AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Best ask him directly if you have questions,” she said. “And you best get a room at the inn before dark. There’s plenty available, but Hurst goes to bed early. Good luck to you.”
Ren knew it was a dismissal. She turned back, watching the distant figures follow some predetermined path down the mountain. Ren remembered that first tug across her bond. When Theo arrived at Nostra, she’d witnessed a young girl there to greet him, and that had to be who he was with now. Ren watched their descent until the rooftops blocked her view. Not knowing what else to do, she headed for the building that looked like the inn.
She was given a key to a room, at a rate that was even cheaper than a typical Lower Quarter hostel. Ren set her things in her room and circled back to ask where the sledding path from the fort fed out. The innkeeper offered her directions.
“Right at the old clock tower, left when you pass the house that looks like a fishtail.”
Armed with that odd knowledge, Ren pulled up her hood against the growing cold and headed outside. She was grateful to find the directions were quite accurate. They led her to an empty field. Across the way, two figures exited the woods, both dragging sleds behind them. Ren felt a flicker of unexpected jealousy. She’d never seen Theo with another woman. It was a strange taste on her tongue, but she could not deny that was what she felt as she watched Theo walk so easily at the other girl’s side, their shoulders touching slightly. He was so lost in conversation that he didn’t see Ren waiting for him in the distance. She couldn’t help herself. She took that slight feeling of jealousy and gave it a proper shove across their bond.
Theo looked up instantly. He stopped in his tracks when he saw her there, shoulders dusted with snow. Ren felt a thousand different emotions as he abandoned his sled and sprinted across the snowdrifts. Here was the boy she’d tethered all her hopes to. Here was the son of her greatest enemy. Here was someone that, for better or worse, she’d started falling for. All those thoughts ran through her mind in the time it took Theo to reach her. He swept her up in a hug that took them both to the ground. She couldn’t help laughing—even as the cold bit into her neck. Theo was as breathless as she was.
“You’re here. How are you here? Is this a dream?”
She watched him for any sign of disappointment. Any sign that he did not actually want her to be here, but there was only excitement on his face. That look of pure delight remained until the interloper arrived. Ren saw that the girl had dutifully grabbed the rope of Theo’s sled and patiently hauled them both across the snow. Her first impression of the girl, in Theo’s vision, had been that she was plain. Now she saw that wasn’t quite right. The girl had shaved her head sometime recently and allowed it to grow out naturally. The shorter hair emphasized round eyes that were a pretty shade of blue. And the cold drew out the roses in her cheeks. If she had looked mousy, it was simply because she was young. There was no doubt that she would be devastatingly pretty in just a few years. Too pretty for Ren’s liking, but that didn’t stop her from offering a hand.
“Ren Monroe.”
“Dahl Winters.”
Her last name surprised Ren, but the girl was quick to explain, as if she always had to explain. “Not those Winters,” she said. “Everyone thinks I’m some distant cousin. But the name is common in the mountains. I’m no kin to any of them.”
“Dahl grew up in the north,” Theo explained. “On the other side of the pass. It was Peska, wasn’t it?”
The girl nodded. Ren could tell Theo was trying to sound uncertain, as if he hadn’t memorized her hometown. She realized that the two of them had likely been alone in that snow-covered fort for the past few weeks. How had she not thought about that reality until now?
“Dahl was appointed to my uncle’s service right before I was assigned to replace him,” Theo explained. “Really, she’s been indispensable. Knows the castle in and out.”
Indispensable. That was not Ren’s favorite choice of words, but she smiled like nothing could have pleased her more. “How lovely.”
“And very much beside the point,” Theo said hurriedly. “You’re here! You’re actually here. Come on. We can talk about everything over dinner. Hurst makes the best soup.”
Ren took his offered arm. They trudged back through the city streets, and it took Ren exactly the amount of time to get back to the inn to realize that he meant all three of them would be dining together. She’d traveled all this way to visit the boy who’d been exiled—to whom she was bonded—and he did not think that warranted some measure of privacy?
She shoved those thoughts back, hoping they didn’t sit along the surface of her mind long enough for Theo to feel the emotions that went with them.
Dinner was in a back room of the inn. Apparently, Theo was staying there that night as well. Ren took a small comfort from the fact that he’d arranged separate rooms for himself and Dahl. But she also realized this was a regular occurrence. Sledding down from the fort, dining with some of the locals, sleeping here for the night. The two of them had formed habits together.
“I’m supposed to practice,” Theo said, dabbing a piece of bread in some kind of corn chowder. “It’s one of the mandatory requirements of the watcher. Even if this post is completely pointless, I thought I might as well do my best. In the case of some imaginary attack, my first task is to light the beacon. If I can’t do that, I travel the waxways to Nostra. And if that isn’t possible, I’m supposed to take one of the sleds down. The first watcher had them carve trails through the forest—all the way down from the fort to the town. It’s already iced over. Really, it’s kind of fun. Dahl and I have been trying to improve on our times.”
The girl offered a tight-lipped smile but said nothing. Theo seemed to realize that he was, once again, focused on the wrong person.
“Anyways. I wasn’t expecting you to come. Not so soon.”
Ren lifted an eyebrow. “Should I leave and come back later?”
“No,” Theo fumbled. “Absolutely not. This is the best news. Trust me. You’re a far more welcome guest than my last one.”
Another surprise for Ren. She kept the emotions off her face.
“Who was the first?”
“My brother came.”
Ren felt a shiver run down her spine. Thugar Brood had traveled through the Hairbone Valley? He’d humbled himself enough to come to this remote place? Ren remembered the look on his face when Theo had first been exiled. The unmasked smugness.
“That’s surprising. I didn’t realize you two were so close.”
Theo actually choked on his soup. He hacked a cough into the back of his hand for several seconds. “Close? We’re not close. Do you not remember Thugar?”
