Page 57 of Till Death

Thea hugged Quill. “What happened?”

“She’s hurt,” I answered, never taking my gaze from the Huntress.

She pulled a trembling hand from her side, revealing a deep gash in her abdomen, dark red blood seeping out. “It’s just a scratch.”

“Careful, you sound as ridiculous as Orin.”

I pulled my blade and ripped a long strip into a blanket I’d found under the bench seat. Though she cursed her the entire time, she let Thea tie the wound.

Hollis steered the cart around the two cities while Paesha sat with her hand pressed into her stomach quietly. We had to make sure we weren’t followed, though the minutes ticked by achingly slow. Each foot, each block its own victory and torment.

Several passes of wary soldiers marched through the Silbath streets just off the Silk Road. When Hollis jerked to a stop, I wrapped my hand around the only weapon I had left and said a silent prayer as Althea forced Quill under the bench seat and used her soot-stained apron to cover the child.

“If he looks in here,” I whispered, grabbing Thea’s hand, “do not try to use magic.”

Paesha’s faint voice was hardly a sound at all. “They will know, Maiden.”

And she was right. Two dead guards had sealed my fate. If Icharius Fern wasn’t already furious with me, I’d just slighted him for a second time and left the bodies to prove it.

Hollis’s nervous laughter from the front seat, where he likely gripped the reins like his life depended on it, filled the night air with palpable tension. But no guard came. We lurched forward, and the sound of the horses’ hooves clacking down the cobblestone streets carried us all the way north with no more delays.

Paesha could barely stand by the time we made it to the front door. Still, Elowen rushed forward, falling to her knees in front of Quill and hugging her before she ever laid eyes on the Huntress. But once she did, she sank further. Defeated. “If the members of this house do not stop getting shredded to pieces, we’re going to have to build a hospital next.”

If the dark circles below her eyes could be used as measurement, she hadn’t slept, and the sleeping tonic I’d given her was likely its own form of torture to her mind at this point. But she was direct, calling orders and forcing Paesha onto the couch.

“What happened?” The gravel of Orin’s sleepy voice melted down my spine as he came from behind me.

“We had to get the kid,” Paesha said, forcing a smile.

“Get her from whom?” he asked with a grimace, immediately taking Quill’s hand.

“The new king,” the child said quietly. “But Paesha and the Maiden saved me.”

“She’s family, right?” Paesha said, weakly.

He pushed past me as if I weren’t there at all, kneeling beside the Huntress as he took her hand. “She’s family.” He kissed her fingers, and the golden band around my wrist throbbed. I couldn’t watch him love her while he was married to me, but I also couldn’t look away. Had I missed a deeper connection between them?

“Looks like you lost the fight, P,” he said, moving his fingers over her fresh stitches.

“Elowen says the blade cut something internally. She’s supposed to dance tomorrow night,” Thea said, bringing a cup of something warm to Paesha.

Orin swiped Paesha’s sweaty brown hair from her forehead. “Did you go on the boss’s orders?”

She shook her head.

He sighed. “At least it was only a soldier’s blade. Drexel can find a new dancer for a week. You’ll be better before you know it.”

Her eyes flashed to me and back to him. I could see the way she fought with her words, though it took me a bit to put it all together.

My chest tightened, forcing the gasp. “It wasn’t a guard’s blade. It was mine.”

Chapter 25

“Orin.” Thea’s voice was low in warning. “She?—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he growled, hand gripping my throat as he held me pinned to the wall. Those eyes that held thunder and lightning and all things malevolent burned into me until I knew the depths of his fury intimately. “This is why she can’t be left to roam free.”

“I will cut the skin from your balls if you don’t get your godsdamned hands off of me and stop speaking about me like I’m not a person.”