Page 17 of This Midsummer Heart
Then again, if I can’t find a remedy, she’ll see it written all over my face. I feel overshadowed by my own pain.
I guide my gelding at an easy pace to minimize the jostling. What I wouldn’t give for a horse with a smooth gait right now! Raven is big enough to carry me, but I suspect he is more used to drawing a cart than long rides over rough roads. He certainly hasn’t been bred for them.
I can’t move this slowly and hope to arrive in Mircose by midday. We have much ground to cover, if we are to reach the next stronghold on our itinerary—home to some of my dark elven kin. I was careful to leave the wood elves off our plans, lest they receive word of what happened at the House of Elves and no longer recognize my authority. Elves aren’t like fae and wild fae, welcoming of their own kind. Elves craft allegiances and carve out territorial borders as if it were a treasured pastime.
About an hour after Titaine leaves me, I’m aching and exhausted. The road bends towards a stretch of woods, an extension of the Evermore Forest, so that I dare not slouch in my saddle, lest the wood elves—or more wild fae—stumble upon me. The further I ride, the more this sun-dappled wood begins to look like dark elf territory as the woods give way to more of Evermore’s old growth forest, full of thick trunks in every shade of brown and grey imaginable. It is noisy here, too, alive with the daily work of its residents. I’m so used to the city now that I’m startled by a chipmunk charging through leaves, and amazed by the smell of good, clean-scented forest air.
Being in so much pain, however, I can barely enjoy it.
The forest road takes me ever deeper, the air growing thick and still as the morning heats. I can see the deep hoofprints in the road from where Titaine’s mare galloped, as if she still ran at top speed. Which is impossible, unless Titaine used her magic to increase Giselda’s stamina. And wouldn’t that be just like a fae, to waste what precious magic she has left on a mere convenience?
Since I am another hour or two away from joining her in Mircose and any hope of a remedy, I soothe myself by imagining the look on Titaine’s face when she realizes that leaving me behind means she left her coin purse behind, too. Yet this little victory over her doesn’t make me smile. Instead, something about it sticks with me like a pebble in my boot. My joy over Titaine’s imagined displeasure is short-lived as I realize why.
There is absolutely no chance Titaine would’ve ridden off like that if she didn’t still have coins on her person. Come to think of it, she never would’ve left her money sitting out in her room like that for me to find if that’s all she possessed.
Fae and their tricks! This is probably just a fraction of the money she still has. And here I thought I’d bankrupted the House of Fetes by charging them so much for passage on the runeships.
I groan aloud. What a fool I am.
“Run into some trouble there, young man?”
The voice has me twisting painfully in my saddle, ignoring the complaints of my back. Despite the words, it’s not a friendly voice. It’s low and rough, and full of menace it can barely hide. A bouncing accent is woven into it, too, from some relatively distant land—one my mind rushes to place.
The Dark Kingdoms. He’s a northman from the cursed islands above the Middle Cross.
I locate him in the trees, still picking his way across the forest understory with the stealth of a predator. Those darting chipmunks make more sound than him, and are more noticeable. He wears brown and gray furs despite the heat, allowing him to blend in with the pale trunks.
Beneath that, he is dressed in full armor, etched with runes that the denizens of the Dark Kingdoms of the far north believe will protect them and draw the eyes of their most caring gods. There is no way he’s come this far on foot, which means he’s left his horse a safe distance away, to avoid alerting me to his presence.
This warrior is a long way from home. And I am most certainly his prey.
A twig cracks. My cheeks flush reddish-blue as I catch my mistake: This man is just a distraction while others creep closer. My gelding nickers uneasily, stamping his feet as I twist in the saddle once again, only to find three more northmen at my back. Well. One northman and two northwomen. The latter two have their faces painted with streaks of blue that have been worn so long, they are now flaking and cracked rather than smudged with sweat.
Their bows are drawn, their arrows aimed at my neck. That’s just insulting, using that weapon to surround an elf.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit from the Dark Kingdoms?” I ask, hoping to sound as though this forest were mine.
“Save your pretty words,” one of the women snaps, her face twisted in a sneer. Her red hair has been darkened with mud to help her hide in the forests, further evidence that I’m not dealing with amateurs. “We’ll be taking that saddlebag of yours, and all the money you have. And your horse. And I think that mail you’re wearing would fit me just fine.”
“I think not,” I reply, running a mental inventory of all the weapons on my person—precious few of them, since the House of Elves’ armory was emptied onto the fleet of runeships. “I don’t think silver is your color.”
The redhead narrows her eyes. “None of us will have qualms about ruining that pretty face of yours—or taking that mail off your dead body.”
“I don’t think you understand,” I say, twisting so my hand is that much closer to the dagger at my side. The bows creak as they pull the strings taut, the bowstrings pressed deep into their noses. “This mail is actual silver. It won’t do you any good.”
“No one makes mail out of silver. It’s too soft.”
“It is when humans do it.” The corner of my mouth creeps up into a smirk as I try to stare the redhead down. I’m beginning to think she’s their leader.
The other northman is still behind me. I can’t keep watch on them all. I’m in trouble. Doubly so because nohumanshould be able to sneak up on me like this. My elven hearing is failing, growing…ordinary.
“This mail was produced by elven and fae craftspeople working together. It’s not meant for the likes of you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the other woman demands, because the redhead is no longer engaging with my efforts to stall them. And what am I even waiting for? It isn’t as though Titaine will come galloping down the bend on her white horse to save the day. “If it’s silver, it’ll sell for good money.”
“Not this silver. There’s no trader alive who will purchase fae-cast metal. Don’t you know it’s enchanted to belong only to the wearer?”
“Suspect it’ll melt down just as well,” says the man who first snuck up on me.
