The candle Lucien had ignited sat on a natural stone ledge, and on the floor nearby lay three bedrolls and old blankets, crusted with leaves and cobwebs. A little fire pit lay in the sloped center of the space, the ceiling above it charred.
No one had been here in months. Years.
“I used to stay here while hunting. Before—I left,” he said, examining a dusty, leather-bound book left on the stone ledge beside the candle. He set the tome down with a thump. “It’s just for the night. We’ll find something to eat in the morning.”
I only lifted the closest bedroll and smacked it a few times, leaves and clouds of dust flying off before I laid it upon the ground.
“You truly planned this,” he said at last.
I sat on the bedroll and began sorting through my pack, hauling out the warmer clothes, food, and supplies Alis herself had placed within. “Yes.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
I sniffed at the food, wondering what was laced with faebane. It could be in everything. “It’s too risky to eat,” I admitted, evading his question.
Lucien was having none of it. “I knew. I knew you were lying the moment you unleashed that light in Hybern. My friend at the Dawn Court has the same power—her light is identical. And it does not do whatever horseshit you lied about it doing.”
I shoved my pack off my bedroll. “Then why not tell him? You were his faithful dog in every other sense.”
His eye seemed to simmer. As if being in his own lands set that molten ore inside him rising to the surface, even with the damper on his power. “Glad to see the mask is off, at least.”
Indeed, I let him see it all—didn’t alter or shape my face into anything but coldness.
Lucien snorted. “I didn’t tell him for two reasons. One, it felt like kicking a male already down. I couldn’t take that hope away from him.” I rolled my eyes. “Two,” he snapped, “I knew if I was correct and called you on it, you’d find a way to make sure I never saw her.”
My nails dug into my palms hard enough to hurt, but I remained seated on the bedroll as I bared my teeth at him. “And that’s why you’re here. Not because it’s right and he’s always been wrong, but just so you can get what you think you’re owed.”
“She is my mate and in my enemy’s hands—”
“I’ve made no secret from the start that Elain is safe and cared for.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you.”
“Yes,” I hissed. “You are. Because if I believed for one moment that my sisters were in danger, no High Lord or king would have kept me from going to save them.”
He just shook his head, the candlelight dancing over his hair. “You have the gall to question my priorities regarding Elain—yet what was your motive where I was concerned? Did you plan to spare me from your path of destruction because of any genuine friendship, or simply for fear of what it might do to her?”
I didn’t answer.
“Well? What was your grand plan for me before Ianthe interfered?”
I pulled at a stray thread in the bedroll. “You would have been fine,” was all I said.
“And what about Tamlin? Did you plan to disembowel him before you left and simply not get the chance?”
I ripped the loose thread right out of the bedroll. “I debated it.”
“But?”
“But I think letting his court collapse around him is a better punishment. Certainly longer than an easy death.” I slung off Tamlin’s bandolier of knives, leather scraping against the rough stone floor. “You’re his emissary—surely you realize that slitting his throat, however satisfying, wouldn’t win us many allies in this war.” No, it’d give Hybern too many openings to undermine us.
He crossed his arms. Digging in for a good, long fight. Before he could do just that, I cut in, “I’m tired. And our voices echo. Let’s have it out when it’s not likely to get us caught and killed.”
His gaze was a brand.
But I ignored it as I nestled down on the bedroll, the material reeking of dust and rot. I pulled my cloak over me, but didn’t close my eyes.
I didn’t dare sleep—not when he might very well change his mind. Yet just lying down, not moving, not thinking … Some of the tightness in my body eased.
Lucien blew out the candle and I listened to the sounds of him settling down as well.
“My father will hunt you for taking his power if he finds out,” he said into the frigid dark. “And kill you for learning how to wield it.”
“He can get in line,” was all I said.
My exhaustion was a blanket over my senses as gray light stained the cave walls.
I’d spent most of the night shivering, jolting at every snap and sound in the forest outside, keenly aware of Lucien’s movements on his bedroll.
From his own haggard face as he sat up, I knew he hadn’t slept, either, perhaps wondering if I’d abandon him. Or if his family would find us first. Or mine.
We took each other’s measure.
“What now,” he rasped, scrubbing a broad hand over his face.
Rhys had not come—I had not heard a whisper of him down the bond.
I felt for my magic, but only ashes greeted me. “We head north,” I said. “Until the faebane is out of our systems and we can winnow.” Or I could contact Rhys and the others.
“My father’s court lies due northward. We’ll have to go to the east or west to avoid it.”
“No. East takes us too close to the Summer Court border. And I won’t lose time by going too far west. We go straight north.”
“My father’s sentries will easily spot us.”
“Then we’ll have to remain unseen,” I said, rising.
I dumped the last of the contaminated food from my pack. Let the scavengers have it.
Walking through the woods of the Autumn Court felt like striding inside a jewel box.
Even with all that potentially hunted us now, the colors were so vivid it was an effort not to gawk and gape.
By midmorning, the rime had melted away under the buttery sun to reveal what was suitable for eating. My stomach growled with every step, and Lucien’s red hair gleamed like the leaves above us as he scanned the woods for anything to fill our bellies.
His woods, by blood and law. He was a son of this forest, and here … He looked crafted from it. For it. Even that gold eye.
Lucien eventually stopped at a jade stream wending through a granite-flanked gully, a spot he claimed had once been rich with trout.
I was in the process of constructing a rudimentary fishing pole when he waded into the stream, boots off and pants rolled to his knees, and caught one with his bare hands. He’d tied his hair up, a few strands of it falling into his face as he swooped down again and threw a second trout onto the sandy bank where I’d been trying to find a substitute for fishing twine.
We remained silent as the fish eventually stopped flapping, their sides catching and gleaming with all the colors so bright above us.
Lucien picked them up by their tails, as if he’d done it a thousand times. He might very well have, right here in this stream. “I’ll clean them while you start the fire.” In the daylight, the glow of the flames wouldn’t be noticed. Though the smoke … a necessary risk.
We worked and ate in silence, the crackling fire offering the only conversation.
We hiked north for five days, hardly exchanging a word.
Beron’s seat was so vast it took us three days to enter, pass through, and clear it. Lucien led us through the outskirts, tense at every call and rustle.
The Forest House was a sprawling complex, Lucien informed me during the few times we risked or bothered to speak to each other. It had been built in and around the trees and rocks, and only its uppermost levels were visible above the ground. Below, it tunneled a few levels into the stone. But its sprawl generated its size. You might walk from one end of the House to the other and it would take you half the morning. There were layers and circles of sentries ringing it: in the
trees, on the ground, atop the moss-coated shingles and stones of the House itself.
No enemies approached Beron’s home without his knowledge. None left without his permission.
I knew we’d passed beyond Lucien’s known map of their patrol routes and stations when his shoulders sagged.
Mine were slumped already.
I had barely slept, only letting myself do so when Lucien’s breathing slid into a different, deeper rhythm. I knew I couldn’t keep it up for long, but without the ability to shield, to sense any danger …
I wondered if Rhys was looking for me. If he’d felt the silence.
I should have gotten a message out. Told him I was going and how to find me.
The faebane—that was why the bond had sounded so muffled. Perhaps I should have killed Ianthe outright.
But what was done was done.
I was rubbing at my aching eyes, taking a moment’s rest beneath our new bounty: an apple tree, laden with fat, succulent fruit.
I’d filled my bag with what I could fit inside. Two cores already lay discarded beside me, the sweet rotting scent as lulling as the droning of the bees gorging themselves on fallen apples. A third apple was already primed and poised for eating atop my outstretched legs.
After what the Hybern royals had done, I should have sworn off apples forever, but hunger had always blurred lines for me.
Lucien, sitting a few feet away, chucked his fourth apple into the bushes as I bit into mine. “The farmlands and fields are near,” he announced. “We’ll have to stay out of sight. My father doesn’t pay well for his crops, and the land-workers will earn any extra coin they can.”
“Even selling out the location of one of the High Lord’s sons?”
“Especially that way.”