes. There was sympathy in her eyes as she said it, but for some reason it didn’t bother me the way it did when I saw it in anyone else’s. For a moment, I let myself feel that sympathy, let it soothe that angry, raw part of me that couldn’t come to terms with what had happened to me, the part of me that was still screaming as they held my face to the flames.

‘I had them before I knew you,’ I said.

She nodded slowly, gaze flicking over me, understanding clearing her eyes. ‘ That’s what he had over you.’

‘He gave me a way to hide them.’

‘It was the mirror, wasn’t it? The one in the cabinet you wanted specially made. I found it shattered in your room before I was taken prisoner. The whole room smelt like magic.’

I huffed. ‘You’re far too sharp for your own good.’

‘I’m sure plenty have said the same of you.’

Reaching across the table, I took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m so glad to have you back.’

A warm smile creased her eyes. ‘Thank you for caring enough to pay the price to get me back.’ The smile softened a little, becoming sad as something else seemed to occur to her. ‘What did he ask of you?’

‘That I attend the negotiations.’ I released her hand, sat back in my chair. ‘Just another power play. He likes forcing me to comply with whatever he wants. As if it wasn’t enough to start a war and chase me into Oceatold. ’ She was looking at me strangely, frowning now. ‘What?’ I asked, wary of her scrutiny.

‘What’s your plan?’ The frown scored lines around her mouth and pale eyes. ‘You’re going to march on Port Howl with the Oceatold army, and then what?’

‘What do you mean?’

She leaned forwards, elbows on the table, hands clenched together around her mug. ‘What will you do when you have to confront your husband?’

‘Kill him,’ I said immediately. ‘And he’s not my husband anymore. He never really was. He’s a liar and a fiend and he’s going to pay for all he’s done.’

Her eyes flickered as they scanned my face. She looked like she was chewing on something she wanted to say, and I waited for her to spit it out. But after a moment, she just sat back and finished the rest of her tea. Before I could ask her any other questions, Lord Faucher came gusting into the tent, watery eyes immediately picking us out.

‘Here you are!’ he puffed, approaching us in all his bluster, casting his attention over Leela. ‘This is the handmaid, then? The one who was held prisoner?’

‘Her name is Leela,’ I said through my teeth. Leela raised her brows at me, looking faintly amused by my reaction.

‘Yes, yes, she must come with me. King Esario wants to speak with her.’

‘Then you can look Leela in the eye, ask her if she would mind speaking with the king, and if she would please follow you when she’s finished her tea.’

His brow crumpled in consternation. ‘If she would… well of course she must speak with him! It isn’t a matter of—’

‘Faucher,’ I snapped, cutting him off as I jabbed a finger back at the opening to the mess tent. ‘Go and stand over there. She’ll join you if and when she’s ready.’

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, but the formation of words seemed beyond his capabilities. I flicked my fingers, and after a moment he turned—perhaps to hide how bright red his face had gone—and lumbered back to the entrance to the tent.

‘That wasn’t necessary,’ Leela said quietly.

‘Oh, it was. I’m not playing nice with the powerful men of Oceatold and Brimordia anymore. I have the advantage of scaring the pants off most of them now, so I don’t need to. I tell you, Leela, magic is far better than a crown for that. You’ve no idea.’

‘Magic,’ she repeated, her voice hushed. ‘What he told me is true?’

‘As true as—’ I paused mid-sentence, registering what she said. ‘Draven told you about my magic?’ And now I was scanning her face for something different, because the idea that any of their interactions had ever been a two-way conversation had never occurred to me. My vision of her imprisonment being months of dungeon-dwelling torment and interrogation was shifting far more drastically than I could wrap my head around. ‘He… told you things about me too? He didn’t just sit and fire questions at you?’

‘Not often. But when he had news of you, he realised I’d want to hear it.’ She seemed to read my confusion, adding, ‘You get to know someone a little when they visit you every day. Even when they’re your captor, you can’t help but connect in one way or another. It’s human nature to try to understand each other.’

‘Right,’ I muttered, still not quite able to grapple with this new picture she’d painted in my mind: Leela and Draven in some brightly lit salon, sipping from floral teacups and talking about me .

‘So, the magic,’ Leela prompted. ‘Can you really wield lightning?’

A sharp smile stole the confusion as I responded with a wave of satisfaction. ‘Yes.’

Her answering smile mirrored my own, the excitement gleaming in her eyes reminding me what had drawn us to each other in the first place. For all her calm manners and rationality, Leela had offered me her services as a maid because she’d admired my ambition and she had plenty of her own.

‘That’s something I want to see,’ she said. But then she glanced over at Faucher, who was shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other as he seemed to be working himself up to approach us in a second attempt at delivering Esario’s demand. ‘But for now, I think I’d better go and speak with the king of Oceatold.’ She tipped her mug, swallowing down the last of her tea before rising to her feet. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

I watched her follow Faucher out of the tent and wondered what Esario would ask her. If she’d spoken with Draven every day, surely she’d have information to offer, perhaps on his plans, his state of mind. Would Gwinellyn want to speak with her? Would she confirm the accusations the girl had made in our last conversation? That Draven and I had been… I couldn’t apply the word lovers to what we’d been. Even if I had, for perhaps a moment—just long enough for it to hurt—believed myself in love with him.

I sipped my tea without tasting it, considering whether I should go with them to hear what she would say. But I didn’t make a move, just clutched that mug as it grew steadily colder and other people trickled into the tent for food and hot drinks of their own to stave off the weather. Soon, we would march on Port Howl, and then it surely wouldn’t matter what Leela had to report. It wouldn’t matter how much tea she’d drunk with Draven, or how much Gwinellyn suspected of our history, or how long that moment by the door had lasted as he’d slid his hand onto my hip. We would march on Port Howl, and this hideous thing between us would end.

One way or another.