I flinch. My focus was so fixed on Sir that I didn’t hear Mather approach. He smiles, but it’s marred by the sweat streaked across his cheek, by the panic around us.
“You let me sneak up on you?” he guesses, trying for lightness.
I shrug. “I have to let you think you’re good at something.”
He nods, lips relaxing as he watches me with a calm, solemn stare. Like we’ve never had to abandon camp or run off separately into the night until we all reconvened somewhere safe. We’ve done this at least a dozen times since we were small enough to remember, but he’s looking at me now like he’s never had to leave me before.
“Mather?” It comes out as a question.
He swings toward me, stops, pulls back, dancing around like he can’t gather up the courage to do something. My throat closes, shock choking me, not letting me dare hope that he’s going to do what I think—
Finally he sweeps in and lifts me against him. A tight, whole-body hug as his arms come around my back, holding me to his chest with my feet dangling in the air, his face in my neck.
“I’ll find a way to fix this,” he tells me, his words vibrating across my skin, tremors that shake my very foundation.
Slowly, carefully, I relax into him, my arms going around his neck. “I know,” I whisper. When he starts to put me down I cling more tightly, keeping my mouth to his ear. I have to say these words, but I can’t bring myself to look at him as they spill from my lips. “We all know, Mather. You’ll do everything you can for Winter. No one has ever thought less of you, and I think—I know—that Hannah would be proud that you’re her son.”
He doesn’t respond, just holds me there, panting into the space between us. I want to push my face down to his; I want to stay like this, lingering just short of kissing, forever. The conflicting desires make my pulse accelerate until I’m sure he can feel its rhythm beating on his chest. I can feel his, the fast thump of his heart galloping against my stomach.
In a quick burst of motion he sets me down, slides one hand around the back of my neck, and plants a kiss on my jaw, his lips lingering on my skin, leaving permanent trails of lightning in my veins. His chest deflates, the tension on his face unwinding as he pulls back from me. I catch a glimmer in his eyes, the finest sheen of tears. He doesn’t say anything or agree with me or do more than give my fingers one final squeeze.
Then he’s gone. Hurrying into camp to pack or saddle his horse or whatever Sir ordered him to do.
I stand in the middle of the horse pen, one hand on my jaw. My eyes flick up, searching for Mather amidst the chaos.
What was that?
But I know what it was. Or at least, I know what I want it to be—what I’ve always wanted it to be. What I constantly have to tell myself can never, ever be. But why now, in the midst of leaving, when I can’t corner him and make him explain or figure out some way to ignore that it even happened? Because it did happen. My jaw feels like it’s been branded by his mouth, and no matter how many times I repeat, “He’s our future king” to myself, I can’t get the impression of Mather’s lips out of my skin.
I don’t want to get their impression out of my skin.
Sir slides in front of me, dragging two horses already saddled. “Pack your things.”
I yank my hand down. Mather’s words and his lips and his arms around me fade to the back of my mind, and I hold them there, anchors in the face of all this uncertainty.
“No,” I growl at Sir. No, we can’t just leave. We have to stay; we have to plan something better than running. “I can’t let them—”
In one swift motion, Sir grabs my arm and flings me onto the nearest saddled horse. He leaps onto his own and takes both my reins and his, shooting me a glare that tells me not to argue.
His glares have never stopped me before. “We can’t let them destroy this home too!”
Alysson and Dendera swing onto their own mounts as we trot out of the horse pen. We ease to a brief stop in front of the meeting tent, long enough for Finn, Greer, and Henn to throw passing nods at Sir that yes, everything will be destroyed before we leave. Sir flicks the reins and as we continue I catch the faintest crackle of fire from inside the tent, the pop of flames devouring anything of importance, maps and documents. They probably used the fire pit. We won’t be able to bring it with us. Angra will find it, the only part of our past we possess, filled to the brim with ashes.
As I fumble with the pommel for something to hold on to other than a weapon, Sir’s fist around my reins falls, his hand unfolding just enough to cup mine. It’s so subtle I can’t tell if he’s trying to comfort me or making sure I don’t rip control of the horse away.
“It’s not your fault,” he grunts. “It’s no one’s fault.”
My throat closes and I just sit there, numb and small. It is my fault; I led the scouts here. And I know that staying is pointless—Angra will send far more than five men now, and with only eight of us, the odds are laughable. A death sentence. But I can’t just do nothing—doing nothing will kill me faster than facing Angra’s whole army on my own.
Sir pulls our horses to a stop when we reach the plains on the north side of camp. A heartbeat later we’re joined by every horse, every person, everything they were able to grab in the time Sir allowed. As for our livestock, I hope Angra will treat them better than he treats our people.
“Split up, two riders each. Once it’s safe, we convene in Cordell,” Sir announces. He points at Dendera, who sits on a horse beside Mather on his own mount. “Keep. Him. Alive.”
Dendera bows her head and stays that way until Sir jerks on his horse’s reins. It rears with a mighty whinny, filling all the horses with adrenaline. Over the roll of noise Sir eyes me and nods, beckoning me to follow. When he heaves northwest into the now-dark plains like one of Angra’s cannonballs, I trail a breath behind.
Everyone else follows, a brief stampede before we split off. I look back as Alysson gallops north with Finn, Greer and Henn head east, and Dendera and Mather go northeast.
Mather looks at me, his eyes grabbing mine with the same intensity as before. He urges his horse on beside Dendera’s, then they’re gone, barreling into the night.
Sir pulls his horse back alongside mine. The wind whips against my cheeks, drying the tears as they fall.
Not my fault. Sir said so, and Sir only tells the truth.
After an hour of all-out galloping, we slow. Sporadic groups of trees and shrubs are all we see, their dried, dead silhouettes splayed against the night. We keep going, riding until the sun rises. Until it sets again. Until the horses simply can’t go on any longer. Then we dismount, make sure they have a little water nearby, and leave them. Sir takes all their gear off first—the saddle, the reins, the blankets and small plated armor. He hides the useless parts in dried-up bushes, keeps what remains in his sack; and with a final pat on their flanks, we continue northwest for two days on foot, stopping only to sleep and scan the horizon for Angra’s men.
Sir keeps his supply of food rationed just enough to drive me mad with hunger. Small streams of muddy water run every so often, edible plants are even scarcer, and shade is nonexistent. There’s just sun, sky, yellowed grass, and dead, scraggy shrubs for hours.
I hate heat. I hate the sweat that drips between my shoulder blades, the way the sun’s rays bake every bare area of skin raw. But I hate silence more, and Sir won’t talk. Not just his usual quiet—he’s downright mute. He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t acknowledge me, for hours upon hours of endless walking.
Just when I think I’ll have to tackle him, he drops to his knees next to something in the grass. A stream, little more than an arm’s length wide. It’s the clearest water we’ve seen since we started, and the fog of heat lifts in a burst of relief when I sigh at the small spattering of half-alive green plants clustered around the banks. Tough vegetation that gets roasted in the sun, but it’s more edible than most of the Rania Plains’ delicacies, like crow.
Sir glances at me as he takes the pack from his shoulders. “We camp here tonight and head for Cordell tomorrow. No one’s following us. The sooner we get to safety, the better.”
Though the temptation of clean water sits a few paces away, I stay frozen. He’s talking to me. “Why are we going to a Rhythm Kingdom? I thought you hated King Noam?”
Sir turns to the water, his shoulders slumping a little, but he doesn’t respond.
“I can’t help until I know the plan. And like it or not, my help is all you have now.”
The bite in my voice startles me and I drop my arms. I move forward, hesitate, unsure what reaction will come. But when I step up next to him, all I see are the trails of dried blood that swirl off his hands and into the water. He’s had Spring blood on him for days. Of course he has—when would he have been able to wash it off?
The face of the soldier I killed flashes through my mind. My fault. All the men who died at camp were my fault too.
Sir nods to his left. “Upstream,” he says, ignoring my snap.
I shrug out of my chakram’s holster and drop it in the grass before marching to the left, kicking my way through bits of undergrowth. Every part of me feels bloodied, dirty, like I’m coated head to toe in the guts of Angra’s soldiers. I drop to my knees and dunk my head into the water up to my shoulders. The coolness washes away a bit of the heat, flowing over me and chasing off my panic. My regrets.
I’ve killed before. I’ve seen Sir kill before. I’ve seen everyone at camp, even Mather, speckled with blood and limping from battle. I shouldn’t care that a few Spring soldiers have died; they’ve killed thousands of our people.
My lungs start to burn but I stay down, keeping my breath trapped inside until the painful need for air is the only thing I feel. Nothing else. I don’t have room for anything else.
Fingers wrap around my arm. Before I can shake myself awake enough to realize who it is, I inhale. Water flows into my lungs, icy hot panic rushing into my chest along with the unwanted water, and I yank free of the stream, sputtering and heaving. Sir drags me into the grass, slamming his fist into my back to get the rest of the water to pour out of my nose in a rush of earthy grime.
As soon as my lungs clear I launch to my feet, shaking dirt and water out of my eyes. “I’m—I’m fine. You startled me. I’m fine.”
But Sir doesn’t look convinced.
“None of this is your fault. And you’ve killed before,” he says. His creepily perceptive general senses finally work in my favor for once. “You’ll kill again. The trick is not to let it incapacitate you.”
“I don’t.” I curl my hand into a fist, dirt gritting between my fingers. The rest of me is calm, careful, forcing every bit of anger out in my clenched hand. “I don’t want it to get easy. Not even if it’s Angra himself. I want to feel it, always, so I’m never as awful as him.”
Or you. I don’t want to end up as hard as you.
I twitch at the thought, more guilt heaping atop the rest. He wasn’t always this way, I remind myself. Alysson told Mather and me about the night Jannuari fell to Angra’s men. The night twenty-five of us escaped, cloaked in a snowstorm created by Hannah’s last pull of magic before Angra broke her locket in half and killed her.
“William was the only reason we made it,” Alysson told us as we huddled near the fire one night, waiting for Sir to get back from a mission. “We could see the flashes of cannon fire and clouds of smoke over the city, and we wanted to race back to save our countrymen, but William kept us moving until we crossed the border, until we got away.” She paused then, stroking one hand down Mather’s cheek. “He was the one who carried you on his chest the whole ride out of Winter once we broke free of Jannuari. Every time one of us begged him to go back and help save our kingdom, he’d put his hand on your little head and say, ‘Hannah entrusted us with the continuation of her line. This is how we will save Winter now.’ Even though a war raged behind us, even though we were caught in a chaotic blizzard to hide our escape, even though we wouldn’t reach safety for days, William was so gentle with you. A warrior with a tender heart.”
Sir had never told us that story himself, and after Alysson told it to us once, we never heard it again. But I’d watch Sir after that, looking for the tenderness that Alysson mentioned. Occasionally I could catch a flicker—a twinge around his eyes when Mather faltered in sparring, a twitch of his lips when I begged to learn how to fight. But that was all I ever saw of the general who once carried a baby for days to safety. Like all of his actual tenderness was gone, but every so often his muscles convulsed from the memory of it.
That’s how we all are, too hard for what we should be. We should be a family, not soldiers. But all that really connects us is stories, and memories, of what should be.
Sir nods. He’s clean now, every speck of blood gone except the stains on his clothes. Like it never happened. “Not wanting to forget how horrible it is to kill someone is part of what makes you a good soldier.”
“Did you just—” My fist relaxes. “You just called me a soldier. A good soldier.”
Sir’s lips shudder in his version of a smile. “Don’t let that incapacitate you either.”
The sun dries the water on my cheeks and starts to singe my skin again. This is a weirdly peaceful moment for Sir and me. I fight down the giddiness that threatens to ruin it.
“Should we hug or something?”
Sir rolls his eyes. “Get your weapon. We head for Cordell.”