Ever the Hunted (Clash of Kingdoms #1)(67)

His head drops, so I’m forced to stare at his unruly mess of roasted-chestnut brown hair.

“For everything, I’m sorry.” His words are gravelly and rough. “I swear by the gods I didn’t want to leave you last year. Every day has been agony for me. Saul asked me to go. No, he begged me, saying it’d be safer for you.”

I shake my head, denying his accusation because I cannot take one more secret about Papa, even though heat is pooling in my gut. Horrid truthful heat. “You had just saved my life. Why would my father ask you to leave?”

He lifts his head. The raw passion in his eyes and on his slackened mouth pierces me.

“What do you remember of our last hunting trip together?” His voice dips into a rasp.

It’s always bothered me that I couldn’t remember all of it. When I don’t answer, he urges me to try. I wrinkle my brow as my focus shifts to the last time we hunted together. Nothing more than vague memories, random pieces like swatches of fabric that don’t fit together, comes at first. I remember a hole in the ground . . . Cohen falling . . . a mountain cat . . . and blood.

Too much blood.

I frown, no longer wanting to continue this conversation.

“I shouldn’t have left the path,” he says. There’s an urgent cadence in the way he speaks. It sets me on edge. “I wanted to find a faster route, even though you told me not to go. The mountainside was dangerous after the spring landslide, but I didn’t listen, and I fell through a hole into a cave.” Images form in my memory gaps as he tells his story. “There was a vine I could’ve used to climb out, but I didn’t want to ask for help. Light was coming from the far end of the cave, so I told you I’d find my way out. You, of course, said I was absurd because you could see the vine too.”

That’s right. I’d rolled my eyes at him. Called him a bludger.

“When I’d fallen into the cave, I dropped my bow and couldn’t find it.” He waits, watching me and allowing time for my mind to catch up, and as it does, more unease creeps in. My breath turns shallow as he continues. “I wasn’t prepared for the mountain cat. I didn’t have a chance to block it before it attacked. I barely remember the struggle, mostly just the pain. Gods, it was terrible.”

Forgotten cries echo in my head. The bow drops to my feet as I shove the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, pressing against the horror crawling out of the corners of my mind:

Cohen lying in a pool of red, unconscious and barely breathing.

Tattered skin.

Exposed bones.

His teeth gleaming through a gash in his cheek.

Red, red, red everywhere.

“I heard you cry out.” His voice vibrates through me—?he’s crossed the clearing and is pulling my hands from my face as he speaks. “I was struggling to breathe, and still I was worried for you. I thought you’d been attacked also. We were both going to die, and it was my fault.”

My eyes won’t shut; they’re frozen against the avalanche of nightmarish memories. The scar on his face has been there this entire time and I never questioned it. Never put more thought into the sort of savage attack that would mar his skin. I thought it was the price he had paid to save my life.

“I was searching for the cave opening when you screamed. I’d never heard you sound like that.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “So—?so pained.” His fingers slide from my wrists to my hands, clutching them tightly. “I found my way in and saw your blood. You were still beneath the cat, that massive beast.” What’s left of the saliva in my mouth is dust. “I—?I remember now, taking it down. One arrow to the vitals, one to the neck.”

A shudder racks my body as the overwhelming images, in perfect lucidity, play in my mind.

“It was too late, though,” I recall softly. “Wasn’t it?”

There’s carefulness in the way he nods.

“You were bleeding.” Each word I utter is a thread stitching the story back together and simultaneously pulling me, unraveling me. “There was too much . . . and—?and I tried to help. I put my hands on you. Your heart beat once . . .”

Everything turns to stone inside and plummets, the vivid and harrowing truth knocking me harder than a horse hoof to the chest. I can scarcely breathe.

“I watched you die, Cohen.”





Chapter

30


“DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?” A touch of uncertainty lingers in his question, anguish in his watchful eyes.

“I think I prayed for you,” I admit with a grimace, knowing how strange the confession sounds, especially from me, the last person who’d attend Sunday service or kneel at the stone of the royal church’s altar. And yet I remember that in his final moment, I would’ve paid any price to save him. Would’ve given my heart, my blood—?anything to let him live. “The next thing I remember is Papa leaning over my bed, lathering my neck with that nasty fever rash poultice. After that, nothing. It’s strange how I can recall the cloying scent of his poultice. And not much else,” I muse aloud.

Cohen reaches for his neck. He catches me studying him and promptly drops his arm to his side. His expression may not give much away, but I can tell from his body language he knows more.

“Tell me what happened next.”

He shuffles back a few steps, his eyes drawn to the ground where his boots push through the creeping groundcover to the near-black dirt below. When his gaze lifts to meet mine, I can see the shift to acceptance, as well as pain. Whatever he’s about to tell me is a great burden on him.