“I’ll take second,” Alastair said in a considerably less peevish tone. “Wake me in a few hours.”
Akarra tucked her head under her opposite wing. Alastair fished a bit of bardsbread from our panniers and sat with his back to her steaming side. I sat next to him, taking the chunk of bread he offered without enthusiasm. We chewed for a minute in silence.
“I was wrong,” he said at last.
“Hm?”
“To follow Wydrick. We wouldn’t be out here if we hadn’t chased him from Morianton.”
“We couldn’t just let him fly away.”
“Yes, we could have,” he said firmly. “I should’ve known he was taunting us. On the road north, in Morianton, even now. That’s all he’s ever done, all he’s ever been: a taunt. From our earliest days as boys together. Any time he trained longer with my father or bested me in a Sparring or mastered something before me, he would never let me forget it.” He exhaled long and slow, his breath suspended in a frozen white cloud in front of him. “We should have taken the long way around.”
I went back to gnawing at the stale loaf. Argument, justification, sympathy: whatever he was looking for, I was too tired to give. My jaw worked up and down, cold muscles moving mechanically as I navigated the crust of coarse seeds that stuck in my teeth. I no longer remembered what real food tasted like. Everything was chill and grit and cramp and numb hands and throbbing head, and still Alastair went on, chipping out icy monuments to his regret from the frozen air.
“I should have known he was playing with us. He—”
“Alastair, stop. I wanted to catch Wydrick as much as you did, all right? We all decided to follow him back there,” I said. “Stop trying to take the blame.”
His silence took on a grudging edge as he pulled off the length of cloth that he’d been using as a scarf. It’d once been one of his spare shirts, sacrificed to his dagger when we’d started up the mountains. I’d donned the other half beneath my hood like a cowl, though it hadn’t helped much. Breathing through the thin cloth had transformed it into a frozen shell that chafed my nose and did little to block the cold. It now lay slumped in a soggy circle around my neck. I tugged it off and hung it on a branch above the fire, hoping rather than believing that the fitful flame would dry it out by morning.
When Alastair’s silence continued, I settled against Akarra’s side and negotiated a more comfortable sleeping patch. The living furnace at our backs kept enough of the cold at bay to prevent our freezing to death, but Akarra could warm only that which she touched, and the cold found other ways in. It worked through my clothes like a dull needle, pricking my face, my arms, my feet. The enormity of my folly in taking four walls and a roof for granted for so many years struck me once more, the Old Wilds’ birch rod to the back of my spoiled complacency.
You brought this on yourself, you know. Before the words had come only in a whisper; now they thundered inside me, an unyielding magistrate sitting in judgment over my folly. I squeezed my eyes shut. I had been afraid, and in my fear I had lied, claiming readiness to accompany Alastair and Akarra with all the unthinking enthusiasm of the nakla I was. And I had paid for my naiveté. Holy gods, how I had paid for it. I was paying for it still.
I drew my knees up almost to my chin, curling reflexively inward against the question that I knew was coming, that would always and forever be coming for me in the dark place between sleeping and waking.
What if?
What if I’d stayed at Pendragon? What if I’d not forced my body through weeks of physical hardship, terrible food, and the terror of the trek across the Old Wilds? What if I’d never seen Castle Selwyn, never faced the horror that was the Green Lady? What if I’d not fallen on my stomach in the ruined abbey? What if I’d never been on that beach when Wydrick and his ghast came to survey their murderous handiwork? What if, what if, what if, if, if?
If I’d stayed at Pendragon, would our child have lived?
Neither the fire nor the woods nor the winter silence had an answer. A tear slid down my cheek, warm as blood.
“Do you remember what Tristan said?” Alastair asked.
I opened my eyes.
“‘You’ve tasted the lifeblood of one of the Great Tekari,’” he murmured. “He said there would be consequences.”
“Aye, I remember.”
He touched my heartstone on its chain around his neck. The deep green gem had formed from the last drop of lifeblood of the Greater Lindworm, spilled from the heart Alastair had eaten to cure himself of its poison. Getting the heart had cost him the life of one of his oldest friends, and I didn’t doubt that it was that knowledge as much as the physical reminder of the Worm’s sting that slowed his sword arm and gnawed away at his confidence. “Aliza, I need to know what’s happening to me.”
“You’re still healing, that’s what’s happening.” I rolled over again. “Give it time.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“Alastair, please.”
“North Fields changed something in me. I can feel it. What if I’m never the way I was?”
Yes, what if? What if? “You know I don’t know the answer to that.”
He drew deeper under his cloak and pulled his hood over his eyes. I tossed a few more twigs onto the fire and wondered how much longer it’d keep up the pretense. It was smoking in earnest now, the flames no larger than my hand. I sank into my little bearskin bundle and fought my way back into darkness.
It wasn’t sleep that waited for me within that darkness, though—merely cold and panicked restlessness. When Alastair shook me awake a few hours later, I felt more tired than I had been when we’d lain down. The fire had long since burned out and snow was sifting in through the branches, dusting our panniers in white. By the rhythm of Akarra’s breath at my back I guessed she was asleep, though hers too was a restless one. Her wings fluttered above us, fighting dream-winds. I stretched my stiff limbs, wrapped my cloak around my knees, and listened to the howl of the storm.
Hours crept by. I measured them by the accumulation of powder along the branches just visible in the distilled moonlight. Snow still fell, but the storm had finally slackened, and here and there the clouds parted long enough to show a glimpse of sky beyond. Apart from the sound of our breathing, all was deathly still. Shivers ran icy-nailed fingers along my arms and down my back. Akarra no longer felt as warm as she had when we had lain down. I forced my eyes open and sat rigid beneath my cloak, but my mind drifted like the snow and I wondered, not for the first time, how many nights it would take to get to An-Edannathair. Many more like this and we might not make it at all.
The soft crunch of snow sounded outside our copse. I forgot about the cold.
“Alastair!” I shook his shoulder. He stirred and opened his eyes. “There’s something out there,” I whispered.
I could see his struggle against the cold and clinging fog of sleep as he stared at me, trying to make sense of my words or perhaps just to remember where we were. A second later he was on his feet, axe in hand. He nudged Akarra’s wingtip and spoke softly in Eth. She too took longer than usual to wake, but her sides flared with sudden heat when she did. She peered out into the snowy darkness.
“I don’t see anything,” she said. “What did you hear, Aliza?”