‘Deadly serious. Elska hasn’t sensed it since we’ve entered the forest though. Maybe it’s gone in another direction.’
I lick my now parched lips.
‘Stay with me,’ he entreats. ‘Stay with me on Els. Then I know you’re safe. Then I can focus properly. And we need me focused.’
I hesitate, but nod. Right now, despite everything, there’s nowhere else I want to be than in his arms – even if he did throw me away at his father’s command. Because if there really is a Myrkr on our tails, there’s no one I would rather fight beside than Kyor.That,at least, hasn’t changed.
Over the next couple of hours, every slight whistle through the trees or crack of a branch causes me to start. The slow pace and constant creaks and sighs of the forest, combined with the anxiety thatebbs from us all, coil the tension so tightly that every breath grates. The horses can sense it too, their movements rigid and their eyes wide.
When we finally stop, I drop down from Elska to find Benny staring at me, his skin pallid as he worries at the back of his neck. His look is asking a single question:Have you told Kyor?
As I offer one single shake of my head, the tension drains from him. Though it probably shouldn’t. Not if what Kyor’s told me is true.
‘I’m going to scout around,’ Kyor grunts. He takes off on Elska – back-tracking, I realise. Making sure there’s no sign of the Myrkr following us.
Fuck, I can’t even believe I thought that seriously. A Myrkr. It’s madness.
‘All right,’ Caz finally explodes. ‘I’m the only one in the dark. What the fuck is going on?’
Silence pulls at the group, and then Ruben tries to evade the question.
‘It’s nothing. Just Benny being a flirt,’ he says, but we can all see Caz doesn’t buy it.
With a low sigh, Benny shakes his head. ‘Rose found out I’ve been funding the rebels,’ he confesses.
Caz purses her lips. There’s no shock in her eyes. No gasp of disbelief or angry accusations fired at him.
She knew all along about Benny’s extracurricular activities. And that stings, more than a little. Did everyone know but me?
‘Did Llinos know?’ I ask.
Benny nods slowly. ‘It was why we were arguing. She didn’t want me to do anything while we were in the Retterheld.’
‘Why the fuck did you?’ I press, keeping a hold of my fraying temper with real effort.
‘Things were going badly for us,’ he explains. ‘We’d lost Suan, Jai, Coulter …’ He shrugs. ‘I still don’t regret it. If someone had brought Korvane down …’
‘They didn’t even get near him,’ I spit. And if they had, it wasn’t like Korvane would have even bothered to fight. He was so well protected that there was no need. Not when others were there to willingly lose their lives for him.
‘No,’ Benny agrees.
‘Make me understand,’ I say, rubbing at my temples. ‘Make me understand why you hate Korvane so much. I know he’s not the best king?—’
‘Not the best king!’ Benny’s laugh is bitter, and it quickly turns into a scoff. ‘Where do you want me to start?’ he asks. ‘He is the worst of the worst, Rose. He doesn’t care about anything but his own power. He’s been stripping the Isles of everything that makes them what they are. The people, the land … he’s destroying it all.’
‘What do you mean?’ I reply. I’ve only been to the Isles once, and even then it was only to the palace in Brandish, but nothing I saw looked as if it was stripped or destroyed. It was beautiful.
‘There’s the mining, to start with,’ Benny explains. ‘There used to be gold on the islands, but his father ripped all of it out years ago. Yet Korvane refuses to give up. He’s ruined over half of the smaller islands digging for a treasure that doesn’t exist, and each time he finds nothing, he moves on to the next one, not giving a shit about the people whose homes he’s just destroyed or the land he’s left uninhabitable. And it’s not like he makes room for them on the mainland. You’ve seen how he treats people in his own city. We’re second-class scum to him at best.’
Hard to argue with that. ‘I’m sorry, Benny. Really, I am.’
‘That’s only half of it,’ Benny continues, agitated. ‘A huge portion of the guards sent to the front line come from the Eastern Isles, despite the fact that we only make up twenty percent of the population. That’s not a coincidence. He’s doing everything he can to weaken us so that we don’t have the power to fight back. And the children …’
‘The children?’ My stomach squirms. How much worse is this going to get?
Benny’s eyes meet mine.
‘We thought it was just the Isles, the way that the children were being born with less and less power – that it was a blip, something that would rectify itself – but it’s happening in other places, too.’
