Page 51 of Slaying the Shadow Prince
‘What?’ Talemir croaked.
‘Flashbacks. Suddenly I’m not here, I’m back there, back where everything changed.’ She pressed her own palm to the stone by Talemir’s hand. ‘This is where it happened to you.’
‘Yes…’ Talemir managed, not trusting himself to say anything more.
‘You didn’t deserve it,’ Drue said.
‘It happened anyway.’
‘The worst things always do.’ She inched her hand towards his until her fingertips brushed against his skin, until her warmth closed around him and offered comfort.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘A little while. I thought it best not to disturb you… Sometimes… sometimes that only makes it worse.’
‘It does,’ Talemir agreed. ‘But I apologise, I didn’t realise —’
Drue shook her head. ‘It’s not in your control. It’s not your fault. Adrienne tells me the same thing every time it happens to me.’
Talemir stopped himself from reaching for her, his chest tightening at the thought of her suffering the same torment. ‘Where do you go? When it happens to you?’
‘To the night my brothers and mother were slain,’ she replied without hesitation.
‘By the wraiths.’
‘Yes.’
Talemir bowed his head. He had seen her reaction back at the watchtower and had known then that she had suffered horrors of her own. His heart ached for her, wishing he could take that torment away.
‘What’s done is done.’ She nudged him with her elbow. ‘Now, shall we get the fuck out of this place? It’s making my skin crawl.’
‘Your best idea yet.’
Talemir’s hands were still shaking as he mounted his stallion, but he let Drue lead, understanding that she was giving him the space to process what he’d just relived. He was grateful for that, for flashes of Malik’s swollen and bloodied face swam in his vision and Wilder’s shouts rang in his ears.
Briefly, his mind took him back to Thezmarr in the weeks that had followed that horrific event. When Malik’s dimly lit quarters had smelt of potent potions and despair. When he’d been unable to feed himself, unable to walk. It had almost been too much to bear, to watch the mighty warrior struggle to lift his spoon, his spirit as broken as his skull. He hadn’t uttered a single word since.
Sipping once more from his tonic, Talemir wondered if there would ever come a day where those memories didn’t haunt him so deeply.
Drue haltedwhere dark water lapped the shore, a rickety pier jutting out from the black sand.
‘The Strait of Enovius.’ She motioned to the shimmer of land within sight beyond the sea.
‘Named for the god of death?’ Talemir said dryly.
‘We’ve faced worse, Warsword,’ Drue replied, a note of challenge in her voice. Terrence took that as his signal to launch from her shoulder and fly over the stretch of water.
‘You’re not wrong there.’ He scanned the pier. ‘So… how do we go about this?’
Drue watched the hawk disappear into the distance. ‘There used to be a ferryman.’
‘And now?’
‘Now there’s just a raft.’ She gestured to the watercraft bumping against the wharf.
It was as basic as it got: a floating platform made of logs fastened with rope, a rudimentary rudder at the rear. There was a mast in the middle and a ragged scrap of canvas tied to it. The sides were barely a foot high, certainly not tall enough to keep out water from lapping waves…
Talemir was more than sceptical. ‘You know how to direct such a… vessel?’
