Page 107 of A Storm in Every Heart
Teeth gritted with determination, I splash some soap and water on my face and use my torn dress to try to really scrub at what’s left of the dirt. Then, I take off the dress and I perform the same treatment on the rest of my body and rinse my tangled hair in the sink before knotting it into a tight braid. Finally, I rinse my dress in the sink.
The dress is barely more than scraps at this point. In addition to the torn, short skirt, there’s a large hole in one sleeve and a rip along the neckline. The once-lavender fabric has stretched due to my not wearing a corset, and is stained so the color is more of a mauve, even after I’ve finished washing it.
I will never turn my nose up at a dress ever again. From now on, if it’s clean, I’m wearing it, no matter what it looks like.
I finish washing the dress and pull it back on. The damp fabric sticks to my skin and drips on the floor, but I’d much rather be wet than dirty.
When I’m finally done, I smile slightly at my reflection. It’s far from perfect, but I feel a little better. More like myself.
With another deep breath, I unlock the door to the bathing room and step out into the hall, thinking vaguely that I’ll go find us some breakfast, then wake the others to get ready to leave.
As I pass the room where the men are sleeping, I glance at the door, wondering what Kastian will think if he wakes up and finds me gone.
“Stop it,” I tell myself again. “You know better.”
Those words are starting to lose meaning, but I can’t stop myself from thinking them.
I have to know better. I have to be fine.
There’s only forty-eight hours more of this, and surely the next inn we stay at will have more than one room. Then we’ll be back in Vernallis, and I can go back to avoiding Kastian like the plague.
It feels like a lie even in my head, but I desperately cling to it anyway as I walk down the short hallway and reach the stairs.
I’m hardly paying attention to anything around me until an angry voice from downstairs bursts through my thoughts. “It doesn’t seem like you’ve got any trouble here. Why would you waste our time?”
I come to an abrupt halt on the stairs, my intuition screaming at me to stop and listen.
“I sent the message last night,” the innkeeper’s wavering voice replies. “I didn’t realize how long it would take you to get here, and I thought?—”
“We were stationed over an hour away,” the angry voice replies. “The king has every damn guard in the kingdom on high alert and we haven't slept in two days. We finally got a few hours to sleep, but then I had to drag my men out of bed and through that fucking swamp because your messenger said your village was in trouble. So imagine my surprise when we get here and everyone is still asleep.”
“They looked dangerous, Sir. There were four of them in all. Two tall males with tattoos?—”
“Are tattoos illegal now?” the angry voice interrupts.
My heartbeat kicks up with anxiety. One of those voices is definitely the innkeeper, and while I can’t place the other one, they’re absolutely talking about us.
My pulse pounds in my ears as, quietly as I can, I edge down the remaining two stairs to the landing, and poke my head a few inches around the wall to see what’s going on.
Sure enough, the innkeeper is standing in the middle of the empty tavern. There are four men in front of him, all dressed in green military jackets—Hydrattan royal guards. The largest guard, the leader, is the angry voice arguing with the innkeeper.
I stifle a gasp and pull my head back before they can see me, just as the innkeeper tries again to explain himself to the guard.“You should have seen them. One had to be six and a half feet tall and he had a couple of fresh wounds, like they’d been in a fight. The other one was covered in mud and dragging a third man around with a belt tied around his wrists.”
“A belt?” the guard asks, sounding interested for the first time.
“There was a woman too. She wasn’t bound up, but her dress was torn. I thought she might be a prisoner as well.”
A cold dread washes over me and I inch my way back up the stairs, holding my breath.
It seems like Kastian’s gold did absolutely nothing to deter the innkeeper from calling the local guards, and the only reason we’ve been left to sleep so long is because it took them awhile to get here. Sooner or later, they’re going to come up here to check on us and we absolutely cannot be here when they do.
I’m not that worried about Jett and me. If not for the kidnapping plot, we’d be in Hydratta anyway and we were technically invited to be here. I’m worried about Kastian. He should never have set foot in Hydratta because the second someone recognizes him he’s going to get dragged in front of King Magnus…or worse.
“Wake up!” I hiss, as I step back into the small room where the men are still sleeping.
Surprisingly, Jett sits up immediately, taking no time to blink sleep from his eyes as if he was already semi-alert. “What’s wrong?”
“We have to leave right now.”
