Page 89 of Her Cruel Redemption

‘I don’t know why. I didn’t do anything worth worrying over,’ I muttered, casting my gaze down. Gently, he crooked a finger beneath my chin, tilting my face back up. He scanned my eyes, frowning, before placing the basin on a nearby table and taking my hand. ‘Come on.’

He led me outside, and we found a log that had been dragged beneath a tree. Curls of wood littered the ground where someone must have perched to whittle something, and I instantly pictured a young father carving toy animals for the children waiting for him to return home. My heart sank lower.

We sat side-by-side and I stared down at our laced hands until he nudged me lightly.

‘I can read your feelings, but not your mind,’ he prompted gently. ‘What’s going on in your head that’s making you feel so low?’

‘I wanted to claim the Brimordian throne,’ I murmured. ‘I didn’t want this.’

Elias was silent for a long moment, and then, softer, ‘War was always going to be ugly, Gwin.’

‘I know.’ The words felt hollow. I did know. I'd known when I'd sought the alliance with Oceatold, when I'd promised to lend my support to driving the invaders from these shores. But knowing something and seeing it were not the same. Feeling the weight of it settle in my chest, sinking deeper with every injured man dragged back to camp, was something else entirely. I had set this in motion. I had made my choices, and now the only way out was forward. ‘I should have been down there with them.’

‘I wasn’t down there with them. Does that make my contribution any less valuable?’

My gaze darted up. ‘No, of course not, that’s not what I’m saying.’ The sadness that had seeped throughout my whole body only deepened at the sight of the warmth in his eyes. ‘But this isn’t your fight,’ I continued. ‘You didn’t send men to their deaths while you waited here, safe and sound.’

‘Isn’t it my fight?’ He squeezed my hand. ‘Aren’t I the reason you’re here in the first place?’

I opened my mouth. Closed it again.

‘You didn’t want to take the throne until you realised you could help us,’ he continued. ‘So maybe you’ve asked your people to fight for you, but we asked you to fight for us. And youarefighting, but some fights aren’t fought on a battlefield. If I’d been down there with them, I’d have been completely useless. I know what my strengths are, and they aren’t with a sword as my weapon. I’m fighting here, where I’m easing the suffering of people who are as much my enemy as those on the other side of that wall.’

Of course. I hadn’t even thought about how tending to the wounded while shadowed with illusion and hiding who he was would be for him. ‘Are you alright with doing that?’

He sat back and rolled his shoulders, stretching out his neck. ‘I have to be.’ His voice was quiet, but steady. ‘There’s no use wasting energy on whether I like it or not. They need healing. That’s all that matters.’

‘That doesn’t mean it’s easy.’

He let out a short, humourless laugh. ‘No. It’s not.’ His amber eyes flickered, the light catching the gold in them, making them gleam like embers. ‘But they bleed the same as I do. Hurt the same as I do. That’s what I have to hold onto.’

I swallowed, looking away. My gaze drifted back over the camp, where soldiers sat in clusters, speaking in hushed voices. ‘If this is your fight too, I think I need to ask more of you.’

‘Alright,’ he said after a moment, wariness creeping into his expression while he waited for me to explain.

I didn’t want to ask this. But I was asking plenty of things I didn’t want to these days. I couldn’t expect so many of my countrymen to make sacrifices without asking the same of my friends. ‘We were outmatched yesterday,’ I said. ‘We have a new strategy for the next confrontation, but if it fails again and we take the kind of losses we did yesterday, we’ll lose any hope of winning. I think… I think you need to be part of our new strategy to balance the odds.’

‘Part of it in what way?’

‘Back before we reached Oceatold, you told me that your people were the ones responsible for the Blight on the lands around the Yawn.’

‘I did.’

‘Would it be possible to do the same here?’

‘You want us to blight the land?’

‘I was thinking more the people. Specifically, the soldiers in Port Howl.’

He released my hand, and his unease filled the space between us, solidifying it. ‘It’s possible.’

I had to wrestle with the desire to back away from the request, drop it, apoligise. It was too important a request to allow my reluctance to ask anything of him to impede it. ‘Then would you do it?’

He didn’t reply immediately. The silence stretched.

‘Not a blight,’ he said finally. ‘I won’t use magic to make people sick.’

I sat back, slumping, anticipating the backlash from Dovegni and Esario.

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