“You in here, Nym? They’s tryin’ to leave!” Breck’s round cheeks blur through my vision as I’m jolted awake on my library window perch.
“I’m here, Breck.” I rub my eyes and stoop to pick up the Hidden Lands history book and return it to its shelf before blowing out the lantern. “About time. I swear Colin and Eogan take longer than Adora to get ready.” I grab my bag from the hall and pat Breck’s arm. “Thanks,” I say, and head off to find Colin and Eogan through the predawn dark.
I can already taste the friction in the weather mimicking my strained emotions today. It’s been nineteen days since Adora purchased me, and over a week since Eogan’s and my tension-filled moment at the party. And just as long since he’s made any eye contact or conversation with me other than his reserved, you-can-do-better-than-this training speak. The recent days have begun morphing together in one long, gruelingly awkward training session in which he’s utilized his calming ability to focus me on separating and using individual storm elements.
So far I’ve succeeded at wind manipulation and pulling lightning from the sky with my hands without killing Colin. Unfortunately, the more control I manage means the less I need Eogan’s soothing touches, making them as brief and infrequent as possible. Which maybe I should be grateful for, seeing as it’s exactly what Adora wants. Obviously she needn’t have even threatened.
But the pressure keeps building. In me. In the smoky air. In the Faelen people. And in between Eogan and me, and Colin and me, and in Adora’s house every third night as bald boy and I now smile for Adora’s festivities at which she has us appear, elaborately dressed, refined, reserved, in her banquet room. And Eogan has us always listening for the key to turning the war that’s about to destroy us. But he never asks what we hear, which just makes it easier to keep silent that Lord Myles is a spy—as does the mental image of him slicing Eogan’s throat open—until I can figure out what to do about it.
I shiver and walk faster through the gray mist.
Haven bucks to say hello when she sees me. She’s annoyed at the saddle Eogan’s making her wear and pushes her beautiful black head my direction, hoping for a mouse or mole to snack on for comfort.
“Whoa,” Eogan soothes. He tightens her reins. “The sleeping dead arises.”
I nod toward Colin. “I know. I thought he’d never get up.”
“I’ve been ’ere for a half hour!” Colin leans down from his horse to pat its neck. “Isn’t that right, boy?” The beast issues a quick warning snip, and Colin jerks back. Working with the horses has made us familiar, but overconfidence won’t be tolerated on their part, nor on Eogan’s.
I hide my laugh and hook my bag to Haven’s saddle while Eogan holds her steady. I whisper in Haven’s ear that I’ll find her a morsel soon enough, and by the time I’m mounted and ready, Eogan’s on his horse, with a broadsword on his back, steering us south toward the mountains at the base of our Faelen island.
“A break from the familiar for a few days,” Eogan informed us last night. “You’ll practice your abilities in other types of terrain, specifically the southern altitude and snow.”
I feel Adora’s gaze on me as we ride out, searing her warning about Eogan into my skin as he directs us away from the High Court and Castle and down toward the Hythra Crescent’s southern peaks. The same mountains that, along with our now nearly-wiped-out armada, have kept us safe from Bron for years. But not anymore. I look up through the dim to where the airship bombed.
“Why so far?” Colin asks once the horses are trotting at a good clip. “Why not any of the northern ridges?”
“Because I want to show you something.”
And with that, the ride settles into uncomfortable silence.
The road isn’t one I’ve travelled, but it’s familiar enough terrain once we get galloping. By the time the sun hits the first immediate town and its outlying villages, women are already up and working with their bedraggled children and half-clothed slaves, farming their barren earth patches or setting out feeble wares to sell even though few people are out on the road this early. And even fewer seem interested. We give a wide pass to a unit of soldiers probably heading to the northern front. When Eogan hails them, they offer nothing more than a nod. One’s missing a leg, the other an eye. A third looks like he won’t survive the day.
Next comes a merchant pulling a chain of cows with a goat and an old woman in shackles. She has four owner circles on her wrinkly arm. My throat sticks together, and I want to say something. To ask her name, at least. But one look at her face is enough to tell me that, whoever she used to be, she probably doesn’t remember.
Eogan falls back beside me. I look at him to see what he wants, but he stays quiet. His gaze is on the old slave woman too.