“Let’s go,” I said to Ava, pacing past her to head over to where her horse and Albus were.
My father’s necklace was in the dirt where I’d dropped it when Ava had fallen, so I picked it up and put it back in my inner pocket. The supplies I’d taken I transferred to a pouch of Ava’s saddlebags, and by the time I was finished, she’d reached us.
“Up.” I motioned toward her horse, instructing her to get on.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered, but not even the low volume of it could mask the sadness in her voice. She felt the loss too.
The arrow wound in my shoulder was nothing compared to the throbbing pain in that entire region from being hit with the hammer. It would stop bleeding eventually, and right now the emotional pain in my chest hurt worse than the injuries to my shoulder, face, and back.
“Get on the horse,” I said, and this time she obeyed.
When she was sitting comfortably, she stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle, and Maddox landed on the rear of her saddle moments later.
Like I hadn’t the heart to take anything else from Brande’s saddlebags, I also hadn’t the heart to ride. It would’ve felt like a betrayal. It would’ve been like all the years Brande had spent at my side meant nothing. So I walked. As we traversed the rest of the mountaintop and started our descent, the entire day I walked alongside Ava’s horse. Albus wouldn’t so much as look at me, and he trotted paces ahead of us with his head down like he resented me for what I’d done.
Maybe I resented myself for what I’d done too, but what choice did I have? Brande was dying. Suffering. I’d had him since he was a colt. I’d got him for free because the breeder couldn’t break him. No one could break him so he’d been given away, and in the end all it took was respect and patience. A friendship. That’s what broke him, that’s what made him a companion to me for seven years. I owed it to him not to let him suffer. But really I just owed it to him to have kept him alive, to have kept him safe. I didn’t. I failed him. Maybe if I’d taken the magic sooner we wouldn’t have been in that mess, or I could’ve handled all eight of the men before anyone got hurt. Now here we were, walking with one less friend.
As we walked, I held my hand out in front of me, constantly materializing an unstable ball of sparks in my palm. It never lasted longer than a few seconds because I couldn’t control it now, and the only reason I’d been able to do anything with it earlier was because it had controlled me. All day, I practiced, creating sparks and trying to keep them alive as long as I could. I couldn’t keep anything alive, but at least it kept my mind off thinking of other things. It took all my focus, every bit of it but what I needed to keep my feet moving.
“Kiena?” Ava’s voice cut through my concentration, destroying the thriving ball of sparks in my hand. I immediately created a new one. “Kiena,” she said again.
I dropped the energy. “What?” I asked, my voice cracking because it had been so long since I’d said anything.
She made a deliberate glance around the lush green forest we were in. The trees overhead were thick, blocking out a majority of what daylight was left so that everything was covered in shadow. “It’s getting dark.”
I studied the obscurity of the wood, assessing the truth of her statement. “I’ll gather firewood,” I said, trudging away to collect the bit we’d need for the night.
It wasn’t hard to find dry sticks. There was no more snow, and the woods were thriving and warm, and though the air was a bit damp, it didn’t soak into everything like snow did. By the time I carried back the wood, Ava had already set out her sleeping furs—furs we’d have to share because I hadn’t taken mine. I preoccupied myself with using my magic to start the fire, and it wasn’t until the flames were lit and I sat down next to Ava on the furs that I realized we hadn’t eaten since last night. It wasn’t an abnormal thing for me to go a day without food, but surely Ava was starving. Still, instead of saying anything about food, the moment I sat down she got up to pull my disinfectant out of the saddlebags and then lowered herself again at my side.
“Will you let me care for you now?” she asked.
I said nothing, but made no protest when she reached for my shoulder. It had been so long that the blood had dried. It stuck my tunic to the wound so that when she peeled the fabric away, the edges started bleeding all over again. Ava unraveled the linen from her wrist and, along with the antiseptic, began to clean the dried blood and the open wound.
“Are you hurt?” I asked in a whisper, and I was so emotional from the day that the fact I hadn’t so much as scanned Ava for injuries made me feel immensely guilty. “I hadn’t asked.”
“Nothing sleep won’t fix,” she answered. She draped the linen over my other shoulder to free up her hands, and reached for the small strings at the neck of my shirt. “May I see the rest of it?” I let her, and she loosened the highest ties just enough so she could push my tunic and vest off my shoulder. It exposed my entire collarbone and the topmost part of my chest, revealing to her the entirety of where I’d been struck by the hammer. “Kiena,” she said, sucking in a sharp breath as she set her hand against my bare skin, “this is bad.”
My eyes dropped to it. It was already black and blue, and still throbbing. Surely it was hot against her hand as well, but I didn’t care. “It’s just a bruise.”
For a moment, she said nothing, just sat there with her eyes wandering back and forth between my face and the injury. Then she set her fingers beneath the part of my jaw that wasn’t swollen to request that I look at her. “It’s allowed to hurt.”
I met her eyes with my own, and the caring in her expression was enough that I almost couldn’t keep the tears at bay. “The only thing I feel, Ava…” But I couldn’t finish. Just put my hand to my chest, to my heart so she’d know what I meant.
She pressed her hand over the top of mine, cupped my face with her other and then touched her lips to my forehead, and the gentleness of her hands and lips lingered for a long minute to offer comfort. All it did was make me weak to restraining the emotions I’d been forcing back.
“How far are we?” I asked, pulling away from her and trying to change the subject so I wouldn’t start crying. And bless her. She let me avoid it.
“Close,” she said. Though we were off the road and there were no signs to gauge our distance, Ava scanned the woods as if that would help. Truly, I think she was trying to calculate how far we’d traveled today. “I’d say thirty miles outside the capital.”
I nodded, replaced my tunic and vest to my shoulder and then stretched out to lie on the furs. “We’ll start early,” I said, throwing my arm over my eyes so I could attempt to block everything out. “You should eat.”
It was silent for a few seconds, as though Ava wasn’t sure what to do. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I’ll fetch you something.”
“No,” I answered, turning onto my side to face away from the fire.
Ava didn’t respond, but she got up and I heard her shuffling around through the remaining minutes of daylight. I imagine she fed Albus and Maddox, and then got something of her own to eat. It took a while before she returned to the sleeping furs, during which I hadn’t been able to fall asleep. I’d simply lain there, focusing on the sounds she was making as she moved around and trying to imagine what she was doing. Anything but think about the pain in my chest.
When she did return, she slipped silently under the blankets, making sure to adjust them and drape them over me as well, because I hadn’t put myself under them when I’d lain down. Though we had to share the furs and I was facing her, she turned her back to me once she got in, as if to offer me some privacy on account of how distant I’d been all day. However, now that she was lying down, the only sounds were the bugs in the night and the crackling of the fire. It wasn’t enough to keep my mind from wandering. Not enough to keep from thinking of Brande or from finally feeling the severe aching in my body.