Page 20 of The Rising Wave

She had lifted the hood of the cloak and kept her head down. If anyone looked closer, she hoped the short, cropped style of her hair would look similar to some of the younger recruits who were shaved completely when they were inducted, to prevent the spread of lice.

Luc was a silent shadow at her heels.

She didn't know how someone so big could be so silent, and she thought of her careful plans, ruined by him earlier, and almost shook her head.

She hoped the guard she'd spelled was about to turn on his own friends. If it had worked, Luc could have easily mopped up the leftovers, but instead he'd struck the weapon she'd created down first, rendering him useless.

Her mother had always insisted that only black silk could be used, but she had used her own hair when Herron had taken her thread away, and it had worked fine. So well, he kept her hair shaved ever since.

If Luc had waited just another moment, she would have known if the plain cotton she'd used on the guard had worked, too.

She forced herself to relax and unclench her jaw.

It had ended well, and unless she planned to tell him what she had done, she should be grateful they’d escaped without her having to explain anything away.

She might still have to explain the wound she had stitched. But maybe not.

He might not notice the improvements.

She didn't have enough experience to know if the results of her needlework faded over time. She had always assumed they did, but everything she'd ever created had been taken from her or destroyed, so she had no way of knowing.

Her grandmother's things had lasted a very long time, but as she'd seen with the unpicked cloak wrapped around her mother's body, even that could be undone.

And her mother . . . her mother had had a fear of her own power and strength and had tried to chain Ava's as well. She had never worked anything unless there was no other choice.

It had taken Ava years to work out her mother had been kidnapped when she was young. Ava's grandfather had rescued her before her captors had reached their destination, but it had made her mother cautious beyond normal bounds. Whatever had happened to her on the road had had a profound effect on her.

Even as a child, Ava had understood her mother balanced on the knife-edge of fear, lifting and setting down needlework over and over, without making a single stitch.

Her father's response had been to soothe his wife, and order the servants to pack her sewing away.

To Ava, he told her to learn what she could without her mother, and out of her mother's sight. There would always be those who would try to use her, and the more she understood about herself, the less they could.

Her grandmother had begged Ava's mother to allow her to show Ava what she could do, but her mother had been too afraid for Ava to accept.

Ava had heard many arguments about it, but in the end, her grandmother had loved her daughter too much to go against her wishes and risk alienating her.

Ava recalled the happy times spent on her grandparents' estate were marred only by the look of agony in her grandmother's eyes when she had taken up her sewing in the evening and sent Ava to bed.

“Stables.” Luc's voice, low and rumbling, lifted her out of her musings with a jerk.

The stables must be ahead of them, she could smell them.

“You want to steal a horse?” she asked.

“Two horses, unless you can't ride?” His breath was warm against her cheek.

“It has been a long time since I sat on a horse, but I can ride.”

“Good.”

“How are we going to leave with two of their horses?” Now they were in the open air, she most definitely didn't want to go back. And they were very far from home free.

“I'll think of something, and if it's not going to work, we'll leave the horses and walk out,” he promised, and took the lead for the first time.

She relinquished control to him for now, as she was no more familiar than he was about this part of the fortress.

The weather was cool enough outside that it didn't look strange that the hoods of their cloaks were lifted. It made her feel less exposed.

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