The anguish and fear in her voice made his chest tighten. “I’m fine, Lara. Stay still. I’m coming.”
Striding in her direction, Aren carefully removed her blindfold, grimacing at the sight. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut, the skin around them red with scratches, the tears streaking her face full of sand and blood. “Can you see at all?”
“Not well.”
Memory of the storm flooded over him, of her covering his face, including his eyes. Of her leading him to safety while her own eyes suffered the price. “Let me have a look.”
Not that he was entirely sure how to help her. Eyes were delicate things, and while he was handy enough with setting bones and stitching wounds, this wasn’t something he knew much about. But at the least they needed to be flushed, and he could manage that. “I found the kitchen in my exploration. Should have what we need to clean you up.”
Taking her hand, he led her through the pathways, trying not to notice the texture of her skin beneath his. No longer buffed and polished the way it had been when they were in Ithicana, but dry and calloused. Even so, the shape of her hand, the way it curled around his, was achingly familiar. He dropped it the moment they reached the kitchen.
“Stay here,” he muttered. “I’m going to get some water.”
The sand was beginning to settle in the spring, but the water was still murky. He filled a kettle and a pot, carrying them back. After a bit of thinking, he went to one of the buildings where he’d seen the remains of dresses and retrieved an armload of silk. With repeated attempts, he was able to filter the water through the fabric until it ran clear, then he boiled it on the stove, setting the kettle aside to cool. “You told me once that your father had everyone who knew of his plots killed. Is this where it happened?”
She turned her head away, wiping at her cheeks. “Yes.”
“Did you help him kill them?”
“No.” Her voice was toneless. “But neither did I do anything to save them.”
Aren watched her, waiting, seeing the slight twitch of the muscles in her jaw. The faintest furrow in her brow that he now knew meant she was considering whether to tell the truth or to lie.
Lara sighed. “My father came with his cadre to retrieve the girl Serin had chosen to marry you, which was my sister, Marylyn.”
The woman who’d tried to kill him on Midwatch—who had killed Eli as well as the boy’s mother and aunt and God knew how many others. The sister Lara had killed with one snap of the neck.
“I was close with my master of arms. On the first night my father’s party was here, he arranged so that I’d overhear their plans. I discovered that my father intended to kill me and the rest of my sisters the night Marylyn was officially announced as his choice, the costs associated with us remaining alive more than he wished to pay. Which meant I had a matter of days to figure out how to save all of our lives.”
“Your father told me this story.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” A lie. There’d been comfort in his belief that Lara wasn’t the sort of person to risk herself in a rescue attempt. Silas had taken that away. “Why didn’t you tell your sisters and then escape? With your training, it would’ve been easy.”
“Yes, but it also would’ve meant us spending our entire lives on the run unless we’d also killed my father and all of his cadre, which had obvious risks. Plus . . .” She trailed off, giving her head a slight shake. “At that point we all still believed what we’d been told of Ithicana’s villainy and Maridrina’s suffering. To leave would’ve meant abandoning what I believed was my country’s only good chance of healing itself, and I couldn’t accept that.” Her face scrunched up. “It seems so stupid now to have believed that, but I suppose it’s hard to imagine being blind when one can see.”
That was why Silas had kept them hidden away. Not to protect them from assassination, but to keep his daughters from learning the truth. “Why you? You could’ve faked your and your sisters’ deaths and let Marylyn carry on as your father’s choice.”
“There were some logistical reasons.” She bit down on her bottom lip. “But mostly, it was because I didn’t think she’d survive you.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Little did I know I had it backward, and that it would’ve been you who wouldn’t have survived her. If nothing else, at least I spared you from that.” Her voice cracked on the last.
A pair of tears rolled down her swollen cheeks, and it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms. Instead, he rose, tested the water, and found that it had cooled. “Rest your head on the table,” he said, rolling a silk dress into a pillow to place underneath her cheek. “This will hurt.”
She clenched her teeth but said not a word as he carefully poured the water into her bloodshot eyes. Her face was marked with scrapes and bruises, but she was still beautiful.
Would he have fallen for any of the other sisters, if they had been the ones to come? Would he have made the same mistakes?
Maybe, but he didn’t think so. There was something about her. Something that had spoken to his soul in a way no other woman he’d met ever had.
Ithicana will never forgive her, he silently chided himself. And to ask them to would be to spit in the faces of all his people who’d lost children and parents and sisters and brothers. He couldn’t do it, no matter how he felt about her.
Yet that didn’t mean he needed to continue wallowing in the pain of all the things that could not be undone. The past was the past, and his eyes needed to be on the future.
Reaching into his pocket, Aren pulled out the letter. He read the front and then the back, but for the first time since Marylyn had given it to him, the words failed to ignite his anger. He faced the stove, staring at the flames flickering beneath the kettle of water.
Lara shifted, lifting her head. “What’s burning?”
“Nothing important,” he answered, then continued to watch as the letter turned to ash.
28
Lara
The compound might have saved their lives, but it was not their salvation. Not when there was no food. And not when more of her father’s soldiers would be on their way to ensure she and Aren were dead. Which meant the biggest challenge was ahead: how to get out of the Red Desert alive.
Her sisters had stripped the compound of supplies, and what remained was fouled with sand, broken, or burned. Worse, while her sisters had taken the shorter journey north to Maridrina, Lara and Aren needed to head south to Valcotta, which was twice the distance.
“Find whatever you can that will hold water,” she’d told Aren. “And anything edible, though I doubt there will be much.”
She’d been right on that count. Other than a handful of dates, a lone sack of flour, and a jar of pepper, Lara had found nothing to eat. There were several trees that produced fruit on the oasis, but the storm had stripped them bare. The gardens were buried with sand, and what she found beneath was nothing more than inedible pulp. Which meant they were looking at close to two weeks without food.
“Not much to be found.” Aren dropped the supplies he’d gathered on the ground next to the spring, which Lara had been using a shovel to dredge, her dress soaked with sweat from the effort. It was cursedly hot, but they needed clean water more than she needed a wash, and it was a task she was able to do with her eyes closed. Which, given the way they still stung, was a blessing.