The Heart of Betrayal (The Remnant Chronicles 2)

“I like her, that’s all. And I made promises to her that we’d all get out. We damn well better keep them.”

I nodded. I couldn’t consider any other option.

Orrin blew out a puff, ruffling his straggled hair. “She scares me,” he said, “but I like her too, and hang me, she’s—”

“Don’t say it, Orrin,” I warned.

He sighed. “I know, I know. She’s my future queen.” He went back to the door to watch for the cook.

We caught Jeb up on other details, including the loss of Dalbreck soldiers, the match between me and the Assassin, and how Sven’s face was almost fed to the hogs.

“It was a sealed kettle ready to explode in there,” Sven said. “But it’s safer that she genuinely hates us for now—safer for her and us—especially since Orrin and I are so visible. Let’s keep it that way for a while.” Sven ran his hand along his scarred cheek. “She’s only seventeen?”

I nodded.

“She carries a lot on her shoulders for someone so young.”

“Does she have any other choice?”

Sven shrugged. “Maybe not, but she came close to revealing her hand tonight. I had to shove her back in her chair.”

“You shoved her?” I said.

“Gently,” he explained. “She started across the room to come between you and that Assassin.”

I leaned forward, raking my fingers through my hair. She acted impulsively because I did. The strain was making us both careless.

“Here she comes,” Orrin whispered and sat back on the bench next to me.

The door swung open, and the cook eyed the roomful. She mumbled a curse and plopped down a pair of tongs and a steaming bucket at the end of the bench. She pulled a stack of rags from under her arm and dropped them next to the tongs. “Five layers. Leave it on overnight. Bring back the cloths when you’re done. Clean.”

She pushed back through the door, her charming instructions complete, and we were left with the suffocating fumes of the yellow-green mixture filling the room. Jeb noted that the stench of horse manure was preferable to the poison the cook had brewed. How it would help a wound, I wasn’t sure, but Sven seemed confident. He took a hearty whiff of the putrid substance.

“I’d rather have a dose of your red-eye,” I said.

“So would I,” he said longingly, “but the red-eye’s long gone.” He took great pleasure dipping the pieces of cloth into the hot liquid and placing them over my gash and Orrin’s festering leg wounds.

“For dragging her all the way across the Cam Lanteux, that Assassin seemed none too fond of her tonight,” Sven observed.

“He’s more than fond of her. Trust me,” I said. “He’s just incensed that she agreed to marry the Komizar while he was away. I know she had no choice. The Komizar’s holding something over her—I just don’t know what it is.”

“I know,” Jeb said. “She told me.”

I looked at him, dread flooding through me, waiting.

“You,” he said. “The Komizar said if she didn’t convince everyone that she had embraced the marriage, you’d start losing fingers. Or more. She’s marrying him to save you.”

I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.

For you. Only for you.

I should have known when she added those words to the prayer. They had haunted me ever since she said them.

“Don’t worry, boy, we’ll have her out of here before the wedding.”

“The wedding’s in three days,” I said.

“We’ll be sailing down the river by then.”