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When the fire faded and the cold night air quietly tiptoed into our camp, it took heroic effort not to reach for Raven’s warm body and pull her close. The thought of her fingers trailing across my chest in Javan made my breath hitch. I wished my shoulder still ached so I could have asked her to look at it again. But I could feel that the broken skin had already begun to heal, and the pain was subsiding. For the first time in my life, I felt disappointed that my body was able to mend so quickly.
I sighed, chiding myself for the thought. Ineededmy body to heal because I had to get back to Askeland. Our new path home was going to require all the strength I possessed to survive.
I just miss Lila, I told myself as I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep.That’s all this is.
I hope.
At dawn,the sound of thunder in the distance startled me awake. I rubbed my hands over my face and breathed in the frosty air, feeling it burn in my lungs. My shoulder was stiff from sleeping on the hard ground, but the sharp pain had dulled. The malarite blade hadn’t done any permanent damage, thanks to my Kovakian blood. With any luck, I could stop disgracing myself by using my staff as a walking stick today.
The fire was out. Raven was still asleep beside me. Her right fist was pressed against her chest like she was hugging an invisible doll. She hadn’t once mentioned the map on her palm, though I’d noticed her studying it several times when she thought I wasn’t looking. A part of me yearned for her to trust me enough to confide in me about it. Except, I kept having to remind myself that Iwasn’ttrustworthy. She still didn’t know that we both wanted what was located at the end of that map. Only, would I be the one to betray her to get it?
I reached over to brush her hair away from her face, letting my fingers linger on her cheek. My heart zinged, like it had started to do every time I looked at her. When the Rathalans attacked in Javan, I’d been caught off guard by my fierce desire to protect her—not because I was thinking about the map, but because with every day we spent together, it was becoming harder to imagine not having her at my side.
Idiot, I told myself. From the beginning, there was no possible way this was going to end well. Even if I hadn’t sworn to retrieve the stone or promised my heart to Lila, I didn’t deserve Raven—not when all I’d ever done was lie to her.
I had to find a way to stop thinking about her, stop staring at her, and worse, stop?—
Kah’s grunt startled me. He was already awake, thoughtfully chewing his breakfast like this was any other normal day—not the day we would face the dark evil that awaited us in the bramblelands.
I quickly pulled away from Raven.
“You look like hell,” Kah said, his typical sarcasm sounding more tense than normal. He might be trying to hide it, but I could tell he was anxious. The fur on his back was standing on end.
I smiled grimly. Even though I’d purchased a new shirt in the Terran village and cleaned most of the blood off my leather armor, I probably did look like hell. I felt like hell, too, knowing where this day was leading.
“What did he say to you?”
I turned to see Raven was awake, her dark-blue eyes on me. She’d become more curious about Kah since he’d spoken to her in Javan. I noticed she didn’t flinch away from him anymore and had started to sleep closer to him at night for the added warmth. Kah seemed to like it. He’d developed a soft spot for her under all that sarcasm and fur.
“He said I look like hell.”
She smiled at this. “I think we all do.”
She didn’t, though. The cold made her cheeks rosy, and her hair looked more windswept than disheveled like mine did. There was a kind of fierce, ceaseless beauty about her that radiated outward, no matter if she was covered in soot in the mines or freezing in the winter elements.
“What?” she said when she noticed me staring at her.
“Nothing,” I said, quickly glancing away.Get it together, Jeddak. “We’ve got to get moving soon. We need to reach the bramblelands well before dark.”
She eyed the bandage on my shoulder. “Is the basamweed working?”
“It is. The wound’s healing,” I said, pulling out some of the food from our pack and handing her a piece of bread.
Seeming relieved, she sat up and took the bread, still hugging the blanket around her as a shield against the freezing morning temperatures. “Tell me there are roaring fires and hot mugs of tea in Askeland,” she said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.
“More than you can imagine,” I said, trying to give her hope that there was light at the end of this deadly tunnel we were about to enter.
By mid-afternoon,the bramblelands loomed before us like the imposing black walls of Malengard once had. Each finger-long thorn in the tangle of millions was a wordless warning:Do not enter.
With the help of the map, we found the concealed entrance to the bramble forest, a rough trail wide enough that Kah could fit through. Though it looked less like a trail and more like a passageway to the shadowlands, if you asked me. Every impulse in my body was shouting at me to turn back.
“I guess this is it,” Raven said. There was a quiver in her voice that hadn’t been there before. Now that we were standing opposite this awful place, she was trying hard to hide her fear, but I could sense her breathing had become quick and shallow. Or maybe it was my own.
When I didn’t say anything, she set her jaw and stepped forward to march straight into the bramble without looking back.
“Raven, wait …” I said, catching her arm to pull her back toward me, away from the deadly forest.
Suddenly, we were inches apart, facing one another. She glanced up at me from under her dark lashes. “Jeddak, what is it?”
