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He raised an eyebrow. “She… told you that?”
“Yes.”
“Nice name, Pearl.” He patted her flank gently, and they rode on.
The low rolling hills of the forest grew more dramatic and steeper as they went, and the forest grew wilder. The path narrowed to little wider than Pearl, brushing them all with branches as the pines began to mingle with maples and oaks, some of them younger saplings with lower limbs.
Iseris barely dodged one such branch. Her sudden movement caused Jav to jerk slightly; he blinked like his tired eyes had been closed in sleep a moment ago.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
He just frowned at her. “For what?”
“Never mind. Why is the road so narrow here?”
“Because this isn’t a road. It isn’t even a path. It’s a deer trail. Maybe some foxes take this way too.”
“The deer cut trails?”
He smiled. “No. It’s just made naturally by the animals following paths softened by the ones before them.”
“Ah.” She tried not to blush but felt herself failing.
The forest seemed to wrap around them—dense, dark, close. Jav had to duck his head more than once.
Eventually, it started to thin a little, but instead of the young upstart trees, a long, red grass, which would have come to her waist if she’d been standing in it, took over.
“What’s this grass?” She looked around them as she spoke, then turned to catch his eyes.
His gaze was distant, a little glazed over. They were both quite tired, she supposed. And the injury… She knew little about how the body worked but perhaps it was somehow affecting him. “Never seen it before.”
“Strange color, isn’t it?” she said.
He nodded, and his arms around her tightened a little. It would be nice to think it was out of concern, but more likely, he was simply trying not to fall off the horse in exhaustion.
They rode in silence for a while, the sea of red grass beneath them gradually taking over for all other ground cover. Only dark black trunks rose from the red.
The wind stirred her hair, the grass, and the branches above, letting patches of moonlight flicker against the waving plants.
Iseris grew warmer as they rode. Warm enough that the cloak seemed too much, the heat of Jav’s body behind her a furnace. Heat? She must be mad. Or exhausted. Snow still clung to some of the branches above them. It made no sense.
As they topped the rise of another hill, a larger than usual valley opened before them. Something had knocked down several thick, old trees, their trunks dramatic, sad slices through the red waves. A large meadow of crimson grasses swayed, but on the far side, the trees grew again, growing darker and thicker, the mountains in the distance looming behind them.
“There,” Jav said, pointing at one of them. “We must rest. Let’s see if we can make something of that fallen tree.”
“All right.” He’d nodded off at least three more times in the last few minutes, and she still heard far more wincing and gasping than she’d prefer. So he was probably right—they needed a rest.
She wiped the back of her hand across her slick forehead. How. How could she be sweating? Was that part of being so tired? Could the cuts in her feet have gone sour that quickly?
Gods. That quickened her pulse to think of it, but it’d only been a few hours. Surely, she couldn’t be dying this quickly just from the wrong shoe choice.
She waited patiently while Jav gingerly dismounted. He stopped and stood for too long a time with his head bowed toward the red grass and the snow. Pain. He was trying to hide it, but she knew. She could feel it, almost sense it like pain in her own side. He was hurting bad.
Because of her.
She turned her eyes away. No point in bursting his illusion that he was concealing his suffering. She could acknowledge it later.
She rubbed her sleepy eyes. When was the last time she’d heard a shout from their pursuers? Had they even been real, or had it been dream-induced fears? She might or might not have fallen asleep, too. She wasn’t sure.
