Page 40 of Winter's Fate

She kept her eyes shut, allowing her senses to take in the situation. They’d dropped her into a corner, her back resting against the wall. She listened for voices, but aside from a consistent drip of water from somewhere in the room and the scrabbling of rodents in the walls, the place was quiet.

She risked opening her eyes a crack and peered around the room from beneath her lashes. She appeared to be in a dank cottage.

Two men sat at a rickety table in the middle of the room,slurping mouthfuls of something that might have been soup, their mouths to the rims of the bowl. They were both fully clad in black, their boots spotted with mud, tears in their sleeves. No insignia.

The one on the right was large, if not nearly as large as Callum Farrow, with a patch of yellow hair on the top of his head, the sides freshly shaved. His companion was thinner; even just drinking his soup, he moved with a coiled kind of grace. Like he was stronger than he looked.

She had the sense, though she couldn’t quite say why, that they were waiting for someone.

“Are you from Silerith?” Laena asked.

The thinner man dropped his bowl in surprise, swearing as the food spilled across the floor, but the bigger one merely narrowed his eyes. “Could be,” he said.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Not far,” the man said. “Milla’s tithe wasn’t enough to get us very far. Just out of your guard’s reach, I guess.”

Laena’s heart dropped into her stomach, and she felt like throwing up. Heart-tithers. That was how they’d spirited her away from the clearing so quickly. Her stomach roiled. How long had she been here? Would Callum be able to find her?

The knot of magic at her core turned over, as if awakening, and stretched tendrils of cold weaving through her ribcage and around her heart. It was soothing. A reminder.

She was not without her own power.

Even if she did manage to escape, she didn’t know the way to Inasvale. She might have found it from the original trail she and Callum had traveled; he’d said the religious fortress was situated to the northeast, and her knowledge of geography said they could essentially follow the coast until they reached it.

But she had no idea where her captors had taken her, or in what direction.

Not far, the man had said. And Callum must be searching forher by now. Though he mentioned having spent more time patrolling the border between Aglye and Silerith, he did have a passing familiarity with these woods.

Laena forced herself to breathe. The tendrils of power stretched. Ready.

The man who’d dropped his food finished mopping up the soup, then kicked the chatty one in the shins. “Shut up, Dane. We’re not supposed to talk to her.”

Before Laena could ask who’d given them that instruction, the cottage door swung open and a woman stepped into the room. She was similarly clad in black, with no badges or patches to indicate where she’d come from. Of course, that meant little. They could be from Silerith, as she suspected; they could just as easily be from Aglye, whether Callum knew of their existence or not.

They could be working independently, or for a rogue organization. She and the council had been aware of several such groups when she’d been preparing to serve as queen: secret magic users and religious fanatics, mostly. But they could be quite adept at recruiting, and their membership was not contained by borders.

There were too many possibilities to count.

The woman wore her dark hair clipped short against her head. A sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks gave her an innocent look that Laena could say from experience was mere illusion; she was sure, now that she saw the woman, that this was the person who’d snuck up on her in the woods.

“You two were supposed to watch her,” the woman snapped. “Not hold a conversation.”

“Sorry, Milla,” Dane said.

The woman strode across the room and crouched in front of Laena, looking her over as if to check that her goods were undamaged. They were meant to deliver her somewhere else, that much was clear.

Laena met her gaze. She was well practiced at pretending not to be afraid. This woman was no challenge when compared with a stunned council facing the news of her abdication, or a circle of villagers calling her names as they all but chased her from their social gatherings.

This woman was smaller than Laena. Strong, clearly, with wiry muscles and quick reflexes, but dwarfed by the two men. Yet they, too, were looking at her with the wariness of prey. As if one snap of her jaws would result in their demise.

The woman smelled of ash, of burning rot, and Laena knew instinctively that she was the heart-tither. No wonder they were frightened.

It seemed impossible that someone with such a cold stare could love something enough that its pain would result in magic. But even if Dane had not called it ‘Milla’s heart-tithe,’ Laena could not deny her senses.

Or the darkness that crossed the woman’s eyes, like a veil of smoke, an occasional flicker. Laena had never been close enough to a heart-tither to know if the stories of those shadows were more than a myth. Clearly they were all true.

Laena swallowed her fear as best she could. If Milla was going to stare at her, she could at least try and get some answers. “I don’t understand,” she said. “In Riles, you tried to kill me. Now you’re taking me alive. It doesn’t fit.”

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