Page 22 of Her Cruel Redemption

‘What could you possibly do for them?’ I demanded, yanking at the reins of my horse as he tossed his head. The beast had already thrown me twice, and my tail bone was still bruised. ‘You are one girl. You don’t even have money or a carriage to give them a ride. You aren’t abandoning them, because that would imply that you could do anything for them if you stayed.’

‘I could give them hope,’ she said. ‘I could tell them who I am and they could know that I’m going to try to help them and make everything right.’

‘They can’t eat hope. It won’t keep them warm or return their homes to them. And if you go around telling people who you are, we’ll be caught before we reach the border and then all that hope will have been false anyway. Just keep your head down and try not to draw attention.’

‘Enough,’ Elias interrupted, pulling his horse up on the other side of Gwinellyn’s. ‘There’s no need to be so harsh with her. These are her people and she’s right to be concerned for them.’

Aether’s teeth, was no one going to be realistic about what we were doing? I was fleeing a war-torn country with a bunch of idealists. ‘So long as that concern doesn’t get us caught,’ I shot back. ‘If you can’t prioritise survival over righteousness we’ll never make it to Oceatold.’

Didn’t they know what being caught would mean for them, for Gwin?

Forme?

‘She’s right.’ Mae’s voice of reason joined us from our tail. ‘We need to be careful. And you’ll be no good to anyone if you’re caught, Gwin. But—’ Mae shot me a look ‘—she could have been a little nicer in the way she said it.’

I almost argued back but swallowed the words at the last minute when I saw the misery on Gwinellyn’s face. ‘You’re right. Sorry,’ I muttered, nudging my horse into a trot to pull ahead until I was riding next to the ever-taciturn Goras. It wasn’t Gwinellyn’s fault I was wound up so tight. It was as though I could feelhiseyes on me everywhere out here, like the protective ring of the mountains had been a shield I’d finally shed. I didn’t know if he could use magic to look for me, perhaps magic like the blood stones in my pocket, no matter what Daethie had said about magic-bonded humans being obscured from her attempts to see them. I just wanted to keep moving and get to the border as quickly as possible. It was a danger, me being with them. They should have left me behind. I shouldn’t have let Gwinellyn sweep me up in all her hope and fantasy.

But as I clenched the reins in my fists, I reached for that thrum of static buzzing beneath my skin. Breathing slowly, I loosed just a tendril of it, a tiny spark that flashed between my knuckles, releasing a hit of that metallic, smoky magic smell into the air. The horse jolted, prancing forward a few steps and rearing up, whinnying in distress as I clung on to the saddle, yanking at the reins as I tried to get him under control.

Once he settled down again, I caught Goras looking at me. He quickly glanced away, muttering under his breath.

‘What?’ I demanded.

‘You must stop tugging the reins so hard,’ he said resentfully, as though he was the one wearing the bridle.

‘I do not tug the reins.’

‘Then you squeeze your legs too tight.’

‘Or maybe he is just a flighty death trap and I’d be better off walking,’ I snapped. Goras only grunted in reply. As a collective, my travelling companions were going to drive me mad. But I rubbed my fingers together as my horse walked on with his ears twitching warily. I had the power of revenge sparking at my fingertips. If we wound up in trouble, perhaps I’d only get to mete it out sooner than I’d planned.

Chapter Eleven

Iliked travelling. I liked the easy banter between my friends, liked the rhythm they all fell into when we stopped to make camp for the night, naturally assuming rolls without anyone having to delegate them. Tan and Mae arranging tents, Goras seeing to the horses, Kelvhan rummaging through saddle bags and preparing a meal.

‘Can I help?’ I asked as I knelt next to where Elias was arranging a fire.

‘You could find some more wood. We’ll burn through this in an hour,’ he said as he leaned sticks of kindling into a tower, before taking a few twigs between his thumb and forefinger. In a blink, it sparked into fire, a burst of hungry flames licking at the evening gloom. He fed the burning twigs into the stack of wood, blowing on it until those flames grew, catching and stretching higher, the light flickering across his face, catching in his amber eyes. He flicked his gaze to me, smiling a little impishly when he caught me watching him. ‘Or we can go look together.’

‘Alright,’ I said, rising when he did and trailing after him away from the fire, into the trees. He caught my hand as soon as we were out of sight of the others, and it made my heartbeat quicken, the casual way he’d taken it contrasting with the fact he’d waited until we were out of sight. We walked a while without speaking, and I was so distracted with mapping the way his hand felt in mine that I didn’t even look for any wood. But then, neither did he.

‘I feel like I’ve hardly seen you while we’ve been on the road,’ he said, finally breaking the easy silence.

‘You see me every day,’ I laughed, though there was a thread of nerves running through it. Was he going to ask me about my choice to share a tent with Mae? Maybe to him it seemed strange, when we’d been living in rooms near each other in the Living Valley. But something about the size of a tent, the intimacy of it, gripped me with a sort of panic. I’d always been warned to keep from being alone with men until I was safely married, and even though I’d been alone with Elias plenty of times now… maybe something about leaving the Yawn brought that warning back into focus. But I didn’t want to say that to him. It sounded so stupid, so wary, so…human.

‘But not alone,’ he replied easily, seeming unaware of the way I was knotting up inside. ‘What’s it like for you, to be back among your own people?’

I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed when he chose this subject instead of the one I’d been worrying over. ‘It was easier when I wasn’t,’ I admitted.

‘Why?’

‘I guess everything was simpler in Living Valley. All I seem to feel out here is afraid or guilty.’

He released my hand to climb a fallen tree, before turning back to help me over it. When I reached the top, he stepped down, took a hold of my waist and swung me to the ground. My breath left me for a moment as I steadied myself with my hands on his shoulders, looking up at his warm amber eyes and feeling like I could melt beneath them, like I could turn to molten light.

‘That’s all you feel?’ he asked, that impish smile at the corner of his mouth again.

And when my gaze flickered to it, his expression changed. He skated fingers up the line of my jaw, held me still as he pressed his lips to mine, and it still made my heart stutter the way it had the first time he’d kissed me, made me ache like I wanted more than just that one kiss.

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