AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Varitan’s lips pull back in a way that makes me feel like I’ve just been dropped to the bottom of this ocean, but Rowan doesn’t stop.
“Fuck, Dad, I’ve heard better threats out of the sad old drunks at the World’s End,” he finishes. “I think you’re losing your edge, old man. Assuming you had an edge to begin with.”
Varitan’s lips twist into a smile that makes me think of the rows and rows of windows in our old house, of how he’d use his magic to drag my body along the floor below them, in and out of the light.
“Very well,” Varitan drawls. “I’m about to give you a very specific set of instructions. If any of you deviate from said instructions in any way, then Rowan, I will use my magic on you, specifically. I will force your hands to carve out your brother’s eyes. Both of them. And believe me, he’ll be awake for it.”
My father’s lips pull back even farther, into a gross mockery of a smile. Another wave crashes over the bow, soaking us. I blink as salt water stings my eyes.
“Eh, not bad,” Rowan says, with a shrug that makes his chains chatter like teeth. “Insipid, repetitive, and vaguely disappointing, but it’s not the worst threat I’ve ever received.”
Varitan growls, then spins away from us to continue glaring at the knot of horses waiting for us on shore. I shake my head at my brother.
“You’ve always got to take it just a little too far, don’t you?” I mutter under my breath.
“I know,” Rowan replies, with what looks like a genuine smile. “Someday it might get me into actual trouble, huh?”
Well, there’s nothing I can say to that. I lean forward to brush salt spray off Alindra’s cheeks. My stupid, feeble apology still burns inside my chest. She’d managed to shake off my father’s spell for just a few heartbeats, and that’s what I did with her precious time. I could have come up with a plan, or reassured her, or tried to express some of the enormous tangled mess that’s in my heart. Nine hells, I could have at least said something about what happened between us back at my place.
Instead, I just bumbledI’m sorrylike a complete idiot. And then she passed out again.
I shiver through my cloak. What did I expect? It was just another failure in a long and glorious line of failures, I suppose. I turn away from the soft, dark curves of Alindra’s lips and watch the shore. Varitan makes a rumbling sound low in his throat, then raises his hand. Dull blue light flickers between his fingers; I suck in a breath, my body braced for pain.
But it’s not me who cries out. It’s Alindra. Her body curls forward as she gasps and moans. Her eyes open, then fill with tears, as her whole body shakes. It seems to take a long time to remove the sleep spell, and it looks like it hurts.
Bastard. I’m trembling by the time it’s over, hunched over Alindra’s writhing body with my eyes locked on her face because I don’t dare look at my father. He always makes it hurt, no matter what it is.
The boat hits the shore hard, knocking me forward, and I just barely manage to catch Alindra before she slides into the dirty water sloshing around my feet. My father raises his hand again, and an illusion settles over us. We become humans, all three of us. Human men with grizzled visages and ragged clothes.
It isn’t until my father steps out of the rowboat that I realize what he’s wearing. It’s dark blue, neatly pressed, and disturbingly similar to something I’ve seen over and over again in the Lands Below.
It’s a uniform. My empty stomach pulls tight as my father walks along the shore, gesturing to the man with the horses. Whatever illusion Varitan is wearing, it’s almost identical to the uniform of King Galan’s Royal Guard. The uniform I’ve spent most of my life trying to earn. And failing, over and over again.
I feel like I’m going to be sick, which is ridiculous because I can’t even remember the last time I had something to eat. Still, the desolate stretch of beach sways around me as hooves clatter over stone, and my father barks something at us. I feel like time is folding in on itself, piling all of my failures directly onto my chest.
I didn’t make it into the Royal Guard. I didn’t protect Rowan. And now I’ve destroyed whatever was trying to blossom between me and Alindra, and with it any chance of being part of her new life.
A hand closes over my wrist. I flinch.
“Come on,” Rowan whispers from behind me. “Don’t make me do this alone.”
* * *
The horses are tied together,of course, and our father splits us up, of course. He rides in the lead, with Rowan directly behind him, then Alindra, then the human man from the beach, who looks like the sort of fellow who’d stab you in the kidneys in a dark alleyway before even bothering to ask for your money, and then I bring up the rear. It’s our order of importance, I suppose. He needs Rowan the most, although I still can’t quite bring myself to believe the story Rowan told me in the dungeon. Because what Rowan said he could do, what our father wants him to do, is impossible.
I’m not any better at riding horses than I was in the Barrier Mountains, but the overall terror of everything that’s happened between now and then seems to at least have put the whole horseback riding experience in perspective. I cling to the animal’s thick mane with both hands, and somehow I manage not to fall off as we clatter up a steep road and enter the waiting mountains. Rowan looks even more uncomfortable, with his hands in chains, and I suspect Varitan is using some sort of magic to keep him in place. Alindra keeps her head down. She doesn’t look at me, and while that’s only to be expected, it still hurts. It hurts a lot more than it should.
We ride all day. Varitan and the human stop for lunch, leaving us on the horses while they eat hard cheese and rolls that smell so good they make my stomach groan with longing. The human notices, gives me a nasty grin, then flicks what’s left of his roll to the ground. And then he spits on it.
I turn away. A moment later, we’re lurching forward again, the horses stumbling over the rough road as we climb higher and higher through a dense forest that looks so wild I’m half tempted to believe we’re the first elves to ever walk through it. By the time the sun starts to sink toward the jagged teeth of the mountain range looming above us, every part of my body is screaming at me. Clinging to a horse is strangely exhausting work, and my empty stomach is making my head swim.
Varitan leads us to the side of the road as the sun falls beneath the stone waves of the mountains. He and the human have a short, whispered conversation while the horses stamp and blow through their noses. Finally, Varitan turns back to us with a scowl.
“Dismount,” he growls. “And don’t move.”
“Or do,” the human adds as he runs his fingers across the hilt of his sword with a nasty smile.
Rowan slides off his horse first, like a sack of potatoes, and lands on the ground in a messy pile of chains. Alindra follows, dismounting in a single, smooth motion that makes my chest ache. I attempt to do what she just did, but somehow the ground rushes up to meet me and I end up face-down in the dirt. There’s a huffing sort of snort as the horse I just fell off of walks away, probably in disgust.
