Just keep riding.
We pass more soldiers and edge around the outskirts of a larger town. And while the people in it are poorer, it reminds me a bit of my fourth home with its corroding stone archways and moss-covered sheep sheds. A young mother yells out a doorway for her slave to keep an eye on the kids, then retreats and slams the door. The poor, bedraggled servant looks about the same age as the unruly brats she’s supposed to be watching. Also reminiscent of home number four.
Is Eogan trying to make me erupt through memories? Or just torture me?
By lunchtime, Eogan is riding beside Colin again, and his mood has eased to such that the two of them are exchanging jokes like old schoolmates. The sun is hot and reflecting off the cracked clay road, in a section where the clouds don’t overflow as often. They drift above us, high on their sun-speckled wind currents, while we stop long enough to eat oranges and pasties and water the horses at a stream by a crop of trees.
I catch a field mouse and feed it to Haven. Then we’re moving again. Hour upon hour. Soldier after weary soldier. Village after village. They all blend together with flashes of most every home I’ve ever known. My stomach squirms at the premonition of seeing someone I recognize—one of my former owners perhaps, or their surviving kin. The thought makes me huddle in my seat and keeps me tugging my dyed hair forward to remind myself it’s brown. I look different now.
I am different now.
After five hours of riding, Eogan appears in no hurry to stop, and I can’t stand the discomfort any longer. I nudge Haven forward between the two men. “What do you know of Drust?”
“Why?” Eogan responds without looking over.
I shrug. “Everyone is always talking about the war with Bron, but no one says much about Drust.”
“So are you asking what I know of her history or what I know of the kingdom now?”
“Her history. How did Drust come to be?”
“Same way all kingdoms come into existence. People fight. Alliances form. The strongest survive. Drust has had six hundred years of kings, and I suspect they’ll have six hundred more.”
“But Bron conquered Drust. So technically shouldn’t their king be Drust’s king?”
“Bron beat Drust, which took a toll on both and made them allies of a sort. That doesn’t mean Bron had the man power thirty years ago to rule it, or even until recently for that matter.”
“When King Odion took over,” I say, recalling the library book I’d been reading.
Eogan nods.
“Took over?” Colin asks. “I thought he inherited it.”
I adjust to look at him. “When the old Bron king died, he left the kingdom to his twin sons. It didn’t go well, and Odion got the kingdom, and the other disappeared—supposedly offed by his brother.” I pause before glancing to Eogan. “Is that why our king’s never faced King Odion in person—because he’s too dangerous?”
Eogan’s jaw flexes slightly. “Doubtful. The way I hear it, Odion prefers the tactical side of things rather than dirtying himself in battle.”
“But have they never tried to negotiate?”
“King Sedric has. Odion just doesn’t respond.”
Colin furrows his brow. “Well, why’d Bron start fighting Drust in the first place?”
“To eliminate them as a threat,” our trainer says. “If Drust got Faelen, it would’ve taken Cashlin and Tulla as well, and those are the kingdoms Bron’s been fighting to get all these years. Faelen’s just an obstruction.”
“Why Cashlin and Tulla?”
“Their resources. Wood. Metal mines. Bron’s severely depleted their natural resources, and Drust is basically a wasteland.”
Clouds drift overhead as the sun starts its fiery plunge toward the Sea of Elisedd beyond the southern mountains, bringing a chill into the valley. I glance at Eogan. “But did they eliminate Drust as a threat?”
He laughs, and it’s a hard, callous sound. “Not by any means. If anything, Bron’s arrogance has blinded them to the real danger in recent years. Their focus on Faelen will be their undoing. Whether Faelen’s around to see it or not.”
“How?” Colin tugs his horse as close to Haven as he dares. “Yer not . . . yer not sayin’ Draewulf an’ his Dark Army’s real, are you?”
“He’s a wizard. Why wouldn’t he be?”
“I thought he was a wolf,” I correct.
“A shape-shifter, actually.” Eogan turns to look at me for the first time in over a week. Really look at me.
I stare back, as if to defy him and whatever his problem has been. Except something hungry stirs behind his gaze, and the next thing I know he’s taking my heart for a thirsty leap into green depths, and I’m drinking him in as fast as I can, excruciatingly aware of how parched I am.