We can’t always wait for the perfect timing. Pauline’s words seemed truer now than ever.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

KADEN

We stopped midday at a shallow watering hole to fill our canteens and water the horses. Lia walked along the dry streambed that had once fed it, saying she wanted to stretch her legs. She’d been quiet all morning, not in an angry way that I might expect from her, but in some other way, a way that I found more worrisome.

I followed, watching her as she stooped to pick up a rock and turn it over. She examined its color, then skipped it along the dry bed as if she pictured it skimming along water.

“Three skips,” I said, imagining along with her. “Not bad.”

“I’ve done better,” she answered, holding up her bandaged fingers.

She stopped to slide her boot along a sandy patch, noting the gold glitter of the sand. Her eyes narrowed. “They say the Ancients pulled metals more precious than gold from the center of the earth—metals they spun into giant lacy wings that flew them to the stars and back.”

“Is that what you’d do with wings?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. I’d fly to the stars, but I’d never come back.” She picked up a handful of the sparkling sand and let it sift from her fist to the ground as if trying to catch a glimpse of its hidden magic.

“Do you believe all the fanciful stories you hear?” I asked. I stepped closer and closed my hand gently around her fist, the warm sand slowly escaping between our fingers.

She stared at my hand clasped on hers, but then her gaze gradually rose to mine. “Not all stories,” she said softly. “When Gwyneth told me an assassin was on his way to kill me, I didn’t believe her. I suppose I should have.”

I briefly closed my eyes, wishing I could bite back my question. When I opened them, she was still staring at me. The last of the sand slid from our fists. “Lia—”

“When was it, Kaden, that you decided not to kill me?”

Her voice was still even, soft. Genuine. She really wanted to know, and she hadn’t yet pulled her hand away from mine. It was almost as if she’d forgotten it was there.

I wanted to lie to her, tell her that I had never planned to kill her, convince her that I’d never killed anyone, to take back my whole life and rewrite it in a few false words, lie to her the way I already had a hundred times before, but her gaze remained fixed, studying me.

“The night before you left,” I said. “I was in your cottage, standing over your bed as you slept … watching the pulse of your throat with my knife in my hand. I was there longer than I needed to be, and I finally put my knife back in its sheath.… That’s when I decided.”

Her lashes barely fluttered, and her expression revealed nothing, but I saw her chest rise in a slow measured breath. “Not when I bandaged your shoulder?” she asked. “Not when we danced? Not when—”

“No. Just in that moment.”

She nodded and slowly pulled her fist from mine. She dusted the remaining traces of sand from her hand.

“Sevende!” Finch called. “The horses are ready!”

“Coming,” I yelled back. I sighed. “He’s eager to get home.”

“Aren’t we all?” she answered. The edge had returned to her voice. She turned and walked back to her horse, and though she didn’t say it, I sensed that maybe this time, she had wanted me to lie.

Let it be known,

They stole her,

My little one.

Her arms reached back to me screaming,

Ama.

She is a young woman now,

And this old woman couldn’t stop them.

Let it be known to the gods and generations,

They stole from the Remnant.

Harik, the thief, he stole my Morrighan,

Then sold her for a sack of grain,

To Aldrid the scavenger.

—The Last Testaments of Gaudrel

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

We broke camp before sunup. They said they wanted to reach our next destination well before sundown without any further explanation. I could only wonder if some of the wild animals that Kaden had spoken of weren’t so skittish. We trekked across the flattest part of nowhere, only the occasional distant knoll and malnourished thicket breaking up the endlessness.

We hadn’t been traveling long through grass that swept just below the horse’s knees, when my chest grew tight. A strange foreboding pressed down on me. I tried to ignore it, but after two miles, it became unbearable, and I stopped my horse, my breaths coming shallow and fast. It is a way of trust. This wasn’t just my apprehension of being dragged across the middle of nowhere. I recognized it for what it was, something mysterious but not magical. Something circling in the air.

For the first time in my life, I knew with certainty that it was the gift. It had come to me unsummoned. It wasn’t just a seeing, or a hearing, or any of the ways I had heard the gift described. It was a knowing. I closed my eyes, and fear galloped across my ribs. Something was wrong.

“What is it now?”

I opened my eyes. Kaden frowned as if he was tired of the game I played.

“We shouldn’t go this way,” I said.

He blew a deep, annoyed breath from his lungs. “Lia—”

“We don’t take orders from her,” Malich snapped. “Or listen to her babble. She only serves herself.”

Griz and Finch looked at me uncertainly. They waited for something to materialize, and when nothing did, they clicked their reins lightly. We continued at a slower pace for another mile, but the oppressive weight only grew heavier. My mouth went dry, and my palms were damp. I stopped again. They were several paces ahead of me when Griz stopped too. He lifted up in his saddle, then roared, “Chizon!” He snapped his horse to the left.