“I was a political embarrassment? A challenge? A curiosity?”
“Yes!” he snapped. “You were all those things! A challenge and an embarrassment! At first. But then—”
“What if you hadn’t found Princess Arabella at all? What if you’d only found me, a tavern maid named Lia?”
“Then I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be in Terravin kissing the most infuriating girl I ever laid my eyes on, and not even two kingdoms could tear me away.” He stepped closer and hesitantly cradled my face in his hands. “But the fact is, I came for you, Lia, no matter who or what you are, and I don’t care what mistakes I made or what mistakes you made. I’d make every single one again, if that was the only way to be with you.”
His eyes sparked with frustration. “I want to explain everything. I want to spend a lifetime with you making up for the lies I told, but right now we don’t have time. They could be back for either of us any minute. We have to get our stories straight and make our plans.”
A lifetime. My thoughts turned liquid, the warmth of the word lifetime flooding through me. The hopes and dreams that I had painfully pushed away surged once more. Of course, he was right. What was most important was to figure out what we were going to do. I couldn’t stand to watch him die too. The deaths of Walther and Greta and a whole company of men were already too much to bear.
“I have help coming,” he said, already moving on. “We just have to hold out until they get here.” He was confident, sure of himself the way a prince might be. Or a well-trained soldier. How had I not seen this side of him before? His troops were coming.
“How many?” I asked.
“Four.”
I felt my hopes rise. “Four thousand?”
His expression sobered. “No. Four.”
“You mean four hundred?”
He shook his head.
“Four? Total?” I repeated.
“Lia, I know how it sounds, but trust me, these four—they’re the best.”
My hope fell as quickly as it had sprung. Four hundred soldiers couldn’t get us out of here, much less four. I wasn’t able to hide my skept
icism, and a weak laugh escaped my lips. I circled the small room, shaking my head. “We’re trapped here on this side of a raging river with thousands of people who hate us. What can four people do?”
“Six,” he corrected. “With you and me, there are six.” His voice was plaintive, and when he stepped toward me, he winced, holding his ribs.
“What happened?” I asked. “They’ve hurt you.”
“Just a little gift from the guards. They’re not fond of Dalbreck swine. They made sure I understood that. Several times.” He held his side, taking a slow shallow breath. “They’re only bruises. I’m all right.”
“No,” I said. “You’re obviously not.” I pushed away his hand and pulled up his shirt. Even in the dim light, I could see the purple bruises that covered his ribs. I recalculated the odds. Five against thousands. I dragged the stool over and made him sit, then ripped strips from my already shredded skirt. I carefully began wrapping his middle to stabilize his movement. I was reminded of the scars on Kaden’s back. These people were savages. “You shouldn’t have come, Rafe. This is my problem. I brought it on when I—”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Stop worrying. I’ve taken worse tumbles on my horse, and this is nothing compared to what you’ve been through.” He reached out and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry, Lia. They told me about your brother.”
The bitterness rolled up in my throat again. There were things I never thought would happen, much less have to witness. Watching my brother be slaughtered right before my eyes was the worst of them. I drew my hand away, wiping it on my tattered skirt. It felt wrong to have the warmth of Rafe’s hands on my fingertips when I spoke of Walther, who lay cold in the ground. “You mean they laughed about my brother. I listened to them on the road for five days, gloating over how easily they fell.”
“They said you buried them. All of them.”
I stared at the weak beams of light filtering through the slits, trying to see anything but Walther’s sightless eyes staring into the sky and my fingers closing them for the last time. “I wish you could have known him,” I said. “My brother was going to be a great king one day. He was kind and patient in all ways, and he believed in me the way no one else did. He—” I turned to face Rafe. “He rode with a company of thirty-two—the strongest, bravest soldiers of Morrighan. I watched every one of them die. They were outnumbered five to one. It was a massacre.”
The protective curtain I had drawn around myself was torn away, and sickening heat crawled over my skin. I smelled the sweat of their bodies. Pieces of bodies. I had gathered them all so nothing was left for the animals, then dropped to my knees thirty-three times to pray. My words spilled loose, bleeding from somewhere inside, thirty-three cries for mercy, thirty-three good-byes. And then the earth, soaked with their blood, swallowed them up, practiced, and they were gone. This was not the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.
“Lia?”
I looked at Rafe. Tall and strong like my brother. Confident like my brother. He had only four coming. How much more could I face losing?
“Yes,” I answered. “I buried them all.”
He reached out and pulled me to his side. I sat on the straw next to him. “We can do this,” he said. “We just have to buy time until my men get here.”