Page 88 of The Duke and the Disciple

Aesylt counted her arrows. Forty. Her bow might be designed for a child, but she’d taken one of the larger quivers, sharing a glare with a hulking redheaded man who’d looked at her like she was being wasteful and ignorant. He didn’t know though. None of them did. Not even Rahn. He was perhaps the one person shemightbe able to talk to, but he was the last one she wanted knowing every smirk and sneer of the demons within her.

“Aes. Aes! It’s you. It’s you. Ancestors help us, it’s the end of the world.” Nik panted and sobbed, bowling over before standing, his hands tugging his hair in a silent scream.

“Nikky, look at me. Look at me.” She didn’t know why she’d said it. “Where are the men who did this?”

“Did you hear? Drazhan has returned with a heart.” Niklaus clawed at his sooty neck, his tears cutting trails down his blackened cheeks. “Praise the Ancestors.”

“What? What?” Aesylt reached for both of his hands, batting at them. “Is that true? Is he back? Did he truly win? Where is he?”

“I saw him. I don’t know. I don’t know where anyone is.” Niklaus shook his head, his eyes traveling the remnants of their once-great village. His lower lip curled into his mouth. “My mother, Aes. My....”

Aesylt threw herself into his arms. “Ota and Hraz too, Nikky. They took their heads. I saw...” She couldn’t finish.

They held each other, sobbing, until Val’s cracked voice cut through the haze.“Most of the king’s men have gone, but there are three at the north end of town.” He sniffled and turned back the way he’d come.

“V!” Aesylt cried and folded him into their embrace. Everyone else was gone, but two of her friends were there, and they’d avenge their people. They’d crawl on their hands and knees to Duncarrow if they had to, but they’d do it together. “Oh, thank the Ancestors you’re all right. You’re both...”

“Both of my sostras, Aessy. Both of them.” Val cleared his throat, coughed, and spat black phlegm onto the snowy road. “Those men aren’t leaving this village.”

Aesylt wiped her filthy face with blood-stained hands. She dabbed her tears on the sleeve of her nightgown and looked toward Fanghelm. “My father has a private armory.”

Aesylt blinked harder. She had an arrow ready. She brought the magnifiers back to her face and scanned the valley, shrugging her shoulder to remove the weighted ache. Her chest was so tight, she had to sit tall to take deep breaths.This is not that day. This is the day I help my people. Leave the past in the past.

There were too many young beasts milling about, and though the men loved their tender meat, she refused to hunt anything but the mature ones. She spotted a buck grazing near a small spring and nocked her arrow slowly. It was almost too big for the bow, the size difference causing her hand to shake, but she closed one eye, steadied, and took aim, then waited for the buck to look her way, to expose himself so she could offer a respectful, painless death.

Heart shot. Instant.

The buck collapsed to the half-melted ground.

Aesylt exhaled. She set the bow aside and cradled her hands together to stop the tremors.

The boys both picked swords, too heavy for their growing hands, but Aesylt went for her father’s hickory bow. She’d trained on something much smaller, but she wasn’t hunting hare.

“None of the king’s men leave this village today,” Aesylt said to them both, echoing Val’s earlier message of resolve. “And when we’ve sorted it, we need to feed what’s left of our people.”

“With what? They burned our meat stores. They torched our gardens.” The weight of the sword Val had chosen made his left side sag.

“My brother has returned with the heart of the wulf.” Aesylt hoisted the heavy quiver until the straps were secure over both of her shoulders. “The forests belong to us now.”

“Then we should find him, Aessy! He’s the steward now. We need a leader.”

“Tak, well until he shows up to do so, it falls to me. The last Wynter of Witchwood Cross,” Aesylt said, locking eyes with Val and then Nik. “I don’t know how many are left of our people, but there will be even less if don’t stop these terrible men. We protect. We defend. We feed. All right?”

The boys wore identical looks as they examined her, reading her words. Reading her. There was an ocean of sadness behind their eyes, but at the edges was fear—not of the men who had taken everything from them, but of her.

She was afraid too, but if she stopped to think about it, about anything, she’d shrivel into a wraith of grief and never again rise.

“All right?”

Val glanced at Nik, who raised his brows back. Finally, they both nodded.

On their way out, Val grabbed a spear.

One grouse. Then another. Aesylt nocked, aimed, fired, nocked, aimed, fired.

Both fell to the earth.

The three of them crouched along the inner wall of the north battlement. Val and Nik recited names as they spotted people they knew, those still among the living. Every name was a bolt of warmth on the coldest day of her life. Not all had been lost.

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