I couldn’t hear their words, but it looked like Nikolas was apologizing for his sister. Gia’s smile was undimmed, but I boiled with fury for her. The least her brother could have done was not draw their attention to us. It was almost as if he had wanted them to see her, so that they could admire the contrast with himself.
When I tentatively suggested as much to Gia as we hurriedly mounted our assigned horses, she brushed my words aside.
“He’s just being Nikolas,” she said.
But as we rode down the road, somewhere near the rear of the cavalcade, I found I didn’t agree. Normally Nikolas stuck to his sister like glue, criticizing her decisions in person rather than from afar. His behavior on the tour seemed like something new. New and sinister.
Chapter 16
Airlie
Days passed, and the General didn’t question my living arrangements. Since the nighttime guard at the door never reappeared, I wasn’t even sure he knew. And even in the daytime, eyes no longer seemed to be trained on me at every moment.
The first few nights I didn’t test the limits. But after a while, I couldn’t resist wandering around in the dark.
No one challenged me, and I could find no trace of a tail. The General was apparently giving me a longer lead, perhaps watching to see what I would do with the increased freedom. At first, I did nothing, content to lull him into a false sense of complacency. Although I couldn’t resist making one attempt to ask the gate guard to open the gate for me.
He just laughed and told me to come back another day. I grinned, giving every appearance of easy compliance. I hadn’t expected it to work, anyway.
But even without Quirin’s presence as a constant reminder, Dara’s sad end and Marissa’s words ate away at me. And the thing that troubled me most was Renley’s role in it all.
The more my anger toward my father festered, the more my resentment of Renley disappeared. Scratch below the surface, and we were both the same. We had both been manipulated by adults we looked up to—adults who were too driven by their own agendas to consider what was best for us.
And while my father hadn’t been the monster the General was, his betrayal was more personal and cut more deeply.
And beneath it all was an underlying sorrow that I had wasted my chance to get to know Dara better. If I had known everything I knew now from the beginning, I wouldn’t have kept her at arm’s length.
I had just resolved that I needed to talk to Renley when Quirin returned to the house. He still wore his grief around him like a cloak, but I no longer had to coax him to eat, and he looked marginally better rested.
While I was glad to see him returning to something of his former strength, his presence in the house complicated my new goal. I couldn’t have an open conversation with Renley while his father was around.
I tried hanging around the training yard where he spent his time with the warriors, but he was never alone. But watching them at target practice, my fingers itched to hold a bow again, and an idea formed.
The next morning, I marched up to the General as he left his home.
“Let me go hunting,” I said. “I’m skilled with a bow.”
He gestured for the man at his side to go on without him before turning to give me his full attention.
“Our most recent hunting party has just returned. We don’t have another trip planned for some time.”
I shook my head. “No, let me go on my own. Just for a day. There are a few animals still scratching a living out here. I’ll try for one of them.”
He raised an eyebrow, an amused look on his face. “You want me to give you a weapon—which you admit to being skilled with—and let you walk through the gate alone?”
“Not alone, then. Send…” I let my gaze roam around the courtyard before appearing to latch on to Renley as he walked across the courtyard with others from his dormitory, as he did every day at this time. “Send Renley with me. You said I needed to earn your trust. Consider this the first step.”
When he didn’t immediately reply, I tapped the neutralizer at my waist. “Where am I going to go with this attached, anyway? As far as I know, this camp is the only place in all the kingdoms that has anyone who knows how to disable it.”
Another moment of silence passed before the General nodded once.
“Renley!” he shouted in a bellow that easily crossed the courtyard.
Renley looked up in surprise, not quite able to hide his delight when he realized who had called for him. Trotting over to us, he ignored me, his focus on the General.
“Airlie is going hunting for the day. You’re to accompany her and ensure she doesn’t forget to return come nightfall.”
“Hunting?” Renley finally looked at me.
“Yes.” The General’s curt voice indicated he didn’t expect to be plagued with questions.
Renley straightened. “Yes, sir.”
The General nodded at us both before marching off. I watched him go before turning to Renley with a fake smile.
“So, where can I find a bow?”
Several hours later, I had given up on the idea of actually catching anything. Clearly I had overestimated the number of animals that still survived on this side of the border. But at least we had made it far enough away from the settlement that it was no longer in sight, concealed behind a stand of twisted trees that were barely clinging to life.
I stopped, leaning into the wind and relishing the feel of the unfettered air. Trapped inside the wooden walls of the settlement, I hadn’t felt so much as a free breeze in months. I missed the untamed elements, and the way they roared and whispered with equal allurement.
Without thinking, I reached for the air around me. I felt nothing.
My hand tightened around my bow. Even now, after all this time, I sometimes forgot about the neutralizer—like an amputee, trying to reach for something with an arm that was no longer there.
I pushed the thought away, not wanting to waste any of my precious moments beyond the walls on useless resentment.
“This is a waste of my time,” Renley muttered. “I don’t know what the General was thinking.”
I turned to him, taking his mild criticism of the General as my opening. “He doesn’t care about the hunting. It’s a test. For both of us.”
“A test?” He glared at me. “The General knows my loyalty.”
“I don’t know.” I batted my eyelashes at him. “I am a young female. Boys of your age have proven susceptible to such tests of loyalty before.”
He guffawed, a heartier laugh than I had yet heard from him. I grinned back, trying not to feel offended at his mirth.
“Sorry, Airlie,” he said when his chuckles subsided. “But my parents talked about you and your sister a lot—the perfect daughters they never had.” His smile twisted a little, although it stayed on his face. “I’ve always thought of you like a cousin, or something.”
“There you go, then,” I said. “Family. That’s another kind of loyalty.”
“If you’re trying to subvert my loyalty to the General,” he said in a mulish voice, but I cut across his protests, holding my hand up for silence.
When he tried to keep talking, I hissed at him.