Duke added, “The first rule of hunting is knowing your limits—when to fight, when to run, and when to be cautious. We’ll camp here for a few more days so that the two of you can recover. Perhaps the rest of us can make hunting runs nearer to Sorrow’s Maw and begin bulking up our supplies.”
Locke began to protest, but a firm look from Duke cut him off. “You’re no good to us if you don’t heal properly. Ransom, set up his tent. If he won’t lie down, make him.”
*
The others did have to force Locke to rest. In fact, they had to force him back into his tent several times that day while remaking the camp. Roar thought her tent looked a little sturdier this time, though still somewhat jumbled. She would get better. She had to.
Hour by hour, the others began to unwind from their adrenaline-filled morning, but she could not seem to do the same. Roar was consumed with doubt and shame, but these feelings she knew were all her own.
She thought physical activity might calm her mind, so she busied herself with clearing the debris left by the twister, piling up broken tree branches on the sides of the road to clear a path. There were gouges in the earth where the storm had torn up the soil, and even with the debris removed, the road would be rocky.
When there was no more she could do, she made her way back to the Rock, studying the outside for damage, of which there was remarkably little. Dents and dings certainly, but with the way that twister had looked she would have thought it could tear anything apart. As she stood marveling, Duke ambled over to stand behind her.
“How are you feeling?” the old man asked. His voice was not as soft as it used to be, and his lanky frame was stiff.
She almost said fine. But there were precious few things she could tell the truth about, and this was one of them.
“Confused,” she answered. “Sore. Worried.” Guilty.
“Confusion leads to knowledge for those brave enough to seek it.”
“And if there are no answers to my questions? You’ve been doing this work for decades, and my problems are unfamiliar even to you.”
“And is that where you want to draw your line? When you give up? At things that are unfamiliar?”
“No. Of course not. But—”
“All things were unfamiliar once upon a time. If we all gave up when there were no answers to be found, there would not be hunters like us. Sometimes you must make answers when there are none.”
Her lip wobbled at the familiar saying. “How did you know I loved that book? Did you see it in my things?”
“What book?”
“The Tale of Lord Finneus Wolfram. Those were his last words to his uncle the king before he left on his doomed search for a new world. All my life I’ve dreamed of an adventure like that.”
“Ah. It’s a popular saying in our line of work. I did not know that was its origin.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t. But those words were my greatest hope when I was young. To find answers for the unanswerable, a path through the impossible.”
“Then lean on them now. But let us avoid ending up like Lord Wolfram, yes? No tragedies here, Roar. This world will make you a victim every chance it gets. Don’t let it.”
She nodded, feeling those words sear straight to her gut.
“I’m sorry I put you all in danger,” she whispered. “If you want me to leave, I would understand.”
“And what would you go home to if you did?”
She hesitated, but then decided to give him more of her truth. “My mother. And a life that is stifling on the best days, suffocating on the worst.”
He hummed low in his throat. “No one expects you to leave,” he finally said. “I do not know what lies ahead for you. Sometimes the paths of our lives wander far from what we expect; they twist and turn and branch into dead ends. I have lost count of the number of dead ends I’ve encountered in my long life. Each time, when I could see no future beyond a certain point, the future always came anyway. Yours will too, Roar. All you can do is be ready to meet it when it comes.”
Duke nodded his head and wandered back to the group. She considered following, wanted to, even. But then she saw Sly watching her with suspicion. Even Bait wasn’t his usual silly self around her. She did not blame them. They should be wary of her.
She tried to do some resting of her own and retired to her tent for a nap, but she could not turn her mind off. The hunters gathered round the campfire got more raucous as the day passed, celebrating their victory and survival. She had the feeling this was a ritual, a cleansing of sorts. Each laugh hit her with the force of a punch, bearing down on an already impossible weight that sat upon her chest. Soon she was crawling out of her shoddy tent and seeking out Locke’s. Maybe she would be able to sleep if she saw that he was well.
There was a faint blue glow behind the canvas of his tent, and when she opened the flap, she saw a lightning lantern in the corner, casting light on Locke’s sleeping form. His chest was still bare except for the bandage, and his blankets were pushed down around his waist.
His tent was large enough that she could fit with just a slight hunch of her head and shoulders. She had to practically crawl in and out of her own tent by comparison. She crossed toward Locke on tiptoe and knelt beside his sleeping pallet.
His body was a master study in strength—all hard muscles and scarred skin. The waves of his long hair were spread out on his pillow. He had lashes that rested on cheeks that looked as if they had been cut from stone. She wanted to trace the slightly crooked line of his nose, rasp the pads of her fingers over the thickening stubble along his jaw.
She was still angry over the way he had treated her in the river, and she did not know where to put that anger when what she had done was far worse.
The bandage at his shoulder was clean, so at least the wound seemed to have stopped bleeding. She was glad she had been unconscious when he was injured. Her stomach rolled just imagining what he must have looked like with a branch piercing his skin. So like what had happened to her brother.
The bruising on his chest had darkened, and even in the areas where his skin was undamaged, she could see the faint white lines and marks of dozens upon dozens of scars. Hesitantly, she reached out and lightly traced her finger over a raised mark near his lower ribs. His skin was warm, and the muscles firm beneath it. Her pale skin contrasted against his darker coloring, and she had the sudden urge to splay both hands over his chest, touching as much as she could with the spread of her fingers, but she settled for skimming that scar once more.
“Bandits,” he murmured, making her jerk backward. His eyes were still closed, and she wondered if she had imagined it, but then he kept speaking. “Not just storms and military that are a danger to us. We move a valuable commodity, and some people are not content to buy it in a market.”
“You were stabbed?” She wanted to touch the scar again, but she shoved her hand beneath her thigh to keep it away.
“Between the ribs. It was a close call.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Would have fit with the rest of my life. Survive hurricanes and firestorms, only to be brought down by a small blade.”
“I’m glad you weren’t,” she murmured, her eyes cast down toward her lap.