“Maybe she wants to do it herself,” Jor replied, but his voice was unconvinced.
Lara lifted her head, as though sensing their scrutiny. Aren turned away before their eyes could meet, and the pile of dead Amaridians came into his line of sight. He’d pulled the bastard off her and slit his throat, but the man had been already dead, the knife Lara had picked up somewhere embedded with precision in his heart.
Luck, he told himself. But Aren’s instincts were telling him something else.
“If anything, we need to keep a closer eye on her now,” Jor said. “If the Maridrinians determine where she is and come for her, that little lass’s head is full of enough bridge secrets to cause us some serious trouble.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that maybe she’s more trouble than she’s worth. Accidents happen. Snakes find their way into beds. The Maridrinians could hardly hold it against us—”
“No.”
“Then keep pretending she’s alive.” Jor had mistaken the reason for Aren’s refusal. “Get a forger to fake her letters to her father. They never have to know.”
Aren turned on the man who’d watched over him since he was a child. “I will say this once and never again. If anyone harms her, they lose their head. That goes for you, it goes for Aster, and it goes for my grandmother, too, lest she think me ignorant to her ways. Understood?”
Without waiting for a response, Aren walked to the pyres that had been hastily assembled on the outskirts of the village, the air thick with the smell of the oil drenching the wood. Dozens of bodies, big and small, were laid out in even rows, and the survivors stood around it, some weeping, some staring into nothingness.
Someone passed him a torch and Aren stared at the flickering flames, knowing that he should say something. But any words he might offer these people that he was supposed to protect—that he had failed to protect—seemed empty and meaningless. He couldn’t promise it wouldn’t happen again, because it would. He couldn’t promise revenge, because even if raiding Amarid were a possibility for his already strained army, he wouldn’t lower himself to harming Amaridian civilians just because their queen was a vindictive bitch. He could tell them that he fully intended to send a crate full of heads along with the charred remains of the ship’s flag back to their mistress, but what did that even mean? It wouldn’t bring back the dead.
So he said nothing, only leaned forward to touch the torch to the oil-soaked wood. Flames tore along the branches, the air growing hot, and it wasn’t long until his nose filled with the awful smell of burning hair. Charring blood. Cooking flesh. It made his stomach churn, and he gritted his teeth, wanting to flee but forcing himself to hold his ground.
“The ships are here from Eranahl,” Jor said. “We need to start loading the survivors or we’ll lose the weather.” As if to emphasize the point, a droplet of rain smacked against Aren’s forehead. Then another and another.
“Give them a minute.” He couldn’t tear his gaze from a sobbing mother standing too close to the now hissing flames. This morning she would’ve woken believing that by nightfall she and her family would be on the way to the safety of Eranahl, and now she’d be making the journey alone.
“Aren . . .”
“Give them a goddamn minute.” Heads turned at the sharpness of his tone, and he strode away from the flames. Past the injured whom Nana and her students were preparing for the journey, and down the path to the cove where the ships waited.
Rounding the bend, he frowned at the dozen or so dead enemy soldiers that had been dragged to the side of the path when something caught his eye: a man with an Amaridian blade embedded in his chest. Backtracking, Aren examined the corpses more closely.
Most of his soldiers fought hand-to-hand with knives and the machetes they needed to move through the dense jungle underbrush, and the wide blades made for distinct injuries. But most of these men bore wounds inflicted by the slender swords favored by Amarid, and several of them had the eight-inch knives these soldiers carried embedded in their bodies.
They were killed by their own weapons.
Aren stepped back a few paces to examine the scene, eyes drifting over the pools of blood mixing with rain to create growing puddles. These men had been killed by individuals they’d encountered coming up the path, not from behind by his reinforcements.
But by whom? All of his guard had been with him in the village, as were the civilians who could fight.
A prickle rose on the back of Aren’s neck. Hand going to the blade at his waist, he whirled around. Only to find Lara standing in the middle of the path.
Her eyes drifted to where his hand lingered on his weapon and one of her eyebrows rose, but for reasons Aren couldn’t articulate, he couldn’t let go of the hilt. She’d killed that soldier with an Amaridian blade . . .
But her only visible injury was a bruise on her cheek. Never mind that Maridrinian women were forbidden from fighting, the very idea that she could’ve accomplished this on her own was utter lunacy—his best fighters couldn’t have done it alone.
“Where will they go?” Her voice cut through his thoughts.
“There are safer places.” He wondered why he was being so cagey when now she knew so much. But it was one thing for her to know about the bridge. Quite another for her to know about Eranahl.
Without the bridge, Eranahl doesn’t exist, his father’s voice whispered in his ear. Ithicana doesn’t exist. Defend the bridge.
“If there are safer places, why don’t you keep your civilians there?”
There were practical reasons. Keeping every Ithicanian civilian within Eranahl year-round was impossible, but that wasn’t the reason he gave. “Because that would be like keeping them in cages. And my people are . . . free.” The word caught in his throat, a sudden understanding of what his mother had been fighting for slapping him in the face. For what was Ithicana but a larger prison, those born to it forbidden to ever leave.
Lara went very still, her head cocked and eyes unblinking, as though his answer had dug deep into her thoughts, leaving no space for anything else. “Their freedom seems to come at a significant cost.”
“Freedom always has a price.” How much larger would the price be to allow his people the freedom of the world?
“Yes.” The word seemed to stick in her throat, and she shook her head once, her eyes going to the dead men lining the path. Aren watched her closely, searching her expression for any clue that she was somehow complicit in their deaths, but she only appeared deep in thought.
“You should head down to the cove. The boats are waiting.”
Tearing her eyes from the corpses, Lara walked toward him, silent as any Ithicanian as she navigated the slick slope. His heart skipped then accelerated, the steady thump thump rhythm it took when he was heading into battle or trying to outrun a storm. The thrill that, despite knowing he should not, Aren had sought all his life.
Lara stopped in front of him. Her hair was wet from the rain, a stray lock plastered against her cheek. It took all his self-control not to brush it away.
“Once the boats are loaded, I’m leaving for a . . . meeting. You’ll stay with my grandmother until I return for you.”
Lara frowned, but rather than arguing, she reached up and placed her hand on his, her skin feverishly hot. Then, with surprising strength, she pushed down, snapping his blade back into its sheath.