Well.
At least the screaming would stop.
AMARIA
I pushed a lump of gray mush around my bowl—stew, allegedly, though it had the consistency of mortar and roughly the same appeal. Serenya sat across from me, methodically working through her portion like it was medicine. Which, knowing her, she'd probably convinced herself it was.
"You're not eating," she observed.
"I'm strategizing." I speared a chunk of potato that dissolved into mush the moment I looked at it. "Trying to decide if starvation is worse than whatever died in this pot."
"Protein is protein."
"That's not the comfort you think it is."
I dropped the spoon back into the sludge with a wetplop.
Reaching into my satchel, I fished out a handful of dried roots. I’d dug them up myself near the perimeter, scrubbed them until my fingers were chafed, and sun-dried them on a rock I could see from my post. They looked like shriveled fingers and tasted like dirt, but I knew exactly where they came from.
I bit into one with a loudsnap, chewing the fibrous root while Serenya sighed and swallowed another spoonful of the mystery gray.
The cavern ran deep enough that the far wall disappeared into a smoky haze. Rough-hewn tables, benches made from split logs,cook pots hanging over fire pits that left a permanent grease film on everything within arm's reach. The whole place smelled like rendered fat and the sharp tang of whatever root vegetable they kept throwing into every meal. Spoons scraped bowls. Someone coughed. The normal rhythm of the place—felt muted tonight. Waiting.
I was still trying to convince myself to take another bite when the main tunnel disgorged a knot of bodies.
A dozen rebels, maybe more. The first one through the tunnel had his arm slung over another's shoulders, feet dragging grooves in the dirt. Behind him, a rebel walked with her elbow clamped to her ribs, each breath hitching through her teeth. Their leathers were black with mud, slick where the firelight caught the wet patches.
Serenya was already rising, her healer's instincts pulling her toward the damage like iron to a lodestone. I snagged her wrist.
"Wait."
The group parted around a makeshift stretcher—two spears and a cloak, a female's body slack across it. Her face was gray. Too gray. Behind her, a male limped with his arm pinned to his side, and another had a cloth wound around his thigh that was blooming red with every step.
Whispers skittered through the mess hall.Tax raid. King's men hit Brindlewood. They fought back.Fought back. As if that was a choice when the alternative was dying on your knees.
I released Serenya's wrist. She slipped away instantly, cutting through the crowd with a quiet authority that made people step aside without knowing why.
I stayed where I was and watched.
The triage swallowed the center of the hall—rebels shouting for clean water, for bandages—and through it all, I tracked a figure at the edge.
Eryndor.
He'd come in with the others, but he hadn't joined the knot around the stretcher. Instead, he'd carved out a corner for himself. Grain sacks piled on one side, an empty water barrel on the other.
His cuirass was dulled with grime, the obsidian sheen buried with dust and what might have been ash. He'd peeled the vambrace off his left arm and set it on the crate beside him. The wound underneath, where the vambrace met the elbow joint, was ugly, a ragged mouth of split skin. He worked a needle through one side, pulled the thread taut with his teeth, and pushed through the other. The gut thread made a faint wet sound each time he drew it tight. No mirror. No assistance. Just the steady, mechanical work of a warrior stitching himself closed because he didn't trust anyone else to do it correctly.
I remembered the way his hand had trembled after the sparring match. The raw exhaustion in his eyes before the iron hardness returned to them. The way he held the needle—too steady, too sure—reminded me of the way I held a blade when the shaking got bad. Grip harsh enough to strangle the tremor. Call it control. Hope no one looks close enough to see what it's costing. I was looking though.
No one approached him or offered help. Whether that was his preference or theirs, I couldn't tell. Maybe both.
Then Maxx appeared.
His usual swagger had gone missing somewhere between the tunnel and the mess hall, replaced by a grim weariness that even his glamours couldn't quite paper over. He carried a suture kit in one hand, the contents rattling softly with each step, and his face—
I'd never seen Maxx's face like that. The sparkle, the lazy amusement, all of it stripped away to reveal a clinical frost.
He stopped in front of Eryndor. The silence between them stretched taut as a bowstring.
