Page 38 of Unrivaled
She’d already gone through her morning training when I got up.My head felt like an anvil and my mouth tasted like I’d eaten a bushel of rotten apples.Grateful for the reprieve, I put myself together best I could before I followed after her as she left to go deal with some disagreement over someone’s estate.
I dodged her searching looks.It was easier when we were out of the tower, and she didn’t try to position herself beside me.
She knew the risks.She’dfeltthe consequences.I couldn’t take away her decisions.
I didn’t want to.
By the time she walked out of the parlor with the family’s housekeeper, the sun was high in the sky and my head had almost stopped pounding.She was smiling, and so was the housekeeper, though the latter looked to have been crying.
The weight of the blood-soaked flagstones this city was built on would’ve been less than the guilt I carried in that moment as my liege lady passed me by.
Did shereallyknow the consequences?Had shereallygrasped them?
Because, if she had, wouldn’t she have fled by now?
Thomas kept pace beside me.Audrey and Isolde talked occasionally; small comments I didn’t have the full context for.
If Isolde truly wanted to protect Audrey, they could’ve, between them, killed the Butcher.I believed it.She could’ve seized power, same as she was doing now.Why fight on his terms and lose, when they could fight on their terms and win?
But I remembered her, sick with the plague, probably only days from death, riding with me through the orchards.I know the world isn’t inherently fair, Chay,she’d said to me.But I want tomakeit fair.
What a lofty goal.
How could youfairlymanage a monster?
Somehow, I kept pace behind her, though reality cloaked me like armor on a swimmer.
I knew better.
Shewasthe weakest link in a chain that held us all down, but there were layers upon layers above her.When she gave way, she’d be lost.
“My lady!”
The hail came from just inside the bailey.Audrey lifted a hand, greeting the young man as if she knew him.And she probably did.But some energy stirred as I saw under his arm a leather-wrapped bundle.He was smiling, but he was also reaching into that bundle.
I stepped closer, bringing my shield down as the world came into sharp relief around me.
I’d sworn an oath to defend her not just to save my own hide, but because I wanted to.I wanted a world with this woman in it, brightening peoples’ lives and turning the locways on their sides to reveal the soft underbelly for those who couldn’t access it normally.
“Name and business,” I said, putting myself between them.
The man faltered, his smile fading as he looked up at me.
“Chay, this is Jean,” Audrey said, her hand going to my sword arm in a movement that was both reassuring and agonizingly intimate.The smile she directed at me was a little puzzled, but the depth of warmth in her eyes made me burn.She looked at me exactly like that before she’d curl up against me, tugging the blanket over her shoulders and bringing with her whatever parchment was her current interest.Her eyes would dip down to the words.Sometimes she’d share them with me, and all the ideas and wonderings of hers that spun off from that information.
I loved those moments.
“He’s taken over the family smithy,” she said, her hand still on my sword arm, not to stop me from acting but because she liked it there.“I needed a seal for official documents.”
And she couldn’t use her father’s, not legally.I stepped back, recalling, now, those conversations, and even the face of this man.He’d looked more like a boy when I’d seen him the day before yesterday talking to the Inker apprentice and going over blueprints for the embosser she’d imbue with magic.
“Make it official-adjacent,” Brian had recommended.“You’re technically not lying, that way.”
Her hand squeezed my upper arm through the gambeson before falling away, a briefthere will be more latertype touch.The fire in my chest that contact had started continued to burn even when she turned the smile she had for me onto the boy.It shifted on her face, and became more professional.The smith’s eyes flickered from her to me and back as he unveiled the leather-wrapped bundle.
I bowed and stepped back, wishing I was too hung over to notice that look.
The rain clouds sat heavily above us as they talked about the copper and steel tube with its beautiful detailing, and my heart broke right there in the main bailey of the La’Angi keep.Because even if I could somehow keep my feelings to myself, even if we were never caught or questioned…
