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“Are you trying to make me laugh again?” Henrike said. “Those trunks and this horse are how they found us in the first place. And you’re still dressed in fine silk. Just look at yourself!”
Mina looked down at her wet, mud-covered shoes, then at the bloodstain on the thigh of her torn dress.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. Mina shook her head and walked to the stream to look at her reflection. Her hands shot up to her lips as she gasped. Her hair had fallen out of her bun in thick curls, her pink silk dress had slipped off one of her shoulders, and her face and neck were caked in mud. None of it did anything to tarnish her beauty, but I knew she’d think differently.
“Who is this woman?” she whispered as she tried to put her hair back into a bun.
“We have to go. There is no time for this,” Henrike said and mounted her horse.
“Go where?” Mina asked, washing her neck and face with water from the stream.
“To our castle. To gather our men and fight whoever is after us,” Henrike said.
“Have a great journey, then,” Mina countered, unimpressed. “I won’t travel another step with you. I don’t trust you. As far as I know, you two could be working with those men.”
Henrike rode her horse up to the stream, a determined look on her face, but I shook my head at her. I walked next to Mina and knelt down in the mud.
“Are you hurt?” I asked again, nodding at the bloodstain.
Mina narrowed her eyes at me, then she shook her head. “Spare me your concerns. I won’t travel with a liar.”
Liar.The word struck a chord inside of me. Seeing my father whore around on my mother, telling her one lie after the next when she asked about the smell of perfume on his clothes. Every lie he told her made him less of a man to me, no matter how much pain he could take on the battlefield.
Had I become just like him?
“We will go around the mountain chain, through these woods, then,” I said to Mina.
“But that will get us off course from Kulgrat,” Henrike protested.
“We are not going to Kulgrat,” I said. Mina looked up at me. “We will go to her cousin’s in Bemingfast. This forest stretches all the way up to his lands. It will be safer this way. The roads to Kulgrat are too open; anyone could see and ambush us.”
Like most estates during the war, selling wood for a tenth of its worth to other kingdoms was all that had kept us alive during the years our farmers couldn’t pay their taxes. This had resulted in Kulgrat’s deforestation, widening the roads and reducing the forest to almost half of what it once was.
“It still makes no sense. Our castle will be safer, Alrick. Who knows what the Rhine King will do to us now?” Henrike asked.
“It makes sense to me.” Mina lifted her chin like she so often did. “If you get me to my cousin’s safely, I won’t have you hanged for endangering my life.” She faked a smile. “And if youareaiding the North King in his attempt to kill me, I can promise you to double whatever he offered.”
“You still think we are in on this?” Henrike said, shaking her head. “Have you not seen my brother’s blood-soaked shirt?” She pointed a finger at me, her arm trembling.
Mina’s eyes wandered from my face down to my chest. Her mouth opened wide when she saw the blood and cut on my shirt.
“Alrick, you...” Her hand stretched out, not quite touching me. “You are hurt.”
I rose to my feet, avoiding her soft hand. The memory of her warm curves pressing against my manhood was still too fresh.
“It’s nothing. We better go.”
I grabbed the reins of my horse and mounted it.
“The journey through the woods will be long and uncomfortable, but it will be safer than the roads. There are a few impoverished settlements in these woods. We may find food there.”
Mina’s gaze fell back onto the path we had come from, then she frowned and mounted Fiona.
“Let’s waste no time, then. I’m growing very tired of my circumstances and company.”
I deserved that. That and so much more. A bad deed done with good intentions still remained a bad deed at the end of the day. I could only hope to find a moment to explain to her why the king and I had done what we did.
She might never find it in her heart to forgive me or trust me, but I could at least hope that she’d see the logic in all of it—as insane as it seemed.
