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“He’s easy to hate. But…” he sobered. “You are easy to love. And you… love him.”
It was a question more than a statement.
“Maybe.” The word came out a whisper.
My stomach roiled. I pressed my hand against my lips until my nausea faded enough for me to speak again.
Talisyn gave me a worried look.
I managed to smile at him. “I’m fine. And Zehr will be fine. But thank you. Your concern for him… makes me happy.”
It was still dark as we began the journey toward Rylow.
My men didn’t have a lot of faith in the idea of simply holding Rylow, which seemed to be the plan for Lord Camet, who was temporarily commanding the city in the absence of… all of us.
If our counterattack failed, we could always fall back within the walls of Rylow. But then we would be under siege, which was far worse now that none of us could fly.
The stakes had never felt higher than when we had no magic, no ability to heal.
As we were walking through the eerie forest—to be fair, I find everything eerie at four o’clock in the morning—we skirted a village.
Suddenly Talisyn moved to my side, looming over me. I caught the look he shot at Arren.
“What are you trying to hide?” I demanded.
“She’s going to be queen,” Damyn said tersely. “Keeping bodies from her seems a little unnecessary.”
I halted Talisyn with a hand on his shoulder and peered around him. There was a body stretched out in the grass, at the edge of the village. One arm was outstretched, and his throat was torn open.
“Scourge,” Arren said quietly.
“Maybe it’s from before,” I suggested.
“Halt,” someone called roughly to us. A dozen soldiers melted out of the forest, wearing unfamiliar uniforms. Kallus’s men.
Arren swore under his breath. “We do not have time for this.”
The guard’s eyes fell on the body. “Did you do this?”
Then he barked, “Watch them,” to the others. He moved to the body and turned it over. He cursed. “It’s the patrol that never came back.”
Patrol. That was a funny thing to call the soldiers that had been terrorizing our people.
“Take it easy,” Lynx cautioned Arren quietly.
We just needed to get out of here. We needed to keep moving toward Rylow without getting hung up in another fight.
My men shifted suddenly closer to me, trying to protect me from the soldiers. I rolled my eyes in exasperation. I understood where they were coming from when we couldn’t heal each other anymore. Without our magic, the stakes felt a thousand times higher.
But the stakes felt higher for me too. All I wanted was to protect them.
No, that wasn’t true. That would be selfish. We had a kingdom to protect, and our people mattered more than our own lives.
Their leader straightened, looking angrily toward Branok and Lynx. He didn’t even bother to look at me. Like Damyn had said, I was invisible for so many men. “How many more of you are there?”
“We didn’t do it,” I said.
Now, I began to pick out the bodies discarded among the leaves like so much trash. Their leader seemed to track the same thing, because suddenly, he yanked his sword free of its sheath and moved toward us steadily. His people moved as well.
