I can think of a thousand things I would rather do than touch his offered hand, including hacking off my own arm.
But this crew needs me. Alosa’s missing girls need me. I can’t think about just myself anymore.
This is what being a captain means.
“Dimella,” I say.
“Aye, Captain?”
“You’re in charge until I return.”
Threydan raises an eyebrow at those words but doesn’t argue them.
Dimella says nothing for several seconds before finally replying with “Aye-aye.”
I swallow. “Kearan.”
“What?” he says in a voice filled with rage. I cannot see him through all the undead, but I know he’s back there somewhere.
“You will not move a muscle when Threydan calls off his army. Not one muscle. If anything happens to this crew, I will hold you personally responsible. Do you understand me?”
As with Dimella, he takes a very long time to respond. Then, “Understood, Captain.”
His acceptance moves something else within me, and I melt just a little, like a crying icicle.
“Philoria, keep Visylla in check.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Everyone else, make the queen proud.”
Then I take Threydan’s hand.
The dead fade back into the trees so quickly, if it weren’t for all the footprints in the snow, I might have thought I’d dreamed them.
Threydan’s fingers thread through mine as he leads me away, and I feel the stares of twenty-three pairs of eyes boring into my back.
Chapter 17
AS SOON AS THE crew is safe and long behind us, I say, “I’m not running, but I am taking my hand back.” And I pull my fingers from his.
Threydan lets me go, but he follows my retreating hand with his eyes.
“It will take time for you to get used to me,” he says. “I understand that. But I am a patient man, Sorinda. I have forever.”
I rest my hand on my sword hilt, drawing comfort from the hard steel, yet also disgust from the fact that I can’t feel the cold of it. It should be painful to the touch until the heat of my hand transfers to the metal.
“You could draw your weapon if it would make you feel better,” he suggests.
“What would make me feel better is you putting me back to normal and then releasing me.”
“I already told you I can’t do that.”
“What can you do?” I snap. Exhaustion all but pulls me toward the fluffy snow at my feet. It takes far too much energy just to put one foot in front of the other.
“A great many things,” he says conversationally, ignoring my tone. “I can cook, assuming such things haven’t changed in a thousand years. I am rather good at playing the harp. I can win most drinking games. And …” He pauses to think a moment. “I also have a knack for fishing.”
He turns to me and grins, his blue eyes more intense than ever.
And I can’t say a single thing.
Because those words are so normal. It’s as if he thinks he can convince me he didn’t just threaten my entire crew with an army of undead. An army that appears to be strangely absent for the moment.
I stumble in my next step, and my vision goes dark for a moment.
“You’re wearied,” Threydan realizes. “Here.” He sweeps me off my feet and holds me in his arms as though I weigh nothing. As far as I can tell, he has no supernatural strength, only the ability to not die. He’s simply a rather strong man.
“Put. Me. Down.”
“If you have the strength to make me, I will heed your request.”
I try to push off his chest, but the action has hardly any force behind it. I’m simply too spent, and that terrifies me more than anything else that has happened so far. Threydan could do anything he wanted right now. Including finishing whatever horrible ritual he started.
“Just sleep, dear Sorinda. I’ve got you.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“All right, then. Don’t sleep. I order you to stay alert.”
He thinks he’s being funny, but I find no humor in the situation. I try to hold myself away from the bare skin of his chest. To not notice the way it is still as stone, rather than moving with even breaths.
He is just as dead as those corpses he commanded earlier.
My eyes start to drift, but I slam them open. I think of Roslyn and how I have to be strong for her.
Darkness creeps at the edges of my vision, weirdly soothed by the repetitive movement of Threydan’s steps.
Stay awake.
Stay awake.
Stay …
A DREAMLESS SLEEP IS something I haven’t experienced in a long time, and when I rouse myself, I realize that I feel more rested than I have in a while.
Because you’ve never been so exhausted before.
The events of the last few days flood back to me, and my eyes fly wide.
I’m in a dark cavern of sorts, torchlight illuminating the space around me. A downy mattress supports my weight, a soft blanket wraps around my limbs—not that I need the warmth.
As I sit up, my eyes meet the bright, undead gaze of a Drifta man. My heart thuds painfully in my chest as I realize he’s probably been waiting there the entire time I was sleeping. Watching. He stands stock-still until he sees me sit up. He points to a wooden chest on the stone floor before leaving. I look around to ensure no one else is present before opening it.
I’m not sure what I expected inside. A body part? Something taken from my crew to make me behave? Or something equally disturbing that my sleep-addled brain cannot conjure up?
Instead I find clothes. A few simple dresses in designs I’ve never seen before. Pants and shirts that have ties in the front. Sandals with light soles. And … are those bonnets?
I slam the lid closed and stand before marching from the room, stretching the sore muscles in my arms as I do so. More torches line the dark hallways, illuminating my path. I follow the lights through chambers of stone, through empty rooms without so much as a speck of dust to grace them, and then a smell hits me.
Something is cooking.
I finally step into a small kitchen. Some sort of vent in the ceiling allows smoke to be carried out of the room. An open fire sits in the middle, and Threydan is crouched in front of it, turning a few fish skewers. He’s wearing a different pair of pants, and he’s cleaned himself of any blood from the slaughter he wrought among the Drifta.
He looks over his shoulder as I approach. “You didn’t want to change?”
“I want nothing from you.”
He turns back to the fish. “So it’s going to be like that, then? It makes no difference to me what you wear, but I thought you might like to cease smelling of wet campfire.”
I’m sure I reek, but I’ve long since grown used to the smell. And I’m not about to do anything to make me seem more enticing to this man.
He pulls one of the fish from the flames and cuts into it with a knife to examine the meat. “And are you also too proud to accept my food?”
He holds the skewer out to me after deeming it fully cooked.
Saliva floods my mouth. I’m famished again, and now that my body has finally been allowed the sleep it needed, food is all I can think about. I snatch the skewer from him and tear into the fish, not needing to wait for it to cool.
I cannot be burned.