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“Have you another wrong to right—whether against you or committed by you?”
She shook her head.
“I will right this one, as soon as can be done. Good journey to the end, Fajana.”
He reined Troll back toward Iarthil, who waited at the foot of the bridge, with the knights peering uneasily around them. “I will continue on to the next village, where I must right a wrong. Let us take Elina back to the carriage. When I am done, I will catch up to you.”
“Right a wrong?” Iarthil glanced to the river. “Why? How?”
“Serjeant,” Elina said, lifting her head, revealing a face nearly as pale as the ghost’s hair. “Whatever Warrick is saying that he must do for that poor woman, let him do it. We will ask our questions later.”
Though he clearly wished to ask them now, the serjeant nodded. “Of course, Your Highness.”
She exhaled a shaky breath, then touched her fingertips to the glowing lines on his bicep. “I know not whether to call this a curse or a gift.”
Warrick hadn’t known either. Not for a long time.
But it was a gift.
Night fell before Warrick reached the camp. At the prison, the serjeant had warned him to stay away until dawn if he arrived after the rising of the evening star. Warrick would not. He had just begun to debate how best to penetrate the camp’s defenses when Iarthil himself rode out to meet him.
“What happened?”
Warrick had ridden to the village, found Renil, and hauled him into the market square. There he’d announced what Renil had done—and when the man refused to confess, Warrick had tied him behind Troll and dragged him to the bridge, with most of the villagers following. By touching Warrick, they’d all been able to see for themselves whom Renil had wronged.
Though it was not true of every murderer he’d found, Warrick hadn’t needed to kill Renil himself. Instead the villagers had seen justice done—and Fajana had gone.
Never would he regret doing what was right. But his gut had twisted into knots upon the realization that, in his absence, Elina had likely drunk a tonic prepared by Chardryn. The dose of bloodbane would not harm her worse than it already had—but it meant the purge would end a day later than it would have.
And Warrick was in no mood to answer Iarthil’s demand. “Elina will ask me soon enough. Let me only tell it once.”
The other man nodded. “Do all the dead become ghosts?”
“The dead who were wronged—and only if they stay until it is made right. And the dead who committed a wrong, until it is made right.”
“Those who were wronged. Murdered?”
“Often.”
“Then you could speak to Elina’s mother—or I could, as long as I touched you.”
Warrick grunted a confirmation.
Iarthil stared straight ahead. “If the opportunity comes, I would ask it of you. There is a wrong I have done that I would wish undone.”
Such as promising not to lead Elina home? But Warrick held his tongue. He could hardly comprehend the sort of honor that placed a vow made to a dead woman above the harm done to the living.
“If the opportunity comes,” he said.
Warrick was accustomed to the endless questions that followed the discovery that he could see ghosts, along with the requests to speak to every dead relation that someone ever had. So he was prepared to sit at the fire and give answers. It was made all the more tedious by the need to wait for Iarthil to repeat every question and answer in the proper language—but with Elina at his side, easily bearable.
Until she raised an eyebrow just so, and teased that—after the curse took her—she would make him into a living lantern by following him.
Then he could bear it no longer. Iarthil had not even finished his translation before Warrick hauled her up into his arms and strode to her tent. From behind him came the flapping and fluttering of the attendants.
Warrick roared over his shoulder, “Tell them I will strip her myself before bathing her with my tongue!”
Elina was still giggling uncontrollably when he laid her on the bed. Then his body came down over hers and her laughter quieted, melting into a soft sigh against his mouth.
“It is a gift,” she murmured decisively. “Just as you have been to me.”
Again he was upended. But this time, Warrick understood it. Anyone from the Dead Lands would have understood this, the most basic of all lessons. For what was magic but an unseen power that changed the world? And of all true magics, love was the most powerful—so loving Elina had overturned his entire world.
Just as he intended to overturn hers.
He captured her mouth, and the faint bitterness struck at his heart. Lifting his head, hoarsely he told her, “Not until you are well again will I leave your side. This I swear to you, Elina.”
