Page 53 of Slaying the Shadow Prince
‘No reason,’ she said quickly, averting her eyes.
Talemir suppressed a smile. ‘It was my mother’s.’
A flicker of relief crossed the ranger’s face, and that only made it harder for Talemir to keep his smile under wraps. She had been jealous…?
The raft lurched over a particularly strong set of waves and Talemir had to grip the low side and swallow his nausea.
Drue turned to him again. ‘Is your mother still alive?’
‘Yes, actually. She survived the fall of Delmira. She got our family out of there before… before it all went to shit.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘The last I heard, she was on her way to Aveum. She had distant relatives there.’
‘You don’t stay in touch?’
‘The life of a Warsword isn’t one of regular visits and correspondence. The guild becomes your family. Thezmarr becomes your home. My mother always understood that, supported me.’
‘Why the jewel?’
Talemir huffed a fond laugh at the memory, a conversation with his mother he had been too young to fully understand at the time…
‘I wanted her to come to Thezmarr with me. I worried for her safety on the road. I worried about a hundred things when I thought of her on her own… She gave me a sad smile before handing me this —’ Talemir wiggled the sapphire at Drue. ‘The person who gave it to her was someone she had been very fond of long ago… For whatever reason, they too had needed to leave, and had told her…Sometimes, to love someone, we have to let them go. And that sometimes,in order to go where we need to, we must turn away from one path, onto another…’
‘That’s all very philosophical,’ Drue said slowly.
‘I suppose. But she told me that one day I would understand, and that when I did, I should pass the gem onto someone else who needed to learn the lesson for themselves.’
A chilly wind tore through the channel, the raft bobbing along the current, making Talemir queasy and desperate to distract himself. So he grinned at Drue. ‘You thought it was a lover’s jewel, didn’t you? A gift declaring lifelong love or something like that…’
‘I did not.’
Talemir’s grin only widened. ‘Liar.’
Drue scowled. ‘So what if I did? It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Talemir teased, tucking the sapphire back down the front of his shirt. ‘I’d say that means you —’
‘Don’t even finish that sentence, Warsword. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us still and I won’t have you —’ Drue cut herself off, her gaze snapping to the waves just beyond their raft. ‘Did you see that?’ There was a tremor in her voice.
Talemir whirled around. There was nothing but black waves.
‘Tell me you’re messing with me?’ he said quietly.
Her eyes were wide. ‘I wish I was.’
Then he saw it: two fins emerging, breaking the surface.
Sharks.
And he saw why. In the wake of their raft was a distinct trail of red. Drue’s mare was bleeding from a cut on its back leg, the blood trickling slowly but steadily onto the floor of the raft and into the water behind them.
‘Fuck,’ he murmured. ‘That’s practically a beacon…’
Drue blanched as she spotted it. ‘We’re going as fast as the wind and current will take us, but the steering on this thing isn’t overly sophisticated.’
‘It’s alright,’ Talemir breathed, keeping calm. ‘They can’t —’
