I wasn’t sure if I should be frustrated or grateful. I owed Kat an apology, not just for the other night, but for so much more. But there was so, so much I needed to explain, and every time I thought about what to say, my mind became stupid, squeezed between Hydra Ascendant, unCavendish’s plot, and this object that could end the Sleep.
There was no space left for something as personal and huge as this.
Aside from my father, I’d never given anyone an apology for anything so important, and that one hadn’t exactly gone well.
I forced my gaze to hers, brow tight from my headache. “This isn’t the time.”
Her nostrils flared as she exhaled, and it killed me to watch her reel herself in to something small and contained, hands folding as she left.
“I could’ve come back tomorrow.” Faolán glanced after her, eyebrows crashing together.
“I won’t be here tomorrow.” From my drawer, I fished out a willowbark tablet. I’d already taken one, but this headache was only getting worse. I swallowed it whole and washed it down with the coffee that had been sitting on my desk for the past hour. “I leave at first light.”
20
Kat
We rode away from the rising sun, leaving the city behind. Although I still wore gloves because of the chilly air and the rub of the reins, I felt freer—like I could breathe now I was away from so many people and the risk of poisoning someone unintentionally.
And away from Elthea.
Nightmares had come for me in the night, and I’d woken bathed in sweat, breaths rasping through me.
Thank the gods I wouldn’t see her or anyone else from Dawn for a few days.
At least riding had always calmed me—perhaps it was the repetitive motion. Though my stag’s gait was different and his back wasn’t as flexible as a sabrecat’s, this didn’t feel so alien, and I found myself watching the rolling hills of Elfhame pass by.
It wasn’t as though I had conversation to occupy me.
Bastian might as well have been a solid lump of obsidian on his stag’s back for how still and quiet he was. Perhaps he was afraid I was going to try to （gasp） speak to him again.
After how he’d spoken to me about the note and the way he’d brushed me off yesterday? Why bother? He would only find another excuse. Besides, he was the one who needed to apologise to me.
I kept my mouth shut as I pulled my coat tight and fastened the top buttons. Out here, as the hum of magic dimmed, it grew colder. This had to be what Bastian meant about the concentration of magic affecting the climate.
Outside the city, autumn was nearly over, with most trees bare and amber and russet leaves coating the ground of this wooded valley. Trunks crowded close-by, but someone had cleared the lowest branches above the road, so they didn’t tangle in our stags’ antlers.
We ate in the saddle, not sharing a word, just passing the filled rolls between us, offering a pear, breaking a piece of cheese. Bastian’s silver eyes remained fixed on the road ahead, the overcast sky as cool as his gaze and as dark as the scowl he wore.
Off the road, we found a ring of boulders to camp within. Bastian disappeared for a while after setting up the tent, muttering something about “wards.” It was the first thing he’d said to me all day. I didn’t feel much like replying, and his gloom didn’t invite conversation.
We ate, we slept, we rose to another dull day. If anything, this one was even darker, with grey clouds looming above. The weather matched my terrible mood after a night where I woke at least half a dozen times from dreams about Elthea experimenting on me. Travelling gave me no opportunity to sleep in.
When Bastian had sent instructions to pack, he’d told me the town was two days’ travel from the city. Halfway there. How much more painful could another day of this be?
Except… we weren’t even halfway through our ordeal, I realised as I buttoned my coat over my trousers and fresh shirt.
This marked only a quarter of the journey—two days there, two days back.
Great.
Biting back a groan, I mounted my stag.
As it passed noon, our breaths still steamed, drifting away like ghosts.
No matter what happens, remember all of this is real.
That damn phrase again. It haunted me, battling with my anger and hurt and the harsh words Bastian had given me. Even now, when I’d sworn I wouldn’t bother speaking to him, a question tugged on me, drawn by that inescapable phrase.
“What did you mean when you said…？” But it sounded silly as my words broke the silence. A foolish girl asking for something he couldn’t give. “Never mind.”
He finally looked at me for the first time in hours; it felt more like days. Not just a glance, either, but a long, deep look. “What were you going to say?”
I gritted my teeth, but it was out there now—or at least half out there. Fine. Better to get this done at last—and better speaking about this than accidentally spilling what Elthea had done. “When you said ‘remember all of this is real,’ what did you mean?”
His back straightened and the reins creaked in his grip as he turned to the road ahead.
Just when I thought he wasn’t going to respond, he opened his mouth. “It was the first time I realised you might some day find out what I was doing.”
That was a pretty way of putting it. “That you were using me.”
He winced, and I felt a little bad.
But sometimes the truth was less painful than skirting around it.
“It had never crossed my mind before that moment. But having you in my rooms, it hit me all the harder.”
“The fact you might get found out.”
He turned back to me, shifting in the saddle as though all his attention was on me and me alone. “The fact there was a vast, vast gulf between what we were supposed to be and what we really were.”
A shiver ran through me. What we really were. I couldn’t even summon some harsh truth to push back against him and everything those four words suggested.
“Kat…” He blasted a sigh. “In that moment, I wanted to tell you everything. Why I was there. My plans. How it had started one way, but that we had galloped off course and were out in the wilds with no map.”
His gaze might as well have been a grip around my throat for all I could summon any response.
I’d been so lost in my hurt, it had never crossed my mind that he had wanted to share the truth with me. I’d certainly never dreamed that his plans had been blown as drastically off-course as mine.
Our plans that were so similar.
Somewhere, the gods were laughing.
“I wanted to tell you how it scared me,” he murmured. “And how it gave me something I’d never had before. But I couldn’t.” The corner of his mouth rose, but there was nothing happy about it. “I couldn’t risk revealing the truth just in case I was wrong about you and you revealed it to unCavendish. And you… I couldn’t put that on you when you were in such a precarious condition.” His gaze fell to my fingers as they squeezed the reins. “So when I placed my orrery in your hand and told you to focus on the links, the feel of it, the reality of it… I wanted to help you ground yourself, but I also wanted—needed you to know that everything I did for you, everything I wanted for you, everything that happened between us was real, even if you found out the truth later.”