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‘Happy to,’ I said, moving my weight to my other leg. For a moment – a small but blissful moment – I almost laughed, ominous movements of the Mother be damned. ‘You know patience is my greatest virtue. I hope I’m not arriving at an inopportune moment?’
‘Never,’ he said with a groan, followed by more thudding around the tent and then the suppressed sound of Rosalind’s laughter. ‘But for both your and my sakes …’
‘He’s looking for trousers,’ Rosalind helpfully translated, sounding a whole lot more awake.
I snorted a chuckle. ‘Happy to wait, in that case.’
‘Thanks, Al,’ my father grumbled, voice muffled by the sound of the clothes he was pulling over his head. ‘There goes the last of my parental authority.’
‘Rest assured,’ I said, ‘you didn’t have a lot of it before.’
Rosalind laughed again. The tent was opened from the inside a moment later, revealing a sloppily-dressed Agenor – bare feet, half-buttoned shirt, hair that could not have seen a comb anytime in the last twenty-four hours. His smile was apologetic and slightly fogged with sleep … but something about him seemed softer, too, than I'd seen him in all these months.
No –younger.
Gone was that persistent weariness, the bitter lines burned around the corners of his eyes and lips by twelve hundred years of war and grief. His eyes were brighter, clearer. As if he’d woken up this morning and found that every fear and responsibility had abruptly lifted off his heart – as if he’d suddenly learned how to laugh again.
I’d come here to talk about war and strategy, and gods help me, now there was nothing I wanted to talk about less.
But he said, ‘Developments?’, and it seemed unlikely that he would agree to let it go if I told him to forget about it and to focus on his newfound happiness instead.
‘It's the Mother,’ I said, unable to suppress a smile when Rosalind let out a just-too-loud curse behind him. ‘She's been sending out ships, but they haven't arrived anywhere so far, and we aren't sure where they would be arriving in the first place. So I thought …’
His eyes narrowed abruptly at something behind me.
At the same moment, an alarmed cry went up at the edge of the camp.
I spun around, grabbing reflexively for the red tent cloth. What was wrong? No fae above us, no magic lighting up the sky as far as I could see …
But there, below the ridge of the hills, a lone grey horse came hurtling down the slope towards us, a small rider crouched over its back.
I had already started running.
Agenor caught up with me within seconds, boots on his feet and coat around his shoulders now – a speed honed by twelve hundred years of battle instinct. Neither of us spoke a word as we hurried to the edge of the camp together. In the morning quiet, no one but a handful of human guards had noticed our visitor approach, and they seemed more than happy to hand over the matter to us; the group of them watched quietly froma distance as my father and I strode out into the empty field, to where the horse was limping to a halt.
The poor animal foamed at the mouth, its grey coat shining with sweat and clots of blood. As soon as it thudded to a standstill, panting and heaving, the small human on its back let go of the tangled mane and started sliding, sliding, sliding …
Agenor’s flash of yellow was just fast enough. The earth went soft and pliable a fraction of a moment before the rider hit the ground; with a few gentle bounces, their thin, bloodied body landed face-down in the grass and stayed there, motionless.
I swallowed a curse. ‘Hello?’
No reaction followed.
I exchanged a quick glance with Agenor, then cautiously tiptoed forward when he nodded. The rider still didn't move when I knelt beside them and prodded a shoulder; my next attempt at a greeting went unanswered, too.
Not an ambush, then? I decided it was time to believe it.
Holding my breath, every muscle in my body tense, I wrapped my hands around those bony upper arms and rolled the limp figure over. The rider landed on their back with a dull thump … and only then did I see the battered face that emerged from below a grubby hood, a swollen black eye and a nose so crooked it must be broken. Short brown hair fell over a split eyebrow – a man’s haircut, I would have said, and yet that face it stuck to …
A familiar face.
The realisation rose in me like a memory from a lifetime ago.
But that … that wasimpossible. I stared at those gruff, scrawny features and felt the grass sink away beneath my knees – no doubt about it, even below the disfigurement of her injuries. This was the same face that had scowled at me in the shadows of a dusky stable once. The same face that had furiously snapped at me to get the hell out of her sight while I cowered between the hay bales, desperate for a way to escape.
But that had been at the Crimson Court.
And humans at the court wereboundto the island.
