The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles #1) - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,139

his lower lip and nodded. “I said my good-byes.”

“Then turn around,” I ordered. “You don’t have to do this.” He was shaken and did as I told him.

I stepped over to the horse. His back legs shuddered, spent from the effort of trying to do the work of his front legs too. He had worn himself out but was still as wide-eyed as Eben.

“Shhh,” I whispered. “Shhh.” I knelt beside him and whispered of meadows and hay and a little boy who would always love him, even if he didn’t know the words for it. My hand caressed his soft muzzle, and he calmed under my touch. Then, doing what I had seen Walther do on the trail, I plunged the knife into the soft tissue of his throat and gave him rest.

I wiped the blade on the meadow grass, pulled the saddlebag from the dead horse, and returned to Eben. “It’s done,” I said. He turned around, and I handed him his bag. “He feels no more pain.” I touched Eben’s shoulder. He looked at my hand resting there and then back at me, confused, and for a brief moment, he was an uncertain child again. “You can take my horse,” I said. “I’ll walk. I’ve had enough of my present company.”

I went back to the others and held Malich’s sheathed knife out to him. He cautiously reached down and took it from me. The soldiers lowered their bows in unison.

“So you know the choice words of Venda,” Malich said.

“How could I not? Your limited filth is all I’ve heard for weeks.” I began untying the saddlebag from my horse.

“What are you doing?” Kaden asked. I looked at him long and hard, the first time my eyes had met his with purpose in days. I let the moment draw out, long enough to see him blink, know. This wasn’t the end of it.

“I’m walking the rest of the way,” I said. “The air is fresher down here.”

“You didn’t do the boy any favors,” he said.

I turned and looked at the others, Griz, Finch, Malich. Slowly surveyed the hundreds of soldiers who surrounded us, still waiting for the caravan to continue, and circled around until my gaze landed back on Kaden, slow and condemning. “He’s a child. Maybe someone showing him compassion is the only real favor he’s ever known.”

I pulled my saddlebag from my horse, and the procession moved forward. Once again, I followed the clatter, clank, and jingle of the wagon ahead, and the loose rattle within me grew louder.

* * *

Steps and miles blurred. The wind gusted. It tore at my skirts, whipped at my hair, and then a strange stillness blanketed the landscape. Only the memory of Eben’s horse and its last shuddering breaths ruffled the air, the horse’s hot gusts receding, quieter, weaker. A last gust. A last shudder. Dead. And then the eyes of a dozen soldiers ready to kill me.

When the arrows were drawn and aimed, for a moment, I had prayed the soldiers would shoot. It wasn’t pain I feared, but no longer feeling it—no longer feeling anything.

I had never killed a horse before, only seen it done. Killing is different from thinking about killing. It takes something from you, even when it’s a suffering animal. I didn’t do it only to relieve Eben of a burden. I did it for myself as much as for him. I wasn’t ready to give up every last scrap of who I used to be. I wouldn’t stand by and watch a child butcher his own horse.

I was heading into a different world now, a world where the rules were different, a world of babbling women pushed from walls, children trained as killers, and skulls dangling from belts. The peace of Terravin was a distant memory. I was no longer the carefree tavern maid Rafe had kissed in a sleepy seaside village. That girl was forever gone. That dream stolen. Now I was only a prisoner. Only a—

My steps faltered.

You’ll always be you, Lia. You can’t run from that. The voice was so clear it seemed that Walther was walking at my side, speaking his words again in greater earnest. You’re strong, Lia. You were always the strongest of us.… Rabbits make good eating, you know?

Yes. They do.

I wasn’t a carefree tavern maid. I was Princess Arabella Celestine Idris Jezelia, First Daughter of the House of Morrighan.

The one named in secret.

And then I heard something.

Silence.

The loose chip inside me that I’d thought would never be