Page 15 of The Turncoat King

“Let's go?” Dak drew himself taller. “What do you mean? How can we explain what's going on here? I don't have a clear idea myself.”

“I have a suggestion.” Ava thought of the general's hard, blank eyes from this afternoon. “Can we skirt around the camp and approach the general’s tent without passing too many people? I'll speak to her alone.”

“Alone?” Luc frowned. “I'll come with you.”

“Let me talk to her first. I'm the one who has wronged the Venyatux, and I need to apologize to the general. Let her decide how she wants to handle things. I don't want my lie to affect your alliance with this column.” She didn't know if this was the right course, but it was the one way to protect Luc from all the baggage she dragged around with her.

So she would do it.

“That sounds . . . sensible.” Dak glanced at her sidelong. “We can get you to the general's tent.”

She nodded. She had a scarf in her pocket that would help her get to the general's tent on her own if she wanted to, and no one would stop her, but that was not something she would ever say.

She and Luc followed Dak, hands entwined, and she realized Luc didn't seem worried at all.

She looked up at him and gave him a smile as she squeezed his hand.

This was more than she’d dared dream while she’d been planning her revenge at her grandmother’s house, while she’d been racing through Grimwalt’s forests, and while she’d been traveling in the Venyatux column.

She wanted to carry on walking, Luc’s hand in hers, until everything was behind them and the world lay before them, with no responsibilities or cares.

Her mother had told her over and over that the truth about herself, both who her family was and what she could do, would be nothing but a danger to her.

Speaking the words of what and who she was had caught in her throat the few times she had been tempted to utter them. She had a sense of inevitability about telling Luc at some point, but she was greedy for more time with him before that day.

She would manage this.

She hadn't asked how his side and chest were. She had traced the wounds she had stitched with feather-light fingers as they made love out on the plain, and she had not found so much as a ridge of skin.

It was as if he had never been shot by an arrow and stabbed.

She glanced at his forearm, but she guessed that wound, too, where he'd been slashed with a sword, was probably also gone.

He must wonder about that.

He had already asked her once, before they’d been captured a second time by the Kassian. And she was sure, when they had time and privacy, he would ask again.

She would have to think carefully how she answered.

Dak had led them through the tents with an amazing sense of direction, and Ava felt a tingle at the thought.

There was more than one kind of magic.

She’d thought since she'd met him that Luc had something about him, too.

Something . . . more.

“We should announce ourselves, before someone takes us for the enemy,” Dak said, stopping a short distance from the general's tent.

“Stay here. I'll call you when I've spoken to her. I’ve been translating for the general since the Skäddar arrived, and I’ll be able to gain entrance.” That was all true, but the reason she would be able to gain entrance had nothing to do with the small job she'd done for the general earlier that day.

She doubted the Venyatux military leader would even remember her.

Luc released her reluctantly. “Shout if you need help.”

She nodded, reaching into the pocket of her cloak. As she walked away she heard Dak's harsh whisper.

“Help her how? We're surrounded by the Venyatu.”

---