Page 21 of Her Cruel Redemption

‘Don’t test it yet,’ Goas replied. ‘Wait.’

I wasn’t about to argue with that. We waited as the light changed, shifting into late afternoon, before finally venturing out, creeping back into the open one by one. I ducked my head as I stepped back through the crevice, remembering too well those leathery wings that could still descend on us from above.

Gwin stepped out of the opening behind me, peering at the surrounding trees. ‘They look gone.’

Elias was a breath behind her, so close he could have been her shadow. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘If they catch wind of us, they’ll give chase again. We’d better move fast and find this cabin. There’ll be more than leozaurs hunting us if we’re out after nightfall.’

We reached Cotus’s cabin well after nightfall, as it turned out, after a tense walk filled with little of the laughter or talking from earlier in the day. Everyone was twitchy, ready to jump at a shadow or the rustling of wind in the trees, especially when dusk came swooping through the mountains. But even with that ominous warning about what else might be hunting us after nightfall, there had been little to do but walk on.

So the sight of the derelict little cabin was sweet relief. It looked even more neglected than when I’d stayed there with Cotus on my first journey into the Yawn. The roof had slumped further to one side and looked to be kept from falling only by the stranglehold of the vines creeping all over the place. But it had walls and a door, and we piled into that little room, cramming the floor with the thickly-woven blankets that would be serving as our bedrolls. When that was done, I drifted outside while the others tried to set a fire and scrounge together something to eat. It felt odd, being here again. It was too easy to remember my powerless desperation, running into the Yawn to beg Baba Yaga to help me find a way around my deal with Draven. I stared up at the cold stars and wondered where he was. Imagined the moment I would see him again. Imagined the thrill of revealing to him how the balance of power had shifted.

Gwin come out of the cabin to stand beside me, nursing the distinct air of someone about to have an uncomfortable conversation.

‘Rhiandra,’ she began, tone apologetic.

I shot her a sidelong glance. ‘Gwinellyn.’

‘What happened back there… with the magic… we’re all a little worried about you.’

‘I’m not going mad,’ I said immediately. ‘I just wanted whoever thought Baba Yaga’s cottage was theirs to claim to realise it wasn’t.’

‘I’m not saying you’re going mad.’ She embraced the pause that followed this statement for far too long. I wondered what she meant me to read into it. Thatshewasn’t saying I was going mad, but the others were? That she wasn’t saying I was going madyet?‘But I would like you to promise you won’t use your magic again before we reach Oceatold.’

‘And why should I promise that?’

‘Well, for a few reasons. One being that I don’t want it drawing attention to us, which is a reason I know you’ll understand. Another is that it would be better for our enemies not to know about your magic because then they can’t plan for it if we need to use it to our advantage. A third is that, well, it’s really scary.’ She laughed as she added this last piece, which was well-handled on her part. I considered her reasoning, acknowledging that it was sound, even if I didn’t like what it meant for me. I understood the need to be discrete as we moved through the land as much as anyone.

‘Alright,’ I said. ‘You know I’m not enough of an idiot to go flinging it about willy nilly out there, though, right? You don’t need to scold me like a naughty child.’

‘I know that.’

We stood for another few minutes just watching those icy, glinting stars. Then a low, yipping howl stuttered through the air, and the wind picked up, so cold it seemed to be touched with the snow off the mountain tops.

‘Let’s go in,’ Gwin suggested, chaffing at her arms. ‘I’m exhausted.’

As we turned to go inside, I stole one last look at the stars, feeling their cold, indifferent light prickling against my skin. The howl lingered in my ears, low and haunting, as if some ancient part of the land itself were stirring. For just a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of movement far off in the shadows beyond the cabin. A trick of the dim light, I told myself as I shut the door behind us.

Chapter Ten

Iabided by Gwinellyn’s request throughout our first days of travel, tucking my magic away and trying not to resent my inability to use it. Iitchedto use it. I itched to feel that staticky burn in my veins, in my hands. After so many days of long, arduous practice sessions by that lake, it felt wrong to go back to acting as though it didn’t exist. And the longer we travelled, the more persistent that feeling became.

The day after our night in Cotus’s cabin we found one of those bedraggled little villages just beyond the foothills of the mountains where people scratched out a life on the edge of danger, with the threat of the creatures in the Yawn always hanging over them, and their soil constantly riddled with blight. Gwinellyn and I were the ones who went into the village in search of horses; we weren’t willing to test the Yoxvese abilities to disguise themselves as human while we were still so close to the Yawn. They weren’t something I trusted to hold up under close scrutiny. They had varying success with playing with light and shadow to change their appearances, hiding their pointed ears and rounding their faces, but they still didn’t look quite… right. I got a queer feeling if I stared at them too closely for too long. It was nothing like the flawless, glowing glamour I’d once worn. I longed for it, especially when we were moving through a town. Not because people stared at my scars, but mostly because they didn’t see me at all. Gazes didn’t cling to me as I walked by anymore.

The villagers weren’t rich with horses—it seemed they were in short supply in war time, but we were able to purchase enough scraggly nags with the money the Elders had given us, although we had to search a few villages before we had one for everyone. We travelled quicker on horseback, but I hated riding. Didn’t trust the scruffy bay beast I’d been given, no matter how many blisters he saved me.

We slept on the road for the most part, trying to avoid spending extended amounts of time in the villages and towns we passed through. We slept in cramped little tents that hardly fit two people each. I’d hated them on sight. Hated the size, the lack of privacy, the way the dew seeped through them. When we’d camped our first night on the road, I’d stared at them in disbelief after they’d been set up, bitterly contemplating how far I’d fallen from the palace bed I’d flung myself across so long ago.

‘Who is sleeping where?’ I’d asked, which for some reason had made Gwinellyn stiffen up like an ice shard had been jabbed down her collar. I didn’t know why;Iwas going to be the one no one wanted to share a tent with. But while she’d been chewing her lip over her response, Daethie had surprised me by sidling up next to me.

‘We can share, if you’d like,’ she’d murmured, smiling that funny, vague smile of hers.

‘Alright,’ I’d immediately agreed, feeling a tiny lick of relief that I wouldn’t be left awkwardly lumped with Tanathil, who was sweet enough to tolerate me but also hummed and talked incessantly. Especially since Gwinellyn would surely be sharing with Elias. Well, that’s what I’d assumed. When she’d blurted a hasty, giddy offer to share with Mae a moment later, her discomfort began to make more sense, and I was reminded of how young she really was. I hoped she’d be able to hide that naivete when we made it to Oceatold.

The lands we passed through were flooded with people, the roads crammed with them. Carriages and wagons and horses passed us constantly, carrying travel-weary wanderers clutching all their worldly belongings in carpet bags and crates, hollow-eyed children crying ceaselessly for the constant rattling of the road to end. We travelled slowly, avoided the makeshift camps set up alongside the roads where these folk congregated, circling wagons around campfires in the dirt.

Gwinellyn’s face grew more and more drawn the more people we saw.

‘I’ve abandoned them,’ she whispered to me one afternoon as we watched a small family pushing a wheelbarrow down the road, two children trawling along behind on foot. ‘They’re fleeing the war, aren’t they? I can’t sneak off to Oceatold and leave them all.’

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