The Bridge Kingdom (The Bridge Kingdom, #1)(113)

Lara stared at him, her lungs paralyzed. He wasn’t letting her go, he was . . . banishing her. “Please don’t do this. I can fight. I can help you. I can—”

Aren shoved her shoulders with enough force to send her stumbling back. “Go!” Then he reached down and retrieved his bow, nocking one of the black-fletched arrows.

Holding her ground, she parted her lips, desperate not to lose the chance to undo the damage that she’d done. The chance to fight back against her father. To liberate Ithicana.

To win Aren back.

“Go!” He shouted the word at her, leveling the arrow at her forehead even as tears poured down his cheeks. “I never want to see your face. I never want to hear your name. If there were a way to scour you from my life, I’d do it. But until I find the strength to put you in a goddamned grave, this is all I have. Now run!”

His fingers quivered on the bowstring. He would do it. And it would kill him.

Lara twisted in the mud, sprinting up the slope, her arms pumping. Her boots slipped and slid as she jumped over fallen trees and slapped aside ferns.

And stopped. Bracing a hand against a tree, she turned. In time to see his arrow shoot past her face, thudding into the tree next to her.

She pressed a shaking hand against the line scraped against her cheek, a trickle of blood running between her fingers. Eyes fixed on her, Aren pulled another arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and aimed the barbed tip. His lips moved. Run.

She ran, never looking back again.





41





Lara





“Another.”

The barkeep raised one eyebrow over the mug he was polishing with a dirty rag, but made no comment as he refilled her glass with the swill this tap house passed off as wine. Not that it mattered; it wasn’t as though she intended to savor it.

Downing the contents in three gulps, Lara pushed the glass back across the bar. “Fill it.”

“Pretty girl like you could get herself in a bit of trouble drinking the way you do, miss.”

“Pretty girl like me will cut the throat of anyone who gives her trouble.” She gave him a smile that was all teeth. “So how about you don’t tempt fate and you just hand over the bottle.” She shoved a few coins stamped with the Harendell King’s face in the man’s direction. “Here. Saves us having to exchange any more words tonight.”

Wiser than he looked, the barkeep only shrugged, took the coins, and handed her a full bottle of swill. But even drunk, she marked his words. Her face was familiar here. It was time to find a new watering hole to drown herself in every night.

Which was a shame. It smelled like spilled beer and vomit, but she’d grown fond of this place.

Drinking directly from the bottle, she blearily scanned the room, tables full of Harendell sailors dressed in baggy trousers and those stupid floppy hats that never ceased to remind her of Aren. A trio of musicians played in the corner. No-nonsense serving women carried trays of steaming roast beef and rich soups to the patrons, the smell making her mouth water. A nod at one of the women had a bowl of soup arriving in front of her moments later.

“Here you are, Lara.”

Shit. It was time for her to move on. How long had she been in this town? Two months? Three? In the haze of alcohol, she’d lost track of days, it feeling both like a lifetime and just yesterday that she’d dragged her battered boat onto a Harendell beach, half-starved and her clothes still red with the blood of the Maridrinian soldiers she’d slaughtered to get herself off Midwatch.

The smell of soup tickled her nose, but her stomach soured, and she shoved the bowl away, drinking from the bottle instead.

The smart thing would be to move inland, north and away from all those who knew and cared about Lara, The Traitor Queen of Ithicana. Her father’s agents would be looking for her—maybe another one of her sisters, for all she knew—and a drunken wreck like her was an easy mark.

But she kept finding excuses not to go. The weather. The ease of stealing coin. The comfort of this shithole of a tap house. Except she knew the reason she stayed was because here, the news from Ithicana was on everyone’s lips. Night after night she sat at the bar, listening to the sailors chatter about this battle and that, hoping and praying that the tides would turn. That, rather than grumbles about the growing dominion of Maridrina, she’d hear that Aren was back in power. That Ithicana held the bridge once more.

Wasted hopes.

With every passing day, the news grew worse. No one in Harendell was particularly pleased that Maridrina now controlled the bridge—already the old men were bemoaning the good old days of Ithicanian efficiency and neutrality—and there was much chatter over the likelihood of the Harendellian King taking action. Except even if he did, Lara knew it wouldn’t be until after storm season, six months from now. And by then . . . by then, it would be too late.

“. . . battle with the Ithicanians . . . the king . . . prisoner.”

Lara’s ears perked, unease pushing aside the haze of the wine. Turning to the table behind her, which was filled with a group of heavyset men with equally heavy mustaches, she asked, “What was that you said about the Ithicanian King?”

One of the men grinned lasciviously at her. “Why don’t you come over here and I’ll tell you everything there is to know about the sorry sot.” He patted one knee, which was coated with grease stains.