Page 83 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

I shook my head, suppressing a bout of nausea.

“Then why does this feel like one of your sick power games?”

He exhaled sharply with annoyance but replied to me levelly: “I don’t know, Ren. Whydoesit feel like one of my sick power games?”

A fresh gust of freezing wind assaulted us, and I wrapped my arms around myself.

“Because I’m so used to you being able to cope with anything that it didn’t even occur to me you may have limits.”

Einar chuckled sardonically, as if to dispute my observations. It was the first time I had seen him smile in three days, and it was over before I knew it.

“It feels like you’re just testing me. To see how far I’ll go for you.” I met his gaze and held it firmly.

“And if I am?” he asked, his voice colder than the wind that continued to burn on my exposed skin. “Does that change anything?”

For a moment, I pondered his question in silence. The tip of my nose and my earlobes were numb, and I breathed into my hands to warm them up.

“It does,” I finally replied. “Because if I’m going to do it, I want to be clear on what I’m doing it for.”

He straightened up, his lower lip curling with admiration.

“And are you going to do it?”

“For you? Yes. But let’s not pretend that it’s for Finlay.”

Later that night, I disentangled myself from the covers of our bed and Einar’s embrace. I wore nothing but his T-shirt, and my teeth began to chatter immediately. It was a full moon, and we hadn’t pulled the curtains, so luckily it wasn’t completely dark in the room. I put my trousers on, not bothering with socks or underwear. I tied my hair. Then I picked up my bow and the one quiver of arrows I always kept nearby. Scarcely breathing, I walked carefully on my tiptoes, willing the floor not to creak beneath me.

Crossing the street as if in a daze, almost unsure whether I was awake or dreaming, I soon found myself unlocking the door to the room where Fin was confined. I closed it behind me carefully. Thankfully, the hotel had clearly been refurbished in the not-too-distant past, and the door jambs were well oiled and silent.

The curtains were also pulled there, which meant I wouldn’t need to light the candle I had brought. Finlay was asleep but twitched and jerked restlessly as if he were having a nightmare. I nocked an arrow. I couldn’t pause, I couldn’t hesitate, or else I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it. I aimed, straightening.

Finlay’s eyes opened. Nothing but a brief look of surprise registered on his face, barely perceptible in the dim light.

Knowing I was seconds away from his screams of protest, I released the arrow, focusing only on the movement of my fingers. On the physical act of letting the arrow fly and nothing more. The strings’ vibration ran through me, reverberated from my fingertips, spreading through my whole body.

The tentative silence lasted precisely until the first choked sob clawed its way out of my throat.

PART IV

28

NO LONGER A PERSON

Iwas weightlessly relaxed, suspended momentarily in the warm, cosy state between sleep and wakefulness. I became aware that I had rolled over to Einar’s vacated side of the bed; the pillow and the sheet held faint traces of his male scent and a vague hint of sensual saltiness, a reminder of last night. I stretched my limbs and wrapped the covers tighter around my body. Einar had gone hunting early in the morning with Albert and Russ, kissing me goodbye before leaving. I looked forward to his return, imagining that he would join me in bed again, his body warm despite the cold outside, smelling of snow and exertion.

Then I finally noticed a disturbance in my comfortable limbo, the one that was annoyingly pulling me out of my pleasant, boneless state. Knocking on the door. A voice calling my name.

“Be right there,” I shouted in response, opening my eyes.

“Let me in, Ren, it’s freezing,” said Dave’s muffled voice.

And suddenly I was wide awake. I jumped up and rushed in the direction of the door, only to realise halfway there that I was, in fact, naked, having fallen asleep in Einar’s embrace the night before, too drained and satisfied to put any clothes back on. Cursing under my breath, I pulled my nightshirt on. Stillextracting my hair from beneath its collar, I finally opened the door.

“What the hell are you wearing?!” Dave asked instead of a greeting.

“Uhm, it used to belong to the lady who lived here,” I explained. “She probably was a bit bigger than me and older, but it’s warm ...”

“Looks awful, darling.”