Page 44 of Heart of Defiance

Another soldier lopes through the trees and tips his head to Captain Amalia. We’ve been leaving traces of our journeyso the Darium forces can track us down, making the evidence look as accidental as we’re able to.

After yesterday’s confrontation, none of us has any doubt that High Commander Livius and his underlings will be eager for vengeance.

Our last sentry to arrive reported that the army was marching this way, only a couple of hours distant. I peer through the trees, hoping the man who stayed back to play a peddler walking the road will come out of his encounter with the Darium force in one piece.

He has to let the soldiers think they’ve bullied him into admitting he saw us hiding in these woods. With the grace of the gods, they’ll be in enough of a hurry to follow our trail that they simply toss him aside once he’s coughed up the information.

I check my sword at my side as if the algae might have stolen it when I wasn’t looking, my pulse beating faster. We had a huge victory yesterday. Today’s scheme isn’t even my plan—I’m not responsible for how it turns out.

But I’m here in the thick of it. And none of the other people around me would be here if I hadn’t lit the first spark of rebellion.

I sit down next to rather than on a bed roll, not wanting to risk contaminating it with the stink, and will my nerves to settle as well as I can. We can’t act until the Darium army reaches us. There’s nothing to do at the moment but wait.

Landric sinks onto the ground next to me, his eyes equally alert. Jostein and Iko have gathered with a few squad-mates around Captain Amalia. As my gaze lingers on them, taking in Jostein’s assured stance and Iko’s brilliant grin, Landric glances over at me.

He must be able to tell where I’m looking. His voice comes out low and even. “What’s going on between you and them… it’s more than just physical, isn’t it?”

I swallow hard, the motion bringing back an aftertaste of the mirewort Jostein passed to me earlier this morning. To make sure there are no unintended consequences from our passionate interlude.For now, he said as he set the packet in my hand, with a gleam in his bright blue eyes as if he could imagine a future when pregnancy would be welcome rather than a mistake.

The memory of that moment and of Landric finding us last night sends an awkward flush through my body. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

Landric winces. “I know it’s not. I know… I have a long way to go before you’ll really trust me. And you deserve to be happy.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“Not really.” His gaze drops to the twigs and pebbles scattered on the forest floor around his feet. “This isn’t how I’d have wanted to look—or smell—when putting this out there, but it seems like I’d better say it now or I’ll lose any chance at all. I already lost so many when you were right there in front of me in town.”

Is he trying to present himself as an alternate suitor? My previous flush turns prickly beneath my skin. “If you’re saying that I should entertain your interest over theirs?—”

“No,” Landric says quickly, his head jerking back up so he can meet my eyes. “That wouldn’t be fair of me. But if it isn’t a competition between them, maybe... maybe you’d be willing to consider me alongside them.”

My breath snags in my throat. I don’t know how to answer him when he’s looking at me so earnestly, when all our tangled, painful history still hangs over us.

He means it right now. I don’t think he would have a couple of weeks ago. How quickly could his affections shift all over again?

I still don’t trust him. So why does my heart thump even faster at his proposition?

Before I have to respond to him or myself, a short whistle pierces the air. My stance tenses, rising up so I’m braced on my feet.

The army is almost on us. Any moment now…

The seconds pass by with the rustle of the leaves overhead and the stench of dried algae seeping into my nose. I’ve almost sat down again, thinking it was a false alarm, when one of the sentries posted at the edge of the forest comes running into our midst.

“The Darium army—they’ve found us! We’ve got to get out of here!”

He yells loud enough for his voice to carry all the way to the road behind him—which is the point. Let the enemy soldiers think they’re falling on us unexpectedly, that they’ve driven us into a panic.

We scramble to our feet, panic not at all difficult to feign when all those swords and lances are bearing down on us. At least the trees will shelter us from distant arrows.

Landric grasps my arm with a quick squeeze, fear flickering through his expression and vanishing beneath a firming of determination. A thunder of stomping feet reverberates through the trees as the Darium army barrels toward us.

All of us take off for the deeper forest. We need them to see us fleeing but not quite catch up with us until we’re amid the marl trees.

Taunting shouts ring out behind us. The high commander’s voice booms out in the same contemptuous tone as yesterday. “You won’t escape us now, vermin. We’ll stamp you all out like the rats you are.”

The stampede of footsteps sounds from either side of us—the Darium soldiers doing their best to surround us,coming up along the edges of this patch of forest where they can run faster on the un-treed ground.

I push myself faster and spot the mottled gray bark of the first marl trees up ahead.

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