“Yes, First Ward,” the man answered, heading up the steps into the high caves while the other closed the door of the dungeon, leaving Ava and me alone outside of it.
“You know,” Ava said, nodding toward where the guard had disappeared up the stairs, “that’s not the kind of thing a vile person would do.”
One corner of my mouth twitched with a brief half-smile at the reassurance, but I couldn’t help letting out a sigh that carried with it all the weight of speaking with Silas. “Where have you learned to be so full of forgiveness?” I asked, meeting her deep blue eyes with a mixture of pain and adoration.
“Where I’ve come from,” she answered, her voice low with emotion, “where I’ve been… it’s the only way I’ve learned to keep my heart together.”
She believed her forgiveness was survival rather than the desire or graciousness I saw it as, but I could believe nothing other than that she was far too pure for these circumstances. For the life she’d been bound to. She deserved a life far from here, one where she’d never need to forgive anyone ever again. One where she got the love and the peace that the gods so gravely owed her.
“I wish you would go with them,” I whispered.
It took her a moment to realize that I meant with our family and Silas, so she’d be safe until this was over, but then her brow furrowed, and I watched a range of emotions play across her face: confusion, anger, sympathy, sadness. “When I ran from the castle at Guelder,” she said, “I left with the belief that I’d be doing this alone.” She reached for my hands, and held them between both of hers. “Your companionship, your love, it’s been the most precious thing in the world to me, and I’m certain every success would not have been so without you.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she closed them tight as if to rid the moisture. “But I see it, Kiena… how you’ve taken this responsibility as your own… and it haunts me.” She opened her eyes again, releasing the flood of tears that had built behind them. “Please, don’t ask me to let you do this alone. I won’t.”
I took my hands out from between hers so I could cup her face, running my thumbs over her cheeks to wipe away the tears. “You’ll not be asked,” I assured her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “We’ll do this together.” And to try and get her into a better mood again, I added with a smile, “As neither of us intended.”
Ava let out a teary laugh, pulling away from my hands so she could dry her eyes. “We shouldn’t be doing this now,” she said. “This lamenting. We should be celebrating.”
“Yes,” I agreed, having no desire to do anything but spend our remaining hours together, and with our family. “We should.”
And we did. We spent long hours in the dining hall, enjoying each other’s company until it was so late in the night that Nilson and Akamar could barely keep their eyes open. We retired at the same time as they did because we had to be up just as early. By morning, however, I’d hardly slept a minute of those short hours left of night. It wouldn’t have mattered how late we’d retired from the festivities, because once I’d slipped into bed, I could only think of the days to come.
I lay there contemplating what war would be like—as certainly our raids against supply caravans were but a glimpse—and wondering if there were even any dragons left alive, and hoping my family would be safe with Silas, and that Ava, Nira, Rhien, and I would make it back home. I thought on our strategies, our strengths and weaknesses, our preparedness. I ran over every detail I could in order to convince myself that we were truly ready for this—that I was ready for this.
Before long, there was a knock on the door—my signal that it was time. I woke Ava. We dressed. We had a small breakfast in silence. And we wandered to the outside of the caves. The sun hadn’t yet risen, but its light was beginning to creep on the horizon, and the gray morning was just bright enough for us to see. I greeted Rhien, and then Nira, and Akamar, whose eyes were barely open, and then my mother and Nilson. I don’t know if everyone else had slept as little as I had, but nobody said much of anything as horses were led over, two for my mother’s group and four for ours, along with saddlebags filled with supplies to sustain our journeys.
Just as another few rebels carried out our armor and weapons, Silas exited the cave, being led by Kingston and two others. They stopped a distance away from us—too great a distance to hear what Kingston was saying—but after making brief eye contact with Silas, I didn’t so much as look at him. Not while I fitted into my thick leather armor—the harness with leather flanks that fell just past my hips, the stiff rounded shoulder guards that almost reached my elbows, and the bracers—and not while my companions did the same. Whatever Kingston had been saying, however, he finished, and Silas nodded at him and came over.
He dipped his head with respect at my mother, and said more timidly than he ever had, “Morning, Bib.”
She barely muttered, “Silas,” loud enough to hear, and then brushed past him with Nilson and Akamar to check on the horses.
He clearly didn’t know how to react to that, and it must have made him feel awkward, because for a long minute he just stood there. Surely Rhien was the most at ease, having little history with Silas, but Ava appeared just as unsure as he did, and while my attitude was one of avoidance, Nira seemed bordering on contempt. In the thick tension amongst our small company, his eyes kept darting from me, to Ava, to Nira and Rhien, and then lingered on the ground before making rounds again. After that minute, his gaze fixed on me, and I could feel him staring as I tightened the straps and buckles on my armor. I was about to tell him to stop when he finally spoke.
“Kiena…” he prompted.
“What?”
He passed another deliberate glance around again at Ava, Nira, and Rhien, before looking back at me. “You can’t go to battle in that.”
My jaw clenched, because he was in no position to be telling me what to do. He didn’t know what I was capable of because he hadn’t been around, and the doubt behind his expression only reminded me of how he’d doubted me all those months ago. “I can,” I murmured without looking at him. “And I will.”
“It’ll hardly be enough for war,” he argued. “Your safety is at—”
“My safety,” I interrupted, turning my stern gaze on him as I pulled the final strap, “is none of your concern. You don’t always know best.”
The only safety he should be concerned about was that of my mother, brother, and Akamar. But it wasn’t just that I didn’t want his advice, or his acting like he cared about my safety. I’d been told before that I should be more heavily armored than with this hardened leather. Even my companions were more protected. Nira and Ava had been fitted with leather like mine, but theirs was plated with thin steel, and though Rhien decided only last night that she was coming, she’d been given a shirt of chainmail.
However, no matter how hard I’d tried to adjust to armor like that, I couldn’t. It was heavy, and bulky, and I’d probably have been uncomfortable in even this leather if I wasn’t so accustomed to my winter furs. More than that, I couldn’t wear steel and still use my sparks. I’d tried it once, but that much metal surrounding me interfered with my magic, and it’d nearly set me on fire. It didn’t matter anyway; my magic was a greater defense than armor.