Page 58 of Heart’s Rescue

Rowan

You Don’t Want This

The shelter goes up faster with two people. I knew this, of course, but for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me to ask Arryn to help until now. She didn’t know what she was doing at first, but she was a quick learner. And I liked working with her. Good, because we’d need to work together if we were actually going to do the insane thing and breach the king’s inner towers. Bad, for literally every other reason I could imagine.

I’d gone ahead and made our one remaining meal for tonight. To celebrate successfully crossing the river. Also because there was a chance, albeit a slim one, that we might reach the teleportation hub in the abandoned town of Fringe by tomorrow, and that would allow us to make it back to some semblance of civilization. And food.

Now we’d eaten, I’d hung our cloaks up on the shelter’s ropes to dry, and snow had started to fall in soft, whispering waves against the canvas roof. I’d very obviously spread our one remaining bed roll out beside the fire. And Arryn is ignoring it.

Voids. She’s going to make this awkward, isn’t she?

“Go ahead,” I say, waving my hand in the smoke rising from our cozy little fire. “Let’s call it a night.”

Arryn raises an eyebrow at me.

“What?” I ask. “You waiting for a written invitation? Take the bed roll.”

“I had it last night,” she says.

“So?”

“So,” she says, “you take it tonight. That’s fair.”

Her words are slow and careful as if she were attempting to explain something complicated to someone who was extremely stupid.

“Heh,” I say, trying to make it a laugh and not quite succeeding. “Cute. You go right ahead. You’re—”

Arryn gives me a look that could freeze water. My voice fades.

“Oh, go on,” she says. “I’m… what? I’m a woman? I’m weak?”

Well, yeah, I thought but had the extraordinary good sense not to say.

“You’re my guest,” I finally declare.

Arryn tilts her head and narrows her eyes. I feel like she’s about to pounce.

“Your guest?” she says. “In the shelter I helped put up?”

“Well, it’s my shelter,” I say, lamely.

“It’s also your bed roll.”

“You’re a guest in my bed roll,” I say, and then all the blood in my body rushes to my cheeks as I realize how vulgar that one sounded.

Arryn is grinning like she’s just won something, and I have the sudden, fleeting impression that she’s probably really, really good at chess.

I like chess.

“Not tonight,” Arryn says. “Tonight, you can be a guest in your own bed roll.”

With that, she tugs her cloak off the ropes, winds it around her shoulders, lies down on the snow, and rolls over, showing me her back.

“Arryn,” I say. “Really. Just take the bed roll.”

No response. The fire casts shifting shadows over her back and the slushy snow surrounding her. She’s a handful of minutes away from being thoroughly cold and miserable, and I should know. I’m the one who spent last night shivering in the slush around the campfire.

“Arryn,” I say again. “Seriously.”