She ate all of it—the fish hot against her cold, filthy fingertips.
When they’d finished, he tossed the stripped bones into the fire and watched her. “Are you ready?”
Teeth gritted against the coming pain, she nodded. He dipped his hands in what had to be scalding water, pulled them out, and rubbed them together for a full minute before dunking them again. They came out looking a painful red. Pennice had done the same when she’d tried to clear the festering from inside Caelia.
He pulled away the bloodstained fabric from her leg and hummed low in his throat. He poured some too-hot water over the wound and scrubbed until it bled fresh, the pain raw and sharp. Worse than when it had happened.
She gritted her teeth and tried not to moan. “Tell me—tell me something. Anything. Distract me.”
He hesitated. “There is a place where the trees grow so tall, they snag the bottoms of the clouds. Up from the depths of the turquoise waters, they grow. Waters that team with fish pulsing with color. Winter never touches this place. And even on the darkest nights, there is light and music so beautiful it can make you weep or curse or forget everything that has ever hurt you.”
Music like what he’d played for her last night. Music that could make her forget. The words awoke a longing that vibrated from the top of her head down to her feet—feet that ached with the need to take her there.
She resented him for painting such a glorious picture. “Places like that don’t exist.”
“How would you know?”
She started to reply, but then he tugged at the punctures, peering inside. She gasped, eyes tightly shut.
“You’ll have an amazing scar to tell stories to your children about.” He tossed the rag into the still-steaming pot.
Fingers digging into the loam, she cried softly. As if sensing she needed privacy, he left quietly, his steps leading toward the river. She distracted herself with thoughts of the place he had described. A place with no winter. A place with colors and light and music to make her forget. Such a place couldn’t exist. But then, magic wasn’t possible either.
He came back into camp with a pot of fresh water, which he placed over the fire. He crouched down and packed up his pack. “If we start now, you’ll be home before dinner.”
Home. Where her father would look at her like he didn’t know who she was anymore. Where children would continue to torment her brother. Where the rumors would sting her for the rest of her life. Rumors that would prevent her from marrying. From ever having a job.
But the beast only took maidens. If she never went home, the town would be certain of her innocence. Her father and brother would be spared any further humiliation.
“What if I don’t want to go home?” she whispered.
He carefully packed the antidote. “Where else would you go?”
“The place you described, is it real?”
He slowly nodded.
She eased herself to a sitting position, wincing as the movement tugged at her fresh scabs. “I could come with you.”
“It’s two days’ journey. And every night, you will face the beast. You’re safer going home.”
She looked to the west. Toward her small town with its small people. Atara had been right. “There’s nothing for me to go back to.”
She felt his gaze on her. “You don’t understand what you’re asking me.”
She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “So tell me.”
“Once you set foot in the Alamant, you can never leave again. It’s the law. ”
“My father and brother . . .” She fought back a sob. “They’ll be better off without me.”
“Surely there’s someone else?”
Atara, Joy, the baby. “They’re all dead.” She sniffed. “Is there some kind of work I can do? I’ve been learning to cook, and I know a little about farming.” Mostly that one should put plants in dirt.
“Yes, but—” He rubbed his face in frustration. “Caelia, I’m trying to help you. Someday, you’ll miss your family so much you’ll wish you’d never made the choice to go to the Alamant.”
Caelia used to think she was strong. That she had control over her life. She’d learned in the worst possible way that she controlled nothing. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose everything. To bury the pain so deep it turns to acid and eats away all that you were.”
He stared into the dying embers. “Don’t I?” The heaviness he bore—he had clearly suffered something. He crouched down by the fire and pulled a set of pipes out of his shirt. She tensed. “Let me show you.”
Because he asked first, she nodded. He played. The first note wrapped around her, bearing her away to the memory that haunted her every moment.
She was holding her baby again. He was tiny, so tiny he fit in one hand. He was sticky and red with her blood. He’d been perfectly formed, his skin fragile, the delicate tracery of veins visible beneath. His tiny chest rose and fell frantically, his ribs vibrating with the beat of his heart.
She’d never wanted him, not from the first moment. Until she did. As fiercely as she had ever wanted anything. And so, after hours of silent agony, she’d called for her father.
He’d stumbled into her candlelight room. He’d gaped at her, at the blood, at the baby. Comprehension had come over him. Comprehension and bitter disappointment.
Through her tears, she’d begged him to go for the midwife.
What felt like hours later, Pennice had rushed into the room, taken one look at the infant in her arms, and stopped short. She started again, her movements smooth and gentle as she knelt beside the bed. “He’s too little to survive, Caelia.”
The song released her, slipping away like water to go back to wherever it had come from. Slowly, Caelia came back into the here and now. Gendrin stared into the fire, tears streaming down his face.
“What was that?” she cried.
He shifted to look at her. Their gazes locked. He didn’t look away as another might. Instead, he saw her. Saw the tears streaming down her cheeks that matched his own, and he didn’t look away. This man had known pain. Known it as she had. She saw the same realization come over him.
When she’d been dangling over a pit of gilgad, she’d thought Gendrin’s eyes reminded her of her father, which had given her the strength to fight away her fear. She’d been wrong. What she saw reflected back at her was a grief as deep as her own. It was that shared grief that had made her trust him.
He took a ragged breath. “My friends and I were part of a supply line delivering food to one of our outposts when we were ambushed near sunset. We became separated from the group. We were beset by two beasts. All my years of training, all that preparation . . . I froze. My best friend, Serek, died saving me.
“I’d thought I was powerful, strong. But in the face of his wife’s grief . . .” He held out his empty hands. “I couldn’t face her. Couldn’t tell her the truth. To my shame, I let one of my other friends, Denan, take the blame for Serek’s death, when all he’d done was save him from the shadow.” Gendrin choked, unable to continue.
He’d lost a friend to the beast, as she had. Caelia wanted to reach out to this man she barely knew, comfort him. But she held back, unsure how he would receive it.