Something was there.
They were coming.
A high-pitched howl split the air, but I couldn’t move.
And then the world spun and I was flying through the air, tripping, stumbling. The fabric of my shirt cut into my neck as someone balled it into their fists. This part was real, not a dream. I instinctively grabbed for my knife, but of course, it wasn’t there. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was Rafe. He was dragging me from my bed toward the door.
He threw me out of the barracks, then slammed me up against the wall, the night watch stepping aside, ready to let him tear me to pieces.
Even in the darkness, his face glowed with rage. “So help me, if you so much as lay a hand on her, if you drag her back to that godforsaken kingdom, if you do anything—”
“Are you mad?” I asked. “It’s the middle of the night!” The fury in his eyes made no sense. I had done nothing. “I’ve never harmed her. I would never—”
“We leave an hour past dawn. Be ready,” he said between clenched teeth. There was ale on his breath, but he wasn’t drunk. His eyes were wild and bright like a wounded animal.
“You woke me to tell me that? I already knew when we were leaving.”
He glared at me, freeing my shirt from his grip, giving me one last shove against the wall. “Well, now you know again.”
He walked away, and I got my bearings. The rest of the camp was silent, asleep in their quarters, and for a brief moment, I wondered if he’d had a walking nightmare. It wasn’t just anger I had seen in his expression. There was fear too.
Griz and Eben poked their heads out the door, their eyes still full of sleep, and the night watch stepped forward. Eben was still under close watch.
“What was that all about?” Griz grumbled.
“Go back to bed,” I said. I pushed Eben’s shoulder, and he went back in. Griz and I followed, but I couldn’t get to sleep, trying to puzzle out what had prompted Rafe’s attack. If you do anything. What did he think I was going to do with two hundred soldiers surrounding us on our way to Dalbreck? I was skilled, maybe even foolhardy at times, but I wasn’t stupid, especially knowing they kept a suspicious watch on me too. I rubbed my jaw. Somewhere along the way, when he dragged me from my bed, he must have planted his fist in my face.
* * *
Dawn was just lighting the eastern horizon. Mist in the distance hovered close to the ground in soft layers like a downy blanket. It made the morning even quieter. The only sound was my boots swishing against the dew-covered grass. I had managed to elude my escorts at least temporarily. This was not a quest for which I wanted company. I reached the end of the merchant wagons near the b
ack wall of the outpost and spotted the charred carvachis—and Natiya.
Her eyes met mine, and she drew a knife—and I knew she meant to use it. I stared at her, not sure she was even the same person. She’d gone from a soft-spoken girl with an eager smile who used to weave presents for me to a fierce young woman I didn’t know.
“I’m going in to see Dihara. Step aside,” I told her.
“She doesn’t want to see you. No one wants to see you.” She lunged at me, the knife blindly slicing the air, and I jumped back. She came at me again.
“You little—”
On her next lunge, I grabbed her wrist, spinning her around so the knife was at her own throat. With my other arm, I held her tight against my chest so she couldn’t move. “Is this really what you want?” I hissed in her ear.
“I hate you,” she seethed. “I hate you all.”
The endless depth of her hatred extinguished something in me, something I had nursed like a weak ember, the belief that I could go back, could somehow undo these last months. But to her I was one of them and that was all I would ever be. One of those who had tied up Lia and forced her to leave the vagabond camp; one of those who had torched her carvachi and burned out her quiet way of life.
“Let her go,” Reena ordered. She had returned with two buckets of water in her hands. She set them down slowly and looked at me with large worried eyes as if I would really slit Natiya’s throat. She glanced at a poker near the fire pit.
I shook my head. “Reena, I would never—”
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I’m leaving with the outpost troops. I want to see Dihara one last time.”
“Before she dies,” Natiya said. Her tone was sharp with accusation.
I pried the knife from her hand and pushed her away. I looked at Reena, trying to find words to convince her I hadn’t been part of what had happened to them, but the fact was, I had been. I had lived by the rules of the Komizar, even if I didn’t live by them anymore. I had no words to erase my guilt.