He gripped her arm, steadying her. “Tell me what you saw.”
“I’ll show you.”
She pushed past him with a confidence she didn’t feel, retracing her steps to the fallen oak. Her knife lay half-buried in the leaves. She could clearly see where her own feet had passed. There were no other tracks.
Casrian came up beside her. “The witch can make you see things. It’s why it’s so easy to get lost in the woods. I’ve seen people fall off cliffs thinking they were running to safety. If you see something strange, something that shouldn’t be there, stay where you are. I’ll find you.”
Was that what it had been? An illusion?
She picked up her knife and stood there, staring into the shadows beneath the oak. It looked normal now. A tremor ran through her. Casrian placed a hand on her shoulder, the same way she’d seen him calm a spooked horse.
“What did you see?”
There was no witch. Nothing but the silent woods. The shadows lengthening as the sun began to set. And the lingering smell of rot. It reminded her of the smell of the dungeon in the old fort.
Was that an illusion too?
Somehow she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.
“We should go.”
“Rowan…”
“We’re wasting time.” She stepped away. “We need to get out of here before dark.”
There was no way she was sleeping here tonight.
18
She found a safe place for them to camp before the sun set, sheltered from the wind, near a creek where the water ran clear. She let the trees guide her to it. She didn’t talk to them directly—not with Casrian watching—but she let her natural sense of them pull her in the right direction until he declared the spot acceptable.
They hadn’t talked much that afternoon as they followed the patrol’s trail out of that bad patch of woods. Leaving what he called ‘the sphere of corruption’ was like waking from a bad dream, the boundary between the bad parts and the healthy so sharp her ears popped as they stepped from shadows into sunshine. She could hear birdsong and rodents scampering through the brush. The air was clear. The trees swayed in a faint breeze. There were leaves on the branches in red and gold. The soil smelled rich, not choked with decay.
She was safe. The witch was gone.
Sitting beside the fire, she sipped her tea and tried to still her churning thoughts. They jumped from the bear to the woods to Casrian flicking blood off his sword to the witch to the feel of his hands on her. A sick feeling settled in the pit of her stomach.
She was starting to think she’d gotten herself in over her head.
She looked up as the witch hunter returned from settling the horses. His gaze swept over her, assessing. “How are you?”
“My leg feels better. I added willow bark to the tea. Should help.”
He sat down beside her. Not too close. He was a respecter of space, the captain.
A moth drifted into the circle of light cast by the fire and she let her gaze follow its graceful, spiraling course. It was lovely—one of the great moths, big as an apple, with a plump furred body and delicate wings marked with two dark circles like eyes. It floated above her, lifting in the warm draft from the fire.
Toby’s father had told them that the moths navigated by starlight and were confused by firelight. She had enormous sympathy for the tiny beast. She felt like she’d lost her way too.
“Tell me about hunting witches.”
She felt the weight of Casrian’s gaze on the side of her face. “You don’t want those kinds of bedtime stories, I promise you.”
Probably not. But she’d already committed to this path and she needed to know.
“I thought this would be an easy job,” she admitted, glancing his way. “Find your men. Get you to the fort and collect my pay. It should have been easy.”
She could almost see the thoughts churning behind his eyes. Guilt and determination and loyalty to his friends and doubt about her. He was riddled with doubts where she was concerned, and she badly wanted to prove him wrong. That was at least part of why she’d chosen to serve as his guide—to rub his face in the fact that he needed her. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as she’d thought it’d be.
