And there they had promptly burned them, I thought. Along with an effigy of me too.
“Is something wrong?” Jeb asked.
I realized I was scowling. “Just thinking about—” I stopped my horse and turned to him. “Jeb, when you first came to my room back in the Sanctum, you said you were there to take me home. Which home did you mean?”
He looked at me, puzzled. “Why, Dalbreck, of course.”
Of course.
I spoke to Rafe about it later, reminding him that we had to get to Morrighan first.
“Our first priority is to get to safety,” he countered, “and that means Dalbreck’s outpost. Morrighan can come after that.”
* * *
Things remained distant between Tavish and me. He was polite, but when Rafe had to attend something else, he never offered to fall back to ride at my side. It had been clear he didn’t want to be alone with me.
Rafe continued to be restless and was always riding off to check on something. We’d only been on the trail a short time today when he said he was going to a lookout to see if he could spot game. He called for Sven to ride beside me, but this time Tavish offered to come. Even Rafe took note, raising a curious brow at me before he left.
At first Tavish made small talk, asking me how my back was feeling, saying he could remove the stitches in another week or so, but I sensed something else was on his mind.
“I never answered your question,” he finally mumbled.
“What question?” I asked.
He looked back at the trail and then embarked on a different subject entirely. “Rafe had balked at the barrels and raft, but I promised him it would work.” He paused, clearing his throat. “The moment we lost sight of you in the river, I was certain neither of you would survive. Those hours we spent searching for you were the longest—” His brows pulled together in a scowl. “They were the longest hours I’ve ever endured.”
“It’s not your fault that we fell in—”
“It is my fault,” he said. “It’s my job. To think of every worst scenario and have a plan to avert it. If I had—”
“If I hadn’t been wearing that dress,” I said, cutting him off. “If the Council meeting hadn’t ended early. If the Komizar hadn’t killed Aster. If only I had married Rafe in the first place like I was supposed to. I play the if game too, Tavish. It’s practically a hobby of mine, but I’ve found it’s a game of endless possibilities with no winner. No matter how great a gift or skill, it’s impossible to foresee every outcome.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Even after we found you, I still wasn’t sure you’d live. The expression on Rafe’s face—” He shook his head as if he was trying to erase the memory. “You asked me if I am always certain of my skills and gifts. Prior to that day, my answer would always have been yes.”
“Your plan may not have gone exactly as you wanted, but it did save us, Tavish. I say that not to spare your feelings but because it’s true. With it, we had a chance. Without it, our deaths were certain, that much I know, and you must believe it too.” I cleared my throat as if perturbed. “In fact, I command it,” I added with a haughty air.
A hint of a smile broke his solemn expression. We rode on, this time in a more comfortable silence, my thoughts drifting to the guilt he had carried these past days, the guilt that still edged my thoughts.
“One other thing,” he finally said. “I don’t understand this knowing of yours, but I want to try. Is the gift ever wrong?”
Wrong? I immediately thought of Kaden’s claim of a vision of us together in Venda with him carrying a baby on his hip and then remembered my recurring dream of Rafe leaving me behind.
“Yes. Sometimes,” I answered.
Sometimes it had to be wrong.
CHAPTER NINE
KADEN
Trying to help Griz off his horse was like trying to wrestle a bear to the ground.
“Getcher hands off me!” he bellowed.
“Shhh!” I ordered for the hundredth time. His pain had made him careless. His growl echoed through the canyon. “They could still be here.”
I let go of his belt and he fell, bringing me down with him. We both lay in the snow.
“Go on without me,” he groaned.
I was tempted. But I needed him. He could be useful. And there was no doubt that he needed me.
“Quit your complaining and get up.” I stood and put my hand out to help him. He had all the dead weight of a butchered bull.
Griz was not used to relying on anyone, much less admitting to weakness. The gash in his side began oozing blood again. It needed more attention than my hasty bandaging job. He mumbled a curse and pressed the wound with his arm. “Let’s go.”
We studied the tracks outside of the cave.
Griz used his boot to crush a ridge of snow made by a horse hoof. “I was right. The old coot brought her here.”
He had confessed to me that he and the so-called Governor Obraun had a history, and part of it included this cave, a place they had hidden out together when they escaped the grips of a forced labor camp.
Obraun’s real name was Sven, and he was a soldier in Dalbreck’s Royal Guard. Sven’s deception didn’t surprise me as much as Griz’s. I had suspected a lot of people of being something they were not, but I had never suspected Griz of being anything but a fiercely loyal Rahtan. Not someone who sold information between kingdoms, though he hotly claimed none of it had ever betrayed Venda. Working with the enemy was betrayal enough.
I bent down and looked more closely at the muddle of footsteps and horse tracks. Some were Dalbretch horses, but others unmistakably Vendan.
“They got hold of some our horses is all,” Griz said.
Or someone else had caught up with them.
I stood, my gaze following the tracks that disappeared through the pines ahead. They headed east, which meant they weren’t being taken back to Venda. How did they get Vendan horses?
I shook my head.
Rafts. Stashed horses and supplies.
This was a plan that had been long in the making. Maybe from the moment Lia set foot in Venda. The only conclusion I could draw was that she had used me from the beginning. Every tender word from her lips had served a purpose. I shuffled through them all. Our last night, when she told me her vision was of us together … when she asked me about my mother—
It turned my stomach inside out. Lia was the only person I had ever even whispered my mother’s name to. I see your mother, Kaden. I see her in you every day. But now I knew all she saw when she looked at me was one of them. Another barbarian, and someone she couldn’t trust. Even if she had deceived me, I couldn’t believe that her affections for the people were anything but real. That much wasn’t an act. It churned in me, the memory of Lia standing on a wall, sacrificing precious seconds of her escape so she could speak to the people one last time.
We checked inside the cave and found dark stains in the sandy soil, possibly blood from a slain animal—or maybe from one of their own wounds. And then I saw a scrap of fabric no bigger than my thumbnail. I picked it up. Red brocade. It was a piece of her dress—confirmation that she had made it this far. If she was able to ride, it meant she was still alive. It was a possibility neither Griz nor I had brought up. No one had found a body downstream, but that didn’t mean a rocky crag hadn’t hidden it from view.