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Chapter Fourteen

Guinevere

The Labenda Swamp was humid even in the grip of a Fessuran night, but Guinevere wasn’t sure if it was the swamp, per se, or what had almost happened earlier that was sending spirals of heat through her veins, keeping her awake.

Oskar’s idea of establishing a defensive perimeter had mainly involved setting up their bedrolls on the highest and least wet piece of ground they could find—a small, mossy hill—and stationing Vindicator at the base of it.

They hadn’t lit a fire because it would only serve as a beacon to all sorts of unsavory characters, the mercenaries included.

Supper had been cured meat and wedges of hard cheese, and then Oskar had told her to get some sleep because she was going to take second watch.

Guinevere didn’t have the slightest notion what one did on any order of watch, but she’d gamely agreed. She was determined to pull her own weight.

However, sleep was turning out to be impossible.

It kept looping through her mind—not the attack on the Amber Road, but Oskar nearly kissing her afterward.

He had been about to kiss her, hadn’t he? Guinevere was no stranger to the act. She’d kissed people before—girls in her dance classes, boys at Shimmer Ward parties. She knew what it meant when someone’s eyes darkened, when their breathing quickened, when they leaned in.

But no one had ever looked as good in that state as Oskar. And she had never before wanted it to happen this badly.

How would that even work? Wouldn’t those sharp tusks of his cut her?

Why was she so eager to find out?

She was fidgeting, flushed and uncomfortable in her own skin.

But now that she had all the time in the world to reflect on the day’s events, they caught up with her, and soon her dark little desires had given way to something infinitely more terrible, and then it was the attack on the Amber Road that was looping through her mind.

All the fear of that afternoon’s ambush—the terror that the adrenaline had held at bay—came rushing over her now, with all the force of a breaking dam.

Those mercenaries had popped out of nowhere. One of them had drawn a cutlass on Oskar; another had blown ice at him and walloped him. All while Guinevere had stood uselessly by.

What happened? she asked herself. Why couldn’t I…?

All her life, she had known one thing to be true: the wildfire spirit manifested when she was afraid. Watching Oskar fight for his life, she had felt terror clawing at her throat—but Teinidh hadn’t come.

The one time Guinevere had tried to help, by taking Vindicator’s reins…She felt sick to her stomach as she remembered the crunching of the gnome’s bones beneath the stallion’s hooves. Had she killed someone? Again?

What was in the pearwood trunk? How could her parents have left such a thing in her care?

She clapped a hand over her mouth, gnawing into her palm so she wouldn’t scream.

Her gaze darted to Oskar, sitting a few feet away with his back to her as he kept a watchful eye on their surroundings.

From this angle, he looked like he was holding up the sky.

Shielding her from the world’s dangers despite how tired he must be.

She couldn’t add to his stress. She continued biting down on her despair until at last her exhausted body gave out and she fell into a fitful sleep.

Her father’s name was Illiard. From him she had inherited her head of silver hair. He kept his trimmed short, sideburns connecting it to a platinum mustache. In the firelight, his hair glinted nearly the same color as the dagger he held over her.

Guinevere was wailing. She couldn’t move.

She didn’t like this strange stone room with its odd smells of herbs and offal.

She didn’t like the scrawny, unkempt figure peering impassively at her over her father’s shoulder.

She couldn’t make out the rest of his features—they were muddled by the shadows, by the veil of memory.

But even if they hadn’t been, she would scarcely have noticed him.

Most of her attention was on her father and the sheer desperation on his face.

“It’s the only way, Master Illiard,” murmured the figure. “Do it now, before Accanfal finds—”

And Illiard brought the blade down over his daughter, and Guinevere was screaming—

“Wake up. Guinevere, you have to wake up.”

A deep, solemn voice pierced the fog in her head.

Big hands settled on her shoulders, prompting her to sit up in her bedroll, guiding her out of the darkness.

But she would never be free of it, not completely.

She was still half-asleep when she opened her eyes, the tears that had been welling up behind them now free to spill down her cheeks.

The night was so vast and the banyans so overgrown that she could barely see Oskar crouched beside her.

But she could touch him. Her fingers compulsively traced the ridges and hollows of his face before she snatched them back, the pad of her thumb brushing against the pearly smooth contour of one tusk as she did so.

“You need to go, Oskar,” she told him, still wrapped up in her odd dream, hardly even aware of what she was saying.

There was a name, but she lost it swiftly; it slipped from her grasp like a minnow escaping downstream, leaving uneasy ripples in its wake.

“I can’t…it’s not safe to be with me. There’s something—something in my blood—” Where had that come from?

Was she talking about the wildfire spirit?

She was trying to push him away, but he only held her tighter.

Their faces were so close together that the tip of her nose nudged against his.

He smelled like starlight and autumn wind.

“It was a bad dream,” he said gently, as steady as a rock. “It’s over now. You’re all right.”

“You need to go,” she repeated. Yet she was clinging to him, one hand fisted in his tunic, the other buried in his soft, lovely hair.

“Go to Boroftkrah. I’ve taken you out of your way for long enough.

I’m spoiled, na?ve, and troublesome. I’m sorry.

” Her lips shaped each failing against his jaw. “I’m not worth it. I want you to go.”

She made to pull away. Made to release him. But he curved a muscular arm at the small of her back, keeping her pressed against him.

“You are a little spoiled,” he admitted.

But his tone was gravelly and warm. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“You are incredibly na?ve.” His hand drifted lower, sword-calloused fingers wiping away her tears and sliding down the sensitive skin of her neck, along the silver chain.

One of them rested in the indent between her collarbones, just above her totem.

She shivered. “You are far too troublesome.” The warm hand left her skin, and she nearly cried out in protest, but then it was back, this time tipping up her chin.

“You’re all these things. But, Guinevere—” Her name hitched in his throat.

Her name was a quiet rasp in this place of shadows and water.

“You are also very kind and sweet, and much braver than you give yourself credit for. And you’re so…

” He paused, as though struggling to find the right words.

“You’re so interested in everything,” he whispered at last. “In all that this world has to offer. Your heart is bigger than the Marrow Valley. I don’t think I could leave you if I tried. ”

He sounded distressingly pained for someone listing all her good qualities. Tentative, in a bewildered sort of way. Yet there was nothing tentative about him when he brought his lips down to hers.

And, just like that, Guinevere had her answer to the question of whether his tusks would hurt her. They didn’t. She knew now how their mouths would fit together: Perfectly.