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“I’m better now,” I responded, with a tight smile. “Thank you.”
His hand came up to smooth out the tight knot in his hair.
“You, uh, sure?” He coughed, unable to look directly at me. “Do you… need anything?”
He glanced over me, and around me, and at the tent above us—anywhere but at me. This time, I couldn’t help but laugh.
“You’re blushing. You’re actually blushing!” I teased.
The red in his cheeks deepened, and I laughed again.
Edrich rolled his eyes and turned over on his blanket. Like a child. The mirth continued to roll out of me until finally, reluctantly, he chuckled, too. I could swear I even heard Pepper cawing with laughter somewhere off in the distance.
“It’s nice to know you’re feeling well enough to make fun of me, you imp.”
I feigned offense as he turned back around to study me, but I couldn’t keep the pretense for long.
“Yes, I’m feeling much better now,” I said, grinning and wiping away tears from my eyes. “Much, much better.”
“Har. Har,” he added drily. But I saw the whisper of a smile tempting his lips.
I fell asleep, peacefully, for the first time in ages with that image in my mind.
12
Edrich
“No!” The woman’s scream echoed over and over again. “Don’t take my babies to her! I’ll do anything.”
Even knowing this was a dream, I had no more power to change the outcome than I had that day.
Dream Atesh looked at me with the same expression he had held then, one I still couldn’t decipher. Had he been thinking the same thing I was? Was it worth our lives to go back on our word for this mission?
The penalty, by law, for any mercenary defecting was death, even if the queen’s men didn’t find us first. Her reach seemed to have no limits. I pictured Lina’s farmhouse and the cottage where I had grown up set ablaze, everyone I’d ever loved still trapped inside as the flames shattered the windows and engulfed the doors.
The queen had done worse to those who betrayed her.
We should have known when she came into the dungeon offering us freedom in exchange for a “small favor.” But we had been desperate, all six of us imprisoned for reasons no one had explained.
Of course, it made sense now. Atesh had told hernoonce before. None of us wanted to work for a queen who was known to brutalize anyone who got in her way.
What did the horrible woman even want with a family, anyway, except to extend her particular brand of destruction into every bit of happiness she found?
The littlest child sobbed and clung to her mother’s skirts, but the older boy didn’t take his eyes off me.
“Are you proud of yourself?” His words resounded in my dream, on repeat.
No, I wanted to tell him. And I never will be again.
I had taken part in this. Pepper and I had found them. Then we’d gone with The Huntsmen to deliver them across the border into Floriend where black-armored soldiers threw the defenseless woman, her knocked-out husband, and all three children into the back of a jailer’s wagon. All the while, the boy’s eyes bored into mine. I didn’t drop his gaze, though. Even in my shame, I knew he deserved that much. It might be the last bit of respect anyone paid to him.
Because there sure as hell wouldn't be any once the queen got a hold of them.
“Edrich?” Atesh was trying to break me out of the spell I was under, watching the wagon grow fainter in the distance.
“Edrich?” He said it again, but this time, his voice sounded more feminine, and distinctly more urgent.
“Edrich!”
