Page 87 of Unrivaled
“An excellent one,” he agreed.
We settled into silence again, walking through empty corridors without lit torches.He found his way better than I did through the catacombs of the northern part of the keep, taking us out through a small servant’s door into a quiet part of the garden all greens and shadows.
I shifted my grip on my spear but followed along where he led us.Toward the sea wall we went.The clouds sat low, and the light was poor.Along that wall there were no torches.We should’ve had the watch out, of course, but we’d long since had to give up onshouldand focus onmust.For now, we were surviving.There were people filtering in every day, in twos and threes, or a few family groups that had travelled alongside one another.Need for order, or at leastsymbolsof order, was increasing.
Kaelson looked up the stone steps to the top of the sea wall and sighed.“I’d planned on going up there.”
The steps weren’t in wonderful order.This part of the gardens was half wild.Some of the steps had sunk, others lifted.It’d hold, of course, but it’d take a bit of navigating.
Kaelson stuck the torch in the ground and eased himself down with a sigh.He adjusted where his sword sat, not to make it easy to draw but for comfort.
Taking his cues, I set down my shield to wrap my cloak closer, leaning against the stone to take some pressure off my bad leg.
“Those cutthroats who escaped today,” he said.“We tracked them down.All of them.”
He said it as if it was bad news, so I waited for the rest.
“They’re dead.Close as I can figure, to the last man.Thirty-one of them.Strewn from Big Wig hill to the docks to one just inside the Outer Eastern gate.”
A chill went up my spine.“How?”
“Arrows, mostly.A few stabbed, but mostly arrows.”
For a moment I could feel the horse between my knees, the women racing ahead, moving like they were just another part of the beast.Bows in their hands.
Audrey had been shaken.
There was only one person who could’ve done that.
Still… “Did their own people get them?”I asked.
Kaelson looked at me reproachfully.
He knew.
I blew out a breath, sinking down.He’d known since the looters were massacred.It changed nothing.
With a sigh, he withdrew a knife from behind his hip.The sheath was plain.
My heart started to sink, a slow fall as I reached out one hand, incapable of doing anything else.The compassion in his eyes as he waited for my joints to grind into motion, for my aching fingers to curl around it, almost undid me.His own hands had signs of his age.The grip around the sheath showed knuckles that were larger than they’d once been, skin hanging the way it hadn’t when we were young.Somehow, time had just vanished.
Yet, we still earned our keep.More than.
The sheath was warm from his body.I drew the knife out a short distance.Just far enough to see the silver blade within.
Not steel.Silver.
“She’s not a worg.”I slid it home.
“You don’t have to break your oath,” he told me.“I know you’re loyal to the lady.So am I.But we both know whothey’reloyal to.I want you to have it.Just in case.I figured, any closer, she might hear us.”
My heart kept on sinking.
“She doesn’t wear silver,” I reminded him, hoping I could avoid revealing secrets that weren’t mine.
“Where we can see it.She’d be daft to.The Duke would spot her leagues away.”
“When the worgs attacked?—”
