Page 34 of The Lost Guard's Healer

We watch the light slowly fade on the mountain and feel the howling wind picking up. The far-off rumble of thunder echoes in the air.

“I have a question,” I say gently. “But you will not like it.”

Galene sighs. “No, we will not rub our bodies together for warmth.”

That catches me off guard. “What?”

She looks up at me. “What?”

I give her a bizarre, confused smile. I’m not sure why her mind wandered there.

“No, I…” I take a second to reconfigure my thoughts. “I would like to ask you about your mother. And the Oathlander who killed her...”

She takes a long moment to acknowledge my words. Her voice becomes low and strained. “She was out with my uncle, her brother. They were picking berries in The Greens, before the Wetstones that divide the Wildlands from the Oathlands. She was due to give birth in another two seasons and wanted to go on a foraging trip before she would have to stay home and wait for the baby to come. The Oathlanders… they were dressed in weathered cloaks, like Wildmen. But they were clearly not Wildmen. They attacked and cut my mother down, like an animal.”

“How do you know these details?” I ask, hoping the question doesn’t offend her.

“My uncle had his arm cut off. He was left for dead with my mother. But he managed to return to our village. He… died three days later from an infection.”

“And what did your uncle say about these Oathlanders?”

She keeps her head tilted low so I can’t see her face. “That they wore the uniforms of the Oathlands military beneath their cloaks. He described the man who had slain my mother. The man had a scar on his neck, so was easily identifiable.”

I stop breathing for a moment. “A scar?”

Galene draws a line down her neck with her finger. My heart is pounding hard in my chest. I hope she doesn’t notice.

“My father led a group to infiltrate the Oathlands,” she goes on. “They managed to find out the name of the man. But they were told the man had been struck with an illness and was not accepting visitors.”

Despite the cold, I’ve started to sweat. This all sounds far too familiar. But she can’t be speaking about what I think she is. This can’t be happening.

“You… learned the man’s name?” I ask, my voice sounding hollow. I clear my throat.

“Yes. The man who murdered my mother and unborn brother is named Delton Alacante.”

My breath catches in my throat. It feels like I’ve been dropped from a great distance.

“Are you certain?” I ask, barely able to speak now.

She meets my eyes. “Do you know him?”

Yes. I know my father’s name.

“They said he had been someone close to Queen Moira,” Galene says.

I have to force my voice to remain calm, despite the screaming devastation in my mind. “I know that Delton Alacante did pass from an illness,” I confirm.

“You knew him?” she asks, sounding mistrustful.

“Not really,” I lie. “But, yes, he was known to me.”

I struggle to process what I’m hearing. My father had murdered Galene’s mother? He had slain a pregnant woman in the Wildlands? That can’t be true.

Moira Bearon had taken my father’s name when they wed. After she was murdered by Kingdom assassins, Arthur and I disbanded our royal lineage, and the Oathlands had become a military-led nation. We have gone by our mother’s name of Bearon ever since. My father had become a broken man after his wife died, and he was content to let us break the royal line. I knew his mind had been failing him in his final years, particularly in the lead-up to his illness taking hold of his body.

Could he have slain a Shanti woman in his final year of life? Why would he have done such a thing? I want to tell Galene she must be mistaken, but I can’t reveal what I know.

The sound of heavy rain interrupts my train of thought. Our view of the mountain becomes filled with thick raindrops thudding on the ground. The sparse shrubs around the crevasse sway in the wind. My boots get spattered with wayward raindrops, but at least we know we are safe and covered in here.

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