Page 89 of Kissed By the Gods
“Yes, Father,” she says, with a reverence that’s reserved for the best of fathers.
Without sparing me another glance, he leaves the herb garden, making his way back toward Edessa.
“Leina, I’m so sor—” Elowen starts when he’s turned the corner.
But like the king, I hold a hand in the air and Elowen stops—she wrings her hands in front of her chest, but she stops. I don’t look at the girl. I don’t meet Elowen’s pleading eyes.
“I need frostroot,” I say, my voice hard. Whatever softness I’d managed to salvage these last few weeks is gone.
Elowen hesitates for a heartbeat before she nods. “Wait here, Siofra,” she tells the girl, who looks at me with distrust and dislike, then Elowen leads me toward a row of dormant plants. Elowen kneels, grabbing one of the plants by the base of its gnarled stem.
“It looks dead,” she says, pulling a little knife from her belt. “It has to shed everything to survive the harshness of winter—leaves, petals, even the softness to its stem. It becomes something hard, something the cold can’t kill.”
She uses her knife to prick the stem. Bright green gleams beneath the brittle brown.
“But it’s alive,” she finishes. “It protects what matters by letting go of what doesn’t, and then it waits. It endures.”
She looks up at me, her eyes full of meaning. I hate that I understand. I take a step back, confusion and fury roiling in my chest.
I want to scream at her that I’m not a plant, that I’m not some silent thing that should have to bury itself to weather extremes.
But that’s the nature of endurance, isn’t it? It doesn’t care for fairness, or what we must become.
Her gaze doesn’t waver, but I do.
For the first time, I wonder—when does survival become unworthy of its price?
“In the first tremors of collapse, distraction is the deadliest weapon. It need not kill—it need only draw the enemy’s eyes away from their survival.”
Collapse the Line, Not the Blade in The Treatise on Tactical Collapse
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“You packed the book,but where are the furs?” Ryot fairly growls at me. He’s holding the Treatise on Tactical Collapse with his left hand as he frantically digs through the pack with his right. I flounder, because I know exactly what he’s going to find in my survival pack—dry rations, frostroot, laomai, flint and steel, a waterskin, aldersigh, a needle and thread, rope, a compass, and bandages.
No furs.
“I think I forgot to pack furs,” I say, my voice small. I don’t think. I know.
“What do you mean you forgot your furs?”
I wince. He’s livid—and I can’t blame him. We’ve made it to the top of Brackenfold Peak—the second highest mountain of the Valespire Peaks—on a practice climb of Elandors Veil. It’s a kind of cold I’ve not experienced before. Wind cuts at my face like a blade. Ice coats every rock and crevice, making every step and handhold treacherous. My fingers are nearly numb and would be frostbitten without the frostroot lining my gloves. My toes, too. Now, we’ve made it nearly to the top, right as the sun has dipped below the horizon. The temperature is plummeting faster thanthe light is waning. We don’t even have Einarr with us, because this is something I’ll have to do without a faravar.
We need to make camp, and I forgot furs to make shelter.
“For fuck’s sake,” he says, dragging a hand down his face—it scrapes when he gets to his beard, and then he throws his head back and looks up at the heavens above as if the gods might have answers for him. He tosses the book down on top of my pack like it’s an afterthought, and I scramble for it, holding it against my chest.
“I brought frostroot,” I say.
Ryot’s nostrils flare. His eye twitches. He glares at me as if I suggested I cuddle a snow cat for body heat. He turns around, muttering about wards and commonsense, as he drags the furs he brought out of his pack and starts building his little one-man tent. It’s something you can tell he’s done time and time again. Even here, with no warmth and the wind clawing at us, he moves with practiced efficiency.
Stakes in the stone. Lines taut. Furs stretched over the frame.
I clutch my book tighter, at a loss. He crouches down and tugs the last corner into place with more force than necessary—his knuckles go white.
