Page 14

W e’re to leave within the hour. I rush to gather my things only to find them gone.

My books, my soldad, my dromveske where I’ve also hidden my clasp.

.. I double-check under my bedcovers, behind the woodpile, but there aren’t so many places they could be.

My stomach is falling out through my legs.

I almost died in the banquet hall, but somehow being robbed of my treasures feels more emptying.

I suck in a sharp breath. Nicostratus. I recall the bag slung over his shoulder. My things, were they right under my nose?

Nicostratus has them.

They’ll be looked after. They’ll be safe.

But my stomach doesn’t stop feeling like it’s falling.

I leave the shed to find my teary-eyed aunt and Prins Lief consoling her. When she sees me, she peels away from him, glowing pearly white under the moonlight, and the hold she grabs me in is terrifyingly tight. “I’d go with you. I’d go with you, but... ”

She drops her arms from around me to touch her belly tenderly.

I laugh and hug her warmly. “I’ll use all the skills you’ve taught me to protect the soldiers, who in turn will protect you.”

Prins Lief clears his throat; his wife may worry about me, but he has other quarrels.

I reluctantly move over to him and he hustles me angrily behind the shed, out of Auntie’s view. He pushes me against it, demanding to know how sick his father is; how long he has left.

“A year,” I say. “He’s been told by many healers before me.”

“You made him think there was a chance.”

I bow my head.

He bangs his fist against the shed and curses.

“I tried to extend his life, but this is beyond my ability.”

He bangs his fist again.

“Even a vitalian couldn’t save him.”

“Even? You still think their magic makes them better than you.”

“I thought you were upset about my lying to your father.”

“ Upset? ”

“Angry, then.”

“You’re going to take everything I throw at you?”

“I deserve it.”

He roars. “It was I who forced this mask on you!” His roar breaks into something defeated. “For the sake of scriptions. It is I who harmed him.”

He drops his head, and I steady him before he crumples against the shed. “You sought a better overall outcome,” I murmur, wrapping an arm around his waist and moving him back to my pacing aunt.

She curls an arm around him and kisses his forehead.

Prins Lief murmurs. “There is no winning.”

I swallow hard. Once I believed there was such a thing as clearly defined right and wrong.

Good and bad. Once I threw myself towards the ultimate justice, determined to help forge a better world.

But Prince Lief summarises all my experiences into a punch of reality.

As a healer I know there is no one cure for all.

I know not everyone can be saved. Why do I expect more of my world? More of myself?

There is no way to make everyone happy. Not everyone will be.

Quin’s men, in the mismatched leather of country skjoldmenn, escort me on horseback to Portael.

The town is desolate. I can see the rush of fleeing people in the upturned buckets littering the street, the abandoned fruit and rotting fish left for wildlife, the doors banging in the wind.

I shiver under the moonlight all the way to the edge of town, where tents are pitched and stormblades patrol .

Quin’s horse stops before the guards, and Captain Kjartan strides over. The two men converse and the gates open onto the camp. I’m taken straight to the healer’s tent, where two other alchemists are busy healing, and another is sleeping, preparing to relieve his fellows in a few hours.

I’m to sleep too and help tomorrow.

Except, I can’t sleep. Every time I shut my eyes, I’m back in the banquet hall—on my knees, a blade held to my neck—and he is seated watching, expressionless. I can’t distract myself by diving into my dromveske, because that’s gone. All I’m left with is raw nerves.

I throw back my thin blanket, sneak outside, and find Quin’s tent. The men standing either side of the entrance must recognise me, and they must have been given instructions, because they let me pass.

A single lantern glows on a table, its weak light casting flickers in the darkened tent.

Shadows stretch over leather walls, curling their fingers for me to come deeper inside.

I shiver and shuffle over wet earth towards Quin, slouched on the edge of his cot.

His shoulders are hunched and his forehead rests in the palm of his hand.

He doesn’t move when he hears the sound of my shuffled steps. He knows I’m here.

I drop to my knees before him. Instinctively, I reach for his knee and shakily scroll up into the tight, painful knot in his thigh. I begin to ease out the tension, a familiar rhythm that’s helped him before, but with every press into him, my chest tightens.

His leg stiffens under my fingers, muscle recognising the hiccuppy mess inside me, the heavier dig of my massage. I push deeper, my throat aching, my teeth clenching. I’m pressing too hard. It’s not hard enough. I lift my hands and strike his leg over and over, my vision blurry.

He captures me firmly in his arms, making it impossible for me to continue.

My breathing thickens, making sounds where it hits the flutette, and my eyes sting against his throat.

I try to hit him again but it only thrusts him back against his bed and he takes me with him.

His words shiver through my hair. “Shh. I would never have let him hurt you. I promise. I will keep you safe.”

I clutch his arms and hiccup. “We have to win a war.”

“Then we’ll win it.”

I sink into his hold for a few irregular breaths then pull up, looking at him. “You would have come here without me.”

“Are you upset about being sent here, or upset about almost not being sent here?”

“It’s dangerous. You should always take . . .”

He brushes a damp spot from under my eye and gently raises his brow. “The king’s man?”

We lie there, nose to nose, staring at one another.

At Quin’s slight shift , I swallow and start to scramble off him but he laughs and pulls me back, curling us onto our sides. “Stay. Sleep next to me. I need the strength.”

“You’ll go into battle tomorrow?”

He hums.

“Will you keep up the jarl act? ”

“I can’t have stormblades turning on me and my men.”

“So you won’t use magic?”

“I’ll infuse some into my bow and my sword.”

“How long can your magic last like that?”

“Long enough. It’ll have to be.”

“Why is it so important to be here?”

“When it’s revealed my Lumin soldiers fought alongside the stormblades, protecting them with their lives, King Yngvarr will owe me a public debt. He must seek an alliance with Lumin, and for that, he must back me as the true king.”

“With Skeldar backing, you’ll have enough power to face your uncle?”

“And reclaim my throne.”

“But first you must fight.”

“My brother will be here tomorrow, with our men.”

I close my eyes. “He’ll bring you the strength you need.” Not me.

He bundles me closer, strokes my hair. “Can I have both?”

My lungs deflate and I burrow into his nooks until I can hear the rapid pound of his heart. I can’t leave him here to face the eve of battle on his own. All is fair in war. I find his hand, thread our fingers, and tuck his arm to my chest. Just for tonight.

We’re supposed to sleep, rest before the unknowns morning will bring, but I keep stirring at every worried twist of my stomach, and Quin keeps stroking my hair or rubbing my back or holding me tighter against him.

Each squeeze feels like magic, like a connecting force ties us together.

Its calming and addictive, and soon I’m stirring for more of that strength flowing from him into me.

It must be magic, and yet, he’s using none.

I shift my leg and his breath shudders into my hair, his arms tightening around me more than all the times before, and my own breath hitches at the feel of him, a rigidness that I don’t know what to do with—even though my own responds, flooding me with syrupy heat that feels achy and shivery and ticklish.

Like a different kind of magic that’s linking something emotional with something physical.

I swallow thickly and my hand shakes as I slowly press against his chest and try to move away.

Quin doesn’t let me; he holds me hostage in this thickening feeling and his lips brush my ear. I can feel them curving. “You did once promise you could make that happy, remember?”

The lovelight festival, the restaurant, my na?ve thought he struggled to be physically intimate... I’d thought he’d meant he needed healing...

I flush and something between outrage and mortification slips out of my mouth.

Quin laughs against the sound, stopping it with a press of his warm lips that freezes me mid-shiver. “You were so unbelievable,” he murmurs, “and I was utterly charmed.”

“Quin...” I barely manage to get that out.

He understands what I’m unable to articulate. What I don’t want to do, and must, and he replies. “We go into battle tomorrow. There is no better time. ”

No better time.

I open my mouth and shut it on a mounting pressure to... to confess things, my heart hammering too hard for me to sort through them all. I cast my gaze away and admit something small, something he can take with him, without making promises I won’t be able to keep later.

We go to battle tomorrow . . . what if he . . .

I swallow and slide my fingers under his shirt to curl around his flutette.

He watches me, eyes dark in the silvery shadows of the tent; dark and patient.

I finger each hole of the flutette, my voice unsteady. “In Kastoria, when you wouldn’t wake up, I took this and played music into your mouth.”

His catches his breath and his chest stills. He holds my gaze steady.

I swallow. “I couldn’t bear you not waking up. It was the closest I could let myself come to... kissing you.”

He sighs and strokes the back of my head. “I wish you weren’t just telling me your confessions because you think I’ll die.”