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A heavy silence falls over the underground room. I drag in a breath thick with loamy odors. “Where do we go from here? As soon as we announce you as the Melchiorek heir, all of the Order of the Wild’s forces will be after you.”
“I know.” Petra lifts her chin. “I’ll have to gather all the support I can as quickly as I can. Any help you’ll offer, I’m immensely grateful for. But our first step is clear. I need to return to Florian to gather the proof of who I am to make sure those who would support me believe it at all.”
The defiance in her voice steadies my own resolve. There isn’t any question in my mind of what I owe to the family I nearly eviscerated.
I square my shoulders and hold her gaze. “I’ll be right there with you, no matter what the scourge sorcerers send our way.”
Six
Rheave
The horses’ hooves clop across the forest floor at an even rhythm that I’d delight in if I didn’t have so much distracting me from the simple pleasure.
Even when I’m not looking at her, every inch of my skin quivers with the awareness of Ivy’s presence. I do look at her quite a bit, because some part of me needs the extra confirmation that she’s really here.
My hands tighten around the reins, but I resist the impulse to urge my horse closer to hers. I’m already riding within a few feet of her as we pick our way through the forest. There are spaces two horses can’t squeeze through side by side.
If we hadn’t managed to borrow a couple more mounts from a farm we passed for the royal heirs to ride on, I might have shared Toast with her like we did from time to time on our journey before. I could have kept one arm wrapped around her waist as we rode, had her slim body pressed up against mine and my chin tucked over her shoulder as if there was no way I could ever lose her again.
Of course, that would have worn Toast out much more quickly.
I can’t suppress a pang of regret all the same.
We pass through a clearing, and I nudge my gelding to keep pace. Ivy’s pale reddish-blond hair catches a glimmer of moonlight that looks almost like a flare of magic—and a different sort of pang lances right through the middle of me.
For an instant, my body seems to squeeze tight around me, cold and hard as the cooled clay before the scourge sorcerers brought my prison to life. My lungs ache with my next breath.
If something else happens to her—if I did lose her again?—
I don’t know how I will continue to live.
I’ve been injured in this body. I’ve felt shame over actions that harmed my companions to the point that I considered destroying the form of conjured flesh that makes me almost human.
But I’ve never felt any pain like the agony of the past day, not knowing where Ivy was or what our enemies might be doing to her, not knowing if she was even alive herself after the story we heard from the royal children of how she defied her captors…
Is that the other side of the joy being with her brings me? Like the backlash that balances her magic, my delight in her must come with equal anguish?
Last night, there wasn’t anything I could do to cast off the frantic, searing emotions. They radiated all through my body, from the thoughts whirling in my head to the constricting of my throat to the listing of my stomach.
For the first time since I gained control over the body the scourge sorcerers made, it felt like a prison again. Just remembering the sensations gives me a chill.
I’d never been apart from Ivy for more than a few hours before, and then always by our own designs. I never realized the unsettled feelings that would rise up in her absence could become so much more intense.
Why do humans care so strongly about each other if the sensations can turn so debilitating?
I thought following Ivy wherever she went would ensure my freedom. I thought she was the path to escaping the torment the scourge sorcerers put me through.
But somehow the adoration that’s grown in me can lock me up and send me into harsher torments than I felt under our enemies’ sway.
That’s not her fault, though. It’s something in me.
And the only thing worse than knowing how my heart’s ties to her imprison me is the thought of having to go through that agony again.
So I keep glancing at her, checking for any sign of distress. I ride close even though it stirs up the unsettling memories, so I’ll be near at hand to leap to her defense if necessary.
I simply won’t let anyone wrench her away from me again, and then we can have nothing but joy.
Ivy peers over at Petra, the woman it seems is now supposed to be queen. She’s the only one of us riding with company, I’ve noted more than once with a twinge of envy—her brother sits in front of her on a large stallion’s back, leaning into her arms with a droop of his head as if he’s a wilting flower.
