Page 36 of A Legacy of Poison and Lies

The pain cut so deep, in every nerve, every vein, she could barely breathe through it. “What happens if I don’t? Will it hurt you?” Her fingers curled around the hilt of her sword, squeezing against the pain. “The bargain?”

“Just stay with me,” he pleaded.

She tried to hold on. Tried to focus on the sound of Holt’s breathing, of his comforting scent filling the tiny space between them. But darkness slipped in, unbidden.

Zylah’s eyes fluttered open, her fingers brushing against the hand at her waist. Holt’s hand. She ran her fingers over the bracelet she’d given him, the bell tucked between the leather. She flexed her toes to test her legs, covered by a rough blanket that Holt had no doubt summoned from somewhere. They ached, but she was certain the bone was no longer exposed.

Holt stirred behind her, his arm tightening at her waist as she moved.

“Sorry,” he said, loosening his grip. His voice was hoarse with sleep, and he began to pull his arm away. “The snow. It’s cold. I couldn’t risk moving you.” He slid away, the cold rushing in at once in the space he’d occupied.

“Where are we?” Her eyes adapted to the darkness, to the tangle of vines and leaves that arched over them.

Holt must have been sleeping with his back against the wall of the structure when she awoke, with her body propped up against his.

“The sprites made you a shelter. I… adapted it.”

Zylah shivered, shuffling back over to him.

He laughed softly and draped an arm around her shoulders. “How are you feeling?”

“Like an Aster just clawed half my leg off.” Zylah lifted the blanket, looked down at the scraps of fabric from the thigh down where her trousers had been and ran a hand over the smooth skin. No trace of the wounds remained, not even a hint of a scar.

“That about sums up everything you missed.” His voice was still rough, and back when she’d only just met him, she’d have thought it was with irritation, but she knew better now. Knewhimbetter. He was worried.

Zylah was too cold to dwell on that, her mind still reeling from—Pallia. Gods above. Had she dreamt it? She closed her eyes, leaning into Holt’s warmth as she tried to separate dream from reality. “Where’s Kopi?”

“He’s fine. He’s outside keeping watch.”

Very few things in this life belong to us, Zylah. Pallia’s words echoed on repeat.Get the stone removed. It was put there to keep you safe.Surely it had just all been in her mind, nothing but a fever dream brought on by the pain, the loss of blood. “Do you think the dead look over us?” she asked quietly.

“Why do you ask?”

Zylah pulled at a thread on the blanket, deciding on how much to tell him. “My father told me that once. That we are their legacy.”

“I used to think my family looked over me. Hoped it, really. But after a while I realised…”

“Realised what?” She twisted around to look up at him, her face close to his.

Holt’s gaze dipped for a moment, but then his eyes met hers, pain flickering there for a heartbeat before he shut it down. “That it wasn’t right to tether them to me. That they weren’t mine to keep.”

That was the hardest part about letting go, Zylah had learnt. She’d thought about that on so many nights in Kerthen. How to hold onto the people she’d lost and yet be at peace with the thought that they’d moved on to whatever came next. She searched Holt’s eyes, and though she hated that he understood what that felt like, it made her feel less alone. He had always made her feel like she wasn’t.

Zylah cleared her throat, forcing her attention back to the blanket.

“I don’t know what my legacy will be,” Holt said. “But it will be something of my own making. Nobody else’s.” He pulled away to rummage through a bag, pulling out a bundle of cloth and handing it to Zylah. “We lost a horse. Can you stand?”

She nodded, unravelling the fabric he’d handed to her. Another pair of trousers. The attack came back to her in fractured pieces: the Aster’s fear, the pain in her leg. That strange sound in the forest.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” Holt added, raising a hand to the wall of twisted roots and vines before them. She watched in fascination as the roots untangled themselves, spiralling around each other to make an opening in their little shelter.

It was his voice she’d heard, calling her name. Snow blew in, and Zylah pulled the blanket tighter around herself.Just stay with me, she’d heard him say.

“Holt?” she asked as he stood outside, his back to the opening of the little shelter. “You told me once you have nothing to lose. Do you still feel that way?” She shrugged into the trousers, pulling her boots back on and fastening the laces.She’dhad nothing to lose, she’d told Raif when she wanted to join the uprising. And then she’d lost him. Her father. Had left her friends behind.

Holt’s attention was on the forest as she stepped out into the snow, snowflakes peppering his hair and falling onto his eyelashes as he turned to look at her. “No.” There was a weight to the word. A finality. But then he said, “There’s a town just east of here. We can make it by nightfall.”

Zylah surveyed the structure he’d made,adapted, already covered in a thick layer of snow. She wanted to ask him what had made him change his mind—who.

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