Page 26 of A Scar in the Bone
Arran shook his head with a look of helplessness. He didn’t know why.
But with sinking dread, I did.Iknew why.
They were looking for me.
Stigwas looking for me.
We fell silent as our server arrived and placed platters of food on the table before us with heavy thunks. Long, sweaty strands of hair straggled across her flushed face as she looked at each of us with tired eyes. “Can I get you anything else?”
Harald motioned to our cups. “Another round, please.”
I was surprised to see I’d nearly finished my mead. After a year of imbibing verdaberry wine or juice, mead was unpleasant on my tongue.
The serving girl nodded and left us. We began to eat. I picked at the greasy meat, doubting, in these times of want, that it was the roasted pork we ordered, but trying not to think about what animal it might be.
I studied the tense expressions of my companions carefully asI chewed the stringy meat, wondering how to explain to them thatIwas the reason for the increase of soldiers in the Crags. Now did not seem the time. Not in the middle of this taproom, surrounded by the humans they deemed foes.
The taproom was busy, conversation at a steady hum, but all voices stopped abruptly when the door opened and in walked a fresh group of soldiers in the familiar vestment of the south. Their hauberks of chain mail rustled as they moved, the familiar scarlet capes swishing at their backs.
I stopped breathing, ducking my eyes, my heart beating a drum in my ears so loud I was certain everyone around me heard the clamor. I feigned great interest in my food, almost expecting to feel Stig’s shadow over me, his voice a dark caress in my ear.
But no. I risked a quick glance and confirmed they were only soldiers.Hissoldiers here without him. Of course—the Lord of the Borderlands wouldn’t slum it in a tavern.
Their heavy tread thundered across the wood plank floor, so much more strident now that no one in the room was speaking.
“What? Why so quiet? It sounded like a party from the outside,” one of the soldiers exclaimed. “Don’t stop making merry on our account.” He surveyed the taproom in a turn, his cape a splash of scarlet like the spray of blood on the air. He looked to his comrades for agreement. “We love a good party. Makes the hard work of the day so worthwhile, does it not, lads?”
Hard work of the day?
My gaze skimmed them, marking the blood spatter on their chain mail, and I felt it in my bones that these men had impaled the people outside town and that was thehard workmentioned. Nausea rolled through me. The sensation was starting to feel a part of me now.
The patrons inside the taproom remained silent. Eyes darted fearfully. Shoulders slumped as though striving to become smaller—invisible. Specks among giants. The serving girls vanished into the kitchen. These people were well-versed in the struggle to survive.
Was this everywhere in the Borderlands now? Everyone shrinking,trying to become invisible, clinging to what lifelines could be grasped to pull them from the devouring brushfire?
They call him the Terror, you know.
When I’d started the crossing north after my wedding, I had been shaken at the reality of life outside the protected gates of the City. The wan and tired people, hunger evident in their gaunt faces and the bones pushing like knives at their skin. In their eyes I’d read a despair that plucked at my conscience.
While I had lived in the comfort of the palace, the people of Penterra had suffered, eking out a meager existence. Fell had been their only hope. He’d come to the City for the hand of a royal princess, seeking a seat at the table through a royal marriage. So he could make decisions and bring about real change.
Instead, he got me.
He got me and that had sealed his fate—and that of the Borderlands. My fate, too, but that felt insignificant in comparison.
Guilt and shame ate at me for my part in all this—for the fact that Stig now had the north beneath his boot. My fate was less important when held up against an entire people’s.
I allowed myself to imagine life if Fell had married Alise or Feena or Sybilia. If I had not gone along with the scheme to trick him into marrying me.
Everything would be different. Better.
For a start, Fell would not be dead. He and one of my sisters would be safely ensconced in the Borg, and the denizens of the Borderlands would not be living in terror—or skewered on pikes.
Regret wound through me, tightening as a turning screw. If I had not revealed my dragon, if I had not so selfishly taken Fell away with me, then he would still be leading the north, protecting these people—his people. A light holding firm, fighting against the dark, and I had taken it away, snuffed it out.
The screw inside me took another crushing twist.
This was my fault. My doing, and that sat like a boulder on my chest.
