Page 34 of Ember and Eclipse
“I—” she started but cut herself off. The hunter looked at her, but when she shook her head, he merely went back to checking he had everything. It wasn’t like he would care.
She dressed when he went downstairs and followed when she was ready.
The tavern was quiet, only a couple patrons coming and going, not paying them any mind. Rel looked for Leeda, but no one was at the counter. She would have liked to say goodbye to her.
In record time, they were on Friend and plodding through the streets. The winding, uneven roads were quieter than usual, but shopkeepers were up already. They were opening shutters, sweeping off stoops, fixing signs and displays that had been displaced from the festivities over the last few days. Bakers were already working, the smell of fresh baked goods drifting in the air.
“Won’t the roads still be in poor condition?” she finally asked.
“For a merchant cart to traverse? Yes. But with Friend, no. A day and a half will have allowed enough to drain off that we should be able to stay to the sides without worrying about stepping in a deep puddle. That, and we will be ahead of the caravans of merchants, allowing us to hopefully pass through Heigar’s Pass without trouble.”
Rel didn’t respond. And they ended up riding and making camp in complete silence for two days. She gave up quickly on not leaning against him and instead got as comfortable as she could, her entire upper half pressed into him. If she was going to ride to her imprisonment and death sentence, she might as well be comfortable. Not to mention, she’d been much closer to him on other occasions—it seemed laughable to maintain that standard when he had kissed herandwarmed her.
The landscape began to change. The craggy cliffs and rock faces that lined the valley-like roads turned into more sloping peaks. Another week or two, they’d be at Heigar’s Pass and flanked on either side by enormous mountains.
Though Rel had spent an entire year with no one to talk to besides plants and crocodiles, by the third day, she couldn’t resist her curiosity anymore.
“Tell me about the Lunae.” Even if she had wanted to ask him while they were in Gavenport, he’d spent every moment he could out of the room. When she ventured downstairs, he’d be there, already looking at her as she exited the stairwell.
His chest rumbled behind her in annoyance, as if she had been pestering him the entire time.
“Do you have magic? Why does your pack live in Romul? Is there—”
“Stop with the incessant questions,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Does it go against some sort of code to answer? Because how I see it, we have a long way to Romul.”
“If I answer three questions, will you swear to stop nagging?”
She hummed pensively. “Five questions, and I’ll consider it.”
“Fine,” he conceded more easily than she thought he would.
“I want to know about the culture, how you fit in with the king, what shifting feels like.”
“That,” he ground out, “isn’t a question.”
“Just count it as one.”
His breath left him with a sound of impatience. “We are Selene-blessed. There are many myths of how we came to be, but the most accepted one is that the goddess was lonely. The only beings that seemed to love her, and notice her, were wolves and the ocean. But the ocean, as much as it was moved by her gentle hands, belonged to Poseidon. So, she created children who would talk to her at night but could otherwise live a somewhat normal mortal life. Other myths say it is a curse on evil men. And though sometimes it’s easy to feel like it is just as much of a curse as it is a blessing, I have seen many evil men who didn’t have such an affliction.”
Rel made a noise of agreement.
“As for the malwolves, their curse is their own doing, not some divinity’s. Our history goes back much further than witchkind’s. And therefore, all we have are stories passed down from our elders. But though we live longer than the average mortal, those stories still have been affected, like all things are, by time—lost or transformed altogether.”
Rel wondered if it was the same for witches. “I wish I knew more about our history.” She hardly knew anything, even after living in a coven for a year. The marsh witches didn’t want to answer her questions, and she didn’t want to ask most of the time just so she didn’t continue to emphasize how different she was.
“Witches have only been around for a few centuries, whereas Lunae have been around far longer. Some mortals even worship us—that’s how long we’ve been here.”
“Does the Imperator worship you?”
He snorted. “No, he doesn’t.”
There was a long pause, and she bit her lip, silently willing him to continue. When the hilly landscape before them became painted in twilight, and he hadn’t said anything else, she dared to speak again.
“It must be nice having a built-in family.”
“What do you mean?”
