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He stared at me with such quiet desperation that I couldn’t tell him the truth. He clung to my wrist like he was drowning, and I was his only hope.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Let me help you,” I said.
When his eyes closed, his fingers loosened from my wrist. His hand fell back down to the snow before it curled into a fist.
“Don’t take me back to them,” he said.
“Who?”
He didn’t open his eyes. “The Order of the Asphodel.”
“Never heard of them.” It was the truth.
Some of the tension eased from his body. “God, it’s cold.”
“You lost a lot of blood.” I wrapped a bandage around his wound. “Can you walk without passing out again?”
“Perhaps.”
I helped him stand. Deathly pale, he leaned on my shoulder while we walked.
I had borrowed a horse, a dappled gray mare who waited between the pine trees. Wendel reached out to the mare, letting her sniff him. The horse didn’t shy away from him despite his bloodstained hand or his necromancy.
“Do you know how to ride?” I asked.
“Of course,” he replied with a hint of arrogance.
He had to be rich. Or at least he came from a prestigious family.
I helped him climb into the saddle. Though his jaw tightened with pain, he didn’t protest. I took the reins and led the mare through the forest.
We walked in silence, broken only by the crunch of footsteps in the snow.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked, so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.
I glanced at him, worried he might pass out again. “You need a surgeon. There’s an army camp not far from here.”
“Which army?”
“The Empire of Austria-Hungary.”
“You work for them?”
“Yes, for the Archmages of Vienna.” On the lapel of my jacket, I straightened a golden flower pin—an edelweiss, the mountain blossom of the Alps. “They sent me to find a man who could raise the dead.”
“That’s why you need me.” Bitterness tainted his voice, impossible to miss. “I wondered why you swooped down like a guardian angel.”
My stomach clenched with guilt. “I’m a mercenary, not an angel.”
“Tell me your name.”
“Ardis.”
“I won’t forget it.”
A thrill skittered down my spine when I turned my back on him—like I was turning my back on danger.
