Page 15 of The Rising Wave

Which meant she had to die.

She had no worries about being given in marriage in some grubby exchange for military support or trade routes.

Herron was sure she'd turn whoever her husband was against him and her aunt within weeks.

And he wasn't wrong.

In front of her, Luc slowed, and she noticed he was limping. She worried that he was flagging.

His feet were bare, and he stooped slightly in the chill air.

When she’d rescued him from the question room, she'd noticed his back was mottled with bruises and cuts, on skin that was latticed with long-healed scars.

It was impossible to see his injuries in the darkness now, but he was moving carefully, and his breath came in shallow inhalations.

He made a sudden sound, a shocked grunt, and she tensed as she came alongside him.

They had reached an archway.

It had no doors—it opened into another space that was bigger than the passageway they stood in.

There was a small amount of gloomy light filtering into the space, coming from a tiny window set high in the wall and overgrown, it looked like, by vines.

It took Ava a moment to find what Luc had obviously seen straight away.

A body.

Or rather, skeletal remains.

They lay on a stone bench which had a pallet on top, wrapped in clothing that was rotting in the damp, musty air. A long, thick chain attached to the wall beside the bench spilled onto the floor, and then back up to end in a bracelet around the skeleton's ankle.

Luc approached carefully, his gaze taking in the whole room.

He had exceptional eyesight she realized as he avoided a small table she hadn't seen herself. He moved as if he were aware of the location of everything in his environment.

“A woman,” he said, looking back at her.

She followed him slowly, careful not to touch anything as she made her way to his side and looked down at the almost clean bones.

She didn't realize she'd stopped breathing until he shook her, his voice soft but clear in her ear as he held her waist, forcing her head down toward her knees.

“You know her.” He crooned the words to her, as if she were a crying baby, and the way he did it told her he had done so a thousand times before.

Comforted babies.

Most likely, there were a lot of crying babies and children in Chosen camps.

She gasped in some air at last, and coughed, turning away from the sight.

“I think that is my mother.”

There was a long silence, and at last she turned back, saw his eyes had never left her. Shock was in his expression.

“You think, but you're not sure?”

She nodded, and finally steeled herself to approach the body again. “While I was imprisoned here, I was told both my parents had been killed crossing the mountains. But the cloak is familiar. Although . . .” It had originally been covered in black silk embroidery. She bent closer in the dim green light and saw where the thread had been unpicked from the complex design. There didn't appear to be a single stitch left.

“It is just the cloak that's familiar?”

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