“What?” he asked, irritated.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
He looked around. “Hear what?”
At least he was whispering now, but I ignored him, my focus on the trees. “It’s like snuffling. But it just stopped.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he said in a normal tone. “Like I said earlier, this is a waste of our time.” He strode toward the trees, clearly ready to be done with the day’s efforts.
“Wait! Stop!” I cried, but he didn’t slow.
An explosion of movement and sound emerged from the trees as an enormous shape burst into view. It charged across the short distance of open ground toward Renley, hooves flying and sharp tusks gleaming.
I whipped the bow up, responding on instinct. Nocking an arrow, I let it fly in the same smooth movement.
It hit the hairy creature in the chest, evoking a guttural scream but no reduction in pace. The beast had nearly reached Renley.
I pulled out another arrow, having a better feel for the effect of the breeze now. This time, it hit the animal in the eye. A third arrow sprouted from its chest as it slowed, collapsing downward with an unnatural wheezing gasp.
Renley stood frozen. When the seconds ticked by and it still didn’t move, he slowly spun around to stare at me.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
I nodded, my mouth a thin line as I walked over to join him. Now that the danger had passed, I felt shaky and light-headed. It had been too long since I’d had a chance to practice, and I wouldn’t have made those shots if I hadn’t been firing at such short range.
Together we surveyed the animal.
“What…is it?” I asked.
“A boar, I think.” He had regained some of his calm, glancing at the trees behind the creature. “It’s not just the vegetation that gets twisted out here.”
I winced. The creature dead at our feet was far larger than any boar I’d ever seen, and his back was misshapen. Had the unnatural rage which had made him attack Renley come from pain? From the look of his body, it seemed likely. Perhaps my actions had been a mercy.
“I’m not eating any meat from that creature,” I said flatly.
Renley nodded fervent agreement. “There’s a reason we usually hunt across the border.”
“Let’s move on.” I had no desire to linger beside the body.
Renley nodded, and by unspoken agreement, we skirted the trees the boar had emerged from. Once we’d made it far enough around that we could no longer see the carcass, I stopped, however. The settlement would soon come into sight again, and we still hadn’t had the conversation I had brought us out here for.
Still shaken from our recent run in, I didn’t beat around the bush.
“Do you know what your mother died from?”
Renley also stopped, backtracking to my side, his expression furious. I didn’t back down, though, meeting him glare for glare.
After a moment, he shrugged. “She was sick. It happens.” But there was pain behind the blasé words.
“Yes, it does. But Dara didn’t have a natural illness. She was poisoned.”
“What?” He took a step toward me. “That’s nonsense. Who would do such a thing?”
“You, from what I hear,” I said softly.
He growled deep in his throat, looking ready to leap forward and seize me. My hand tightened instinctively around the grip of the bow, but I kept myself still. I knew the severity of my accusation. There was a reason I was doing it away from the settlement and with a weapon in my hands.
“How dare you!” he said, his voice shaking.
“Am I wrong?” I asked. “Did you not ask her to use her power affinity to help the General?”
“Not just the General,” he said. “All of us. We might already be out of this awful place if everyone just realized that we need to work together.”
“But the requests came from the General,” I pressed, “and you passed them on.”
“What of it?” He sounded defiant now, like a child playing at adulthood.
“Didn’t your father ever tell you why he wouldn’t help the General?”
“He was exaggerating,” Renley said. “Mother wouldn’t have agreed if it was true. The General assured me any hurt was only minor and temporary. We need to accept a little discomfort if we’re ever going to succeed. Ask any of the warriors. Father just doesn’t want anything to change, and he’s managed to convince a bunch of the other old-timers to see it his way.”
His stance was still aggressive, but I could see a terrified hint of doubt in his eyes. Everything in me wanted to pull back from the wound I was about to inflict, but I steeled myself. I was done hiding the truth from others under the guise of protecting them.
“Do you really think it’s true that your mother would have told you no if it was hurting her?” I asked softly. “She wouldn’t be the first mother to put her child’s interests ahead of her own. I understand she wasn’t the…firmest of women.”
Renley shook his head, but his hands were trembling, his shoulders slumping forward.
“No. No, she was ill.”
“If it was an ordinary illness, what was it? Surely she would have told you—her own son.”
He stared at me blankly, clearly at a loss. How had it not occurred to him to ask such a crucial question? What generality had she fobbed him off with?
“She was ill,” I pressed on. “But not with any natural sickness. She was ill because of you. You say the General claimed it wouldn’t hurt her, but now she’s dead. Do you really think that’s coincidence? She confessed to one of her friends that she’d been helping you, but she made a mistake and let it go too far. Her friend had seen it before, with her own grandparents.”
“No.” The doubt was stronger in his voice this time.
“It was Marissa who told me. You must know her better than me. Would she lie about the words of a dead woman? Surely your mother knew what was happening to her own body.”
Horror flooded his face. “Marissa told you that? That my mother said it herself?”
I nodded. “You can ask Marissa yourself if you like. She’ll confirm what I’ve said.”
I could read in his face that he had no desire for that conversation, and I could understand why. From the anger I’d seen in Marissa, she wouldn’t go easy on him. But neither could he discount her word like he could mine.
I had forced him to confront his reality—the pull between the two parts of his life—and the moment had come when he must either accept he had been wrong about the General, or fully reject the people who had raised him, branding them liars rather than just misguided fools.
“No.” This time he whispered the word, his whole body trembling. “Mother…Mother would have told me.”
“Would she?” I pressed, wishing I could turn and run away instead.
I didn’t want to be here for this. But having lured Renley into my trap, I couldn’t abandon him now.
“No,” he whispered again, but this time he followed it with, “she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t want to hurt me.”
“The General knew all along,” I said. “That’s why he agreed to let her go after Cadence. After handing her a death sentence, he was willing to use her final days as well, taking away her last moments with you and your father.”