Page 60 of The Turncoat King

“Ava.” Luc grabbed her and swung her into his arms, and she realized she had just been standing as the world burned down around her.

She couldn’t understand why.

Luc set her down and then ran back into the tent.

She looked after him, saw Dorea was still inside. The healer had loaded herself up with leather satchels, hanging them from her shoulder, and was trying to drag a wooden chest out.

Luc tried to pull her out, and then lifted her into his arms and ran out with her as the tent collapsed behind them.

The healer was sobbing as the flames leaped high, her face turned toward the bonfire.

Ava caught sight of someone standing just beyond the flames, hidden by the long shadows the light created, watching.

Then they were gone and soldiers were suddenly swarming around, shouting as they threw sand on the conflagration. An out-of-control blaze was deadly in a tent camp.

They had it under control in moments.

“What happened?” Luc’s voice was hoarse with smoke. He had set Dorea down and turned from the flames to look at her. She saw the fury in his eyes.

Ava looked at the smoldering mess and felt the loss of her cloak like a knife to her heart.

If she hadn’t layered on so many protections, she reminded herself, perhaps neither she nor Revek would be alive right now, but to have to start again . . .

“I was sitting beside Revek, checking his wound, when I saw a hand come through the bottom of the tent. I thought it was Haslia, and I drew my knife, waiting for her to wriggle through. Instead, the hand did a kind of flick toward where Revek was lying and suddenly my cloak was on fire.”

“It was definitely Haslia?”

She slowly shook her head. “I thought it was her, but I never saw anything but the hand. It could have been anyone. It’s most likely to be her, though. If she was lurking, waiting for confirmation that Revek was dead, and found out he wasn’t . . .” She lifted her shoulders.

“Death by fire is a very direct attack.” Dorea spoke from behind her, and Ava tried not to start in surprise.

Her cloak would have warned her someone was there, she realized. She hadn’t understood how much she had come to rely on it.

It made her defenceless. Made her feel off-kilter.

She needed to remedy that right away.

The cold, hard anger at the destruction of something so precious and useful to her spiked in her chest, and she bowed her head to get it under control.

Behind her, Dorea began to sob again, and she remembered she wasn’t the only one who’d lost something important and precious in the fire.

“How much did you manage to save?” She held out her hands to take Dorea’s in her own.

“Some of the common ointments and most-used remedies. The precious, rare things, they were in the wooden chest.”

“Maybe it survived the fire.” The flames were gone now, and there was nothing but the stink of burned hemp and the gentle drift of ash.

“Maybe.” The healer didn’t sound very confident.

A Venyatux solider hailed them, and Luc stepped forward, had a low conversation with him.

He would be busy now. Sorting out this mess, telling the General about the attack.

She had things to do, too.

First priority would be to buy a new cloak, only she’d run out of money last night when she’d bought wool from the traders.

She realized the Venyatux soldier had gone and Dorea and Luc had been talking in low voices to each other.

---