Page 42 of Her Cruel Redemption (The Dark Reflection #3)

Chapter Forty-Two

T he sight of the wounded laid out in rows weighed heavily on me. Every time I stepped through the entrance of the medical tent, I had to pause and catch my breath.

I had thought fighting for my crown would be righteous, that my drive to end the blood trade would make the suffering worth it. But when I was confronted with the bandages and burns and the tossing bodies of the wounded, it was hard to remember that.

It was worse because I hadn’t been down there with them. I’d stood far above the battlefield and watched as the injured and dying were carried back to camp, watched flaming arrows fly, watched men doused in oil and set alight. Some of them were refugees from Brimordia, men who had lined up to fight alongside the Oceatold army because I had asked it of them.

And then I’d watched lightning tear through the sky, spearing down into fighters below without prejudice. I’d watched the storm gather and spin, watched the echoing flashes spread all the way to the horizon.

That was the moment I truly questioned whether coming to Oceatold had been a mistake.

‘There you are.’

I was drawn back out of my grave reflections by the sound of Elias’s voice, and I turned to find him approaching with a smile creasing amber eyes that were shadowed with exhaustion. He had a cloth slung over his shoulder and was carrying a basin under one arm, and the scent of crushed herbs and something faintly metallic clung to him as he came to stand beside me.

‘I’ve been worried about you,’ he said. His voice was lighter than the weight pressing on my chest, but there was something careful about it. Like he knew I was standing at the edge of something dangerous.

‘I don’t know why. I didn’t do anything worth worrying over,’ I muttered, casting my gaze down. Gently, he crooked a finger beneath my chin, tilting my face back up. He scanned my eyes, frowning, before placing the basin on a nearby table and taking my hand. ‘Come on.’

He led me outside, and we found a log that had been dragged beneath a tree. Curls of wood littered the ground where someone must have perched to whittle something, and I instantly pictured a young father carving toy animals for the children waiting for him to return home. My heart sank lower.

We sat side-by-side and I stared down at our laced hands until he nudged me lightly.

‘I can read your feelings, but not your mind,’ he prompted gently. ‘What’s going on in your head that’s making you feel so low?’

‘I wanted to claim the Brimordian throne,’ I murmured. ‘I didn’t want this.’

Elias was silent for a long moment, and then, softer, ‘War was always going to be ugly, Gwin.’

‘I know.’ The words felt hollow. I did know. I'd known when I'd sought the alliance with Oceatold, when I'd promised to lend my support to driving the invaders from these shores. But knowing something and seeing it were not the same. Feeling the weight of it settle in my chest, sinking deeper with every injured man dragged back to camp, was something else entirely. I had set this in motion. I had made my choices, and now the only way out was forward. ‘I should have been down there with them.’

‘I wasn’t down there with them. Does that make my contribution any less valuable?’

My gaze darted up. ‘No, of course not, that’s not what I’m saying.’ The sadness that had seeped throughout my whole body only deepened at the sight of the warmth in his eyes. ‘But this isn’t your fight,’ I continued. ‘You didn’t send men to their deaths while you waited here, safe and sound.’

‘Isn’t it my fight?’ He squeezed my hand. ‘Aren’t I the reason you’re here in the first place?’

I opened my mouth. Closed it again.

‘You didn’t want to take the throne until you realised you could help us,’ he continued. ‘So maybe you’ve asked your people to fight for you, but we asked you to fight for us. And you are fighting, but some fights aren’t fought on a battlefield. If I’d been down there with them, I’d have been completely useless. I know what my strengths are, and they aren’t with a sword as my weapon. I’m fighting here, where I’m easing the suffering of people who are as much my enemy as those on the other side of that wall.’

Of course. I hadn’t even thought about how tending to the wounded while shadowed with illusion and hiding who he was would be for him. ‘Are you alright with doing that?’

He sat back and rolled his shoulders, stretching out his neck. ‘I have to be.’ His voice was quiet, but steady. ‘There’s no use wasting energy on whether I like it or not. They need healing. That’s all that matters.’

‘That doesn’t mean it’s easy.’

He let out a short, humourless laugh. ‘No. It’s not.’ His amber eyes flickered, the light catching the gold in them, making them gleam like embers. ‘But they bleed the same as I do. Hurt the same as I do. That’s what I have to hold onto.’

I swallowed, looking away. My gaze drifted back over the camp, where soldiers sat in clusters, speaking in hushed voices. ‘If this is your fight too, I think I need to ask more of you.’

‘Alright,’ he said after a moment, wariness creeping into his expression while he waited for me to explain.

I didn’t want to ask this. But I was asking plenty of things I didn’t want to these days. I couldn’t expect so many of my countrymen to make sacrifices without asking the same of my friends. ‘We were outmatched yesterday,’ I said. ‘We have a new strategy for the next confrontation, but if it fails again and we take the kind of losses we did yesterday, we’ll lose any hope of winning. I think… I think you need to be part of our new strategy to balance the odds.’

‘Part of it in what way?’

‘Back before we reached Oceatold, you told me that your people were the ones responsible for the Blight on the lands around the Yawn.’

‘I did.’

‘Would it be possible to do the same here?’

‘You want us to blight the land?’

‘I was thinking more the people. Specifically, the soldiers in Port Howl.’

He released my hand, and his unease filled the space between us, solidifying it. ‘It’s possible.’

I had to wrestle with the desire to back away from the request, drop it, apoligise. It was too important a request to allow my reluctance to ask anything of him to impede it. ‘Then would you do it?’

He didn’t reply immediately. The silence stretched.

‘Not a blight,’ he said finally. ‘I won’t use magic to make people sick.’

I sat back, slumping, anticipating the backlash from Dovegni and Esario.

‘But we could perhaps make them sleep,’ he added, wrenching my eyes back from where they had been stuck to the ground. ‘I’m not sure how deeply, or how many we could affect. But inducing sleep is something often done with young ones who struggle, so it’s not a difficult skill. If we used the same technique we would use in a blight with a different song, we might be able to at least reach the soldiers on watch at the gate. Would that be enough?’

I nodded, thinking. ‘Anything that could help us get that gate open is worth trying.’ If the gate watch weren’t alert, and Rhi’s attack on the harbor was drawing attention there, all we needed was to get someone into the city to open the gate. Though, at the thought of Rhiandra, some of my hope turned to unease. Yesterday she had been told not to use magic, and it had ended in chaos. Now we were building a strategy that gave her permission to use it, and I had no idea what that might unleash. But I didn’t see how to justify leaving any weapon off the table now that so many lives had already been lost. If we didn’t do whatever necessary to drive the invaders from Port Howl, all that sacrifice would have been for nothing.

As though I had summoned her with my thoughts, Rhiandra appeared in my line of sight. She looked distracted, her gaze vacant as she walked with arms wrapped tight around her, her dark hair blowing round her in wild snarls. The pants she had come to insist on wearing were still so strange to me, such a clash with the elaborate, striking facade she had always presented when she was at court in Lee Helse. She was not the same woman she had been then. I wasn’t even sure if she was the same woman she had been on the road to Oceatold. I was still grappling with the realisation of her lies, still unsure of how to interact with her now. But even so… I was worried about her.

And then she looked up, saw me, and whatever had been tormenting her fell away, perhaps packed behind a shield she would never let me see beyond. Her steps lengthened, her arms fell to her sides and her eyes sharpened as she beelined for us.

‘Have you asked him?’ she said immediately.

‘Asked me what?’ Elias replied, glancing between us. Then he sighed. ‘This was her idea.’

‘No, it was mine,’ I protested. ‘We spoke about it beforehand.’

‘And I’ve just spotted Mae, so we can sort out that part too,’ Rhi said, staring over our heads and waving a hand.

A moment later, Mae had joined us, her spiral curls freed from their headscarf to bounce around her face. Like everyone else, she looked exhausted, her eyes shadowed. ‘Gwin,’ she said, breathless, as if she’d been searching for me. Her gaze flicked briefly to Elias, then Rhi, back to me, taking in my expression. ‘What’s wrong?’

Rhiandra didn’t waste time. ‘Orym is still inside the city, isn’t she?’

‘Orym?’ Mae’s posture stiffened immediately. ‘I think so. I… I think I saw her yesterday.’ Pain rippled her brow.

‘We need to get someone inside Port Howl. The gate is our best chance of turning this battle in our favour, but we need a way in. If you can get Orym to meet with you, then that person might be you.’

For a long moment, Mae said nothing. Then, ‘No. Orym’s not stupid. She’d never agree to that.’

‘She’ll agree if it’s you,’ Rhiandra said. ‘If you tell her what she wants to hear.’

Silence stretched between them. Mae’s hands curled into fists.

‘You want me to lie to her,’ she said finally.

‘Yes.’

Mae laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘You think it’s that simple? Orym and I—’ She cut herself off, jaw tightening. ‘She isn’t just some enemy officer I can manipulate. She—’

‘You have history,’ Rhiandra said, voice firm. ‘She’s already snuck into the Living Valley for you. She won’t ignore you.’

‘And you want me to use that to betray her?’

Rhiandra didn’t flinch. ‘I want you to use it to get that gate open.’

Mae exhaled sharply, looking away. ‘She won’t forgive me.’

‘She doesn’t have to,’ Rhiandra said. ‘She just has to believe you long enough to let you inside.’

Mae swallowed, her throat working. When she looked back at us, there was something raw in her expression. ‘Isn’t there another way?’

Rhi held her gaze, her face stern. ‘A lot of soldiers died trying another way yesterday.’

Mae let out another breath, then nodded, just once. ‘Alright. I’ll try. I can’t promise anything, but… I’ll try.’

‘Good.’ There was no sympathy in that single word, and I studied Rhi carefully, remembering our last conversation. Remembering the magnetic energy I’d seen in that negotiating room, two people unable to look away from each other, leaning towards each other like the table between them was all that was keeping them from colliding as they unmasked and inflamed each other in a way it seemed no one else could. Perhaps she would have no sympathy for Mae’s dilemma. She had already betrayed her own lover for this cause, after all.

Mae’s mouth pressed into a thin line. ‘If that’s all you wanted me for, I’m actually looking for Tanathil.’ She held herself rigid as she walked away. I thought about calling her back, but what would I say? That I was sorry she had to do this? Would that make a difference?

Elias exhaled softly beside me, but Rhi showed no sign of unease. If anything, she looked impatient, already turning her thoughts to the next step.

‘She’ll get it done,’ she said.

I wasn’t sure if she was reassuring me or herself.

A gust of wind curled through the camp, stirring the puddles of water left from the recent storm, and in the distance, the sea murmured against the shore.

The city gates were still locked. The enemy was still inside.

But the plan had been set in motion.

And there was no turning back now.