The Beauty of Darkness (The Remnant Chronicles #3) - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,21

couldn’t do anything about it here on the trail. It needed hot water and cleaning before he could stitch anything. “It’s going to take some work.”

The way he said work, I knew even he was doubtful about how much he’d be able to do. I knelt down beside Griz. “Do you have any thannis with you?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“I have some,” Kaden called from his guarded position several feet away.

“I’m not drinking any thannis,” Griz groaned.

“Quiet!” I said. “If I command you to drink, you’ll drink.” But what I had in mind was a poultice once we got down to the valley to help draw out some of the poison.

They untied his hands, and it took Rafe, Jeb, and Sven working together to get Griz to his feet. Several curses later, they finally loaded him onto his horse. They were no longer worried about him making sudden moves. Kaden was still forced to walk ahead of us. His status hadn’t changed.

Sven rode close to Griz, and when he teetered in his saddle, Sven reached out and grabbed his arm to steady him.

Because of the delays with Griz and Kaden joining our caravan, we didn’t reach the valley floor until dusk. Kaden had been walking for five hours now with his hands tied behind his back. I saw the fatigue in his steps, but strangely, instead of sympathy, my own anger and fears resurfaced. How many months had I been in that same position, a half-starved prisoner, humiliated and afraid, uncertain if I’d live another day? He hadn’t suffered half as much as I had. Yet. The unsettling difference was, he had come looking for this trouble. Why was he really here?

We rode down the main avenue, surrounded by the eerie boxy giants. Many of the ancient walls and roofs were still intact. There was a quick scramble to choose a suitable shelter, which meant one that could be defended—just in case.

Rafe and Tavish conferred, and a ruin was decided upon. We all gathered armfuls of what loose and dried branches we could find and filed into the cavernous dwelling, taking the horses with us. It probably could have held an entire regiment.

As soon as a fire was roaring, I prepared a poultice, helping myself to whatever was in Kaden’s saddlebag. Tavish sharpened his knife and work began on Griz. Our shelter rose several stories, and thick slabs of stone that had fallen from higher places littered the floor around us. Griz was laid out on one of them. As weak as he was and, now it seemed, slightly delirious, it took all four of them to hold him down while Tavish cleaned the wound.

Kaden was ordered to sit in an open area far from the gear and fire. I sat nearby on a large block of rock, guarding him, a sword across my lap. A strange feeling knotted inside me, like a meal that wasn’t eaten properly, rushed and uncomfortable. I noted his arms, still bound behind his back. A sour taste rose in my throat.

He was the prisoner now, like the prisoner he had made me. All his actions I had sloughed off and forgotten, because I knew that in some twisted way he had also saved my life, were suddenly as fresh and hurtful as if they had happened yesterday. I felt the rope cutting into my wrists and the suffocating terror of trying to breathe beneath a black hood he had pulled over my head. I felt the shame of crying as my face was ground into the sand. My emotions weren’t blinding and explosive, as they had been back then, but were now tight and contained, like an animal pacing behind the cage of my ribs.

Kaden met my stare, his eyes revealing nothing; cold, calm, dead. I wanted to see terror in them. Fear. Just as he had surely seen it in mine when I discovered he wasn’t the pelt trader he had claimed to be but an assassin sent to kill me.

“How does it feel?” I asked.

He acted as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. I tried to goad his fear to the surface. “How does it feel to have your hands tied behind your back? To be dragged across the wilderness, not knowing what will happen to you?” I forced a long and luxurious smile as if I was enjoying the turn of our fortunes. “How does it feel to be a prisoner, Kaden?”

“I’m not fond of it, if