Page 38 of Her Cruel Redemption

We took it in turns on watch, but the only one who seemed to really sleep was Tanathil. He simply curled up in a ball on the floor and was quietly snoring a moment later. Mae dozed for short stretches, her head dropping back against the wall and her eyes closing, but she would always start awake before long. Goras lay down, but shifted his position frequently. I suspected his leg was hurting more than he would let on. I sat upright by Rhiandra’s side, my eyes fixed on the doorway, like I could will it to remain shut if I only stared hard enough.

A hand on my arm gently tugged at me, startling me from my vigil.

‘Come on, you need rest too,’ Elias said, drawing me against him. I went willingly, relieved to thaw a little in the warmth of his arms. He rested his chin on top of my head, breath stirring my hair, and I closed my eyes, releasing a sigh. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘Should I have let Rhi kill that man back in Garlein?’ I asked, so softly only he would hear the words. ‘If I had, could we have avoided that ambush on the bridge? Did Kelvhan die because I couldn’t do what was necessary?’

He didn’t answer immediately, and the rain on the roof continued to fill the silence. ‘I don’t think so. There were others with him who saw us. And he didn’t know we were headed for the bridge. I doubt the ambush was there on his information alone. And even if it was, killing him would have been wrong.’

‘Then was it that family we spoke with on the road?’ I turned so I could look into his face and see his response written in his eyes. ‘I let them know who I was. If I hadn’t done that, maybe no one would have known to be looking for us.’

‘And if you’d stayed in the Living Valley, we wouldn’t have been crossing the bridge, and if you’d never gone to Lee Helse, no one would have known you were alive, and if you’d never taken a chance on the caves when you were stuck in the mountains you never would have made it to the Living Valley in the first place.’ He cupped my face, brushed his thumb across my cheek. ‘Don’t torment yourself like this. You made the best decisions you could with what you knew at the time. And you stuck by your principles. Sometimes, that means hard consequences, but you can hold fast to the fact that you did what you thought was right.’

I nodded, taking the words in, grasping onto them. The best decisions I could with what I knew at the time. ‘Thank you,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I needed to hear that.’

His eyes hardened a little around the edges, and he seemed to go somewhere else for a moment. ‘It used to weigh on my mother,’ he said. ‘The responsibility for making decisions.’

I sat up a little straighter. He’d never mentioned his mother before. ‘It did?’

He hesitated, and I could feel the heaviness of whatever he was holding back. His fingers absently traced a knot in the wood of the floor. ‘She served as an Elder when I was a child. She was the one who’d talk to the nomads and the other races who roam the mountains. So she heard and saw more of human cruelty than most.’ His eyes flickered, a shadow crossing his face. ‘She became fixated on finding ways to defend the mountains without violence, so she started experimenting with magic, pushing it to extremes.’

I felt a shiver run through me, but I remained silent, letting him go on.

‘She discovered a way to drain life instead of nurturing it. And she taught us all to sing it to blight the land. The mountains… the poisoned land around them… the inability to grow food… that was her doing. Well, the initial idea was hers. The push to keep using it over and over wasn’t.’

I could scarcely breathe as I stared at him, the horror of it trickling through me. For all my life, the lands around the Yawn had been struck with Blight. It had meant starvation for many, waves of country people begging in the streets of Lee Helse, people pleading at my father’s throne for help. ‘The Blight… it comes from the Living Valley?’

He nodded, eyes fixed on that knot on the floor. ‘I should have told you sooner.’

I didn’t know what to do with the information. The Yoxvese had been hunted and bled and killed, but there was something so terrible about the Blight. Something so impersonal in the widespread suffering. Or maybe it just seemed so terrible because it was wreaked by my peaceful, nurturing friends. Something terrible in knowing that even they could be cruel when pushed to it. ‘Where’s your mother now?’

‘Dead,’ he said bluntly, looking up. ‘Started taking amaranth. I watched her get sicker and sicker until she was gone completely. She couldn’t live with her decisions, and she let them crush her. Please don’t let that happen to you, Gwin.’ His face softened again. ‘Just make the best decisions you can. You have to let go of what happens afterwards.’

A gasp nearby yanked my attention back to Rhiandra, whose eyes were open, her chest heaving as she scanned her surroundings in a panic.

‘It’s alright,’ I said, grasping her hand and rubbing it between mine. Mae was instantly awake, sliding closer to take her other hand, and nearby Daethie was stirring. Tanathil merely shuddered and slept on. ‘We’re safe. We’re in a barn perhaps half a day’s ride from the border.’

But she was already pushing herself up, pulling her hands free, staggering to her feet. I scrambled up after her, hands out, ready to catch her.

‘We need to leave. Now.’ Not even her voice was steady when she said this. ‘They’ll be looking for us. Our only chance is to make a run for the border.’

‘Wait, just… wait.’ I let out a breath and stood up straighter. ‘We’re not going anywhere while you can barely stand.’

‘I’ll be fine.’ She waved me off, shrugging off my hand as she did so.

‘Maybe. But if you aren’t, then you’ll be a burden to keep safe and conscious. If we leave before you’re ready, you’ll slow us down. And if we meet soldiers on the road, you’ll be a liability. So sit. Have something to eat. And when you’re steady on your feet, we’ll set out.’

For a moment, it seemed like she was going to argue with me. She raised her hand, as though to emphasise whatever she was about to say, but she must have seen at the same moment I did how badly that hand was trembling. She lowered it.

‘Alright,’ she muttered, sinking back to the ground. I picked up the blanket she’d been under and draped it around her shoulders before sitting across from her and picking through a saddle bag to find her some food.

‘You should have gone on already.’ She said the words so quietly. When I looked up, she was staring at the ground. ‘You don’t owe me anything. You could have left me here and gone on without me.’

It made me sad to know she thought we would ever do that, thoughtIwould ever do that. I wanted to say as much, but I had heard the guilt in her words. Saying so would only make her feel guiltier. ‘It’s raining and awful outside,’ I said instead. ‘You made a great excuse to stay dry and warm a little longer.’

She snorted, shot me a smirk. ‘Missing your feathered palace bed?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I sighed, rubbing at a shoulder. ‘I didn’t realise how much I took being comfortable for granted. And being warm. And clean.’

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