Ever the Brave (A Clash of Kingdoms Novel)(66)

Jamis’s attention cuts to Phelia.

“Truth,” she says, and she’s right because I’m determined to find out exactly where Aodren is hiding.





Chapter

30


Cohen


I WANT TO DIE.

My eyes crack open and the first thing I see is Lirra. The Archtraitor’s daughter is staring down at me, looking as plucked as the day I left her in the church office in Rasimere Crossing. I twist to sit up, and darts of fiery pain shoot into my arm and lungs.

“Mother of scrants,” I pant.

Sunrays sneaking in from a nearby window bleed across the bed, where I lie in an unfamiliar room. Strips of brown cloth wind around my arm and torso, which I notice is unclothed. My legs are covered with the gods’ ugliest creation of a quilt I’ve ever seen. “What’s this?”

Lirra points her finger at my face. “‘Thank you for saving my arrogant arse’ is what you should be starting with. Seeing as you haven’t learned manners in your twenty years, I’ll excuse you. Once. That’s all you get.” She drops down on the edge of the bed, causing the mattress to shift.

“Bloody seeds.” I bite my tongue against the fresh dose of agony.

“My father used to say a man curses because he doesn’t have the wit to come up with anything original.”

“You saying I’m an idiot?”

She smirks, her expression answering for her. Her finger shifts to point at my arm. “That’s a brace. It’ll keep your bones in place while you heal.”

“I know what a brace is, Lirra. I meant the thing on my legs.” The maker of the quilt used every color known to man.

Lirra’s snarl is a bite away from rabid. “My gran made that quilt, so you shut your mouth.”

I go to move my hands and remember . . . pain. Bludger. “No offense to your gran.”

“You just offended her. You cannot erase it by saying ‘no offense.’”

“Fine. Be offended,” I huff, which earns me an eye roll. Lirra’s got about as much charm as Omar.

Seeds, Omar.

“What happened? How’d I get here?” I ask.

Lirra purses her lips. I think she’s going to answer, but instead she goes about poking at my arms and ribs, unwrapping cloth, and lathering my skin with the foulest-smelling poultice known to man.

Her fingers are torture devices. After the third accidental jab, I grab her wrist with my good hand, bite back the pain, and say, “Thank you for saving me.” Even though I don’t have any clue what she saved me from. Last I remember I was with Ulrich and Wallace, following Jamis’s trail. “Where am I, and how’d I get here?”

“Do you remember being pushed?”

I stare at the plaster, willing memories to return. After a bit, I shake my head.

“It’s probably for the better. Nobody wants to remember falling off a cliff.”

I sputter. “Say that again?”

“You followed Jamis’s trail to a dead end.”

“The cliff?”

She nods, and a gauzy memory returns. “You got off Siron, walked to the edge, and looked over. As if Jamis would be there.” She rolls her eyes like that was the stupidest thing I could’ve ever done. Like she’s never checked out the edge of a cliff before.

“What happened after that?”

She stands, and the bed morphs back to how it was before she sat. Again, pain lances through me. I glare at her.

“Settle your feathers. I won’t bump the bed again.” She takes her poultice and puts it on the dresser before turning back. “Ulrich shoved you.”

“What?”

She shrugs. Like I’ve just asked her something as silly as whom she’s courting. Ulrich is a man I’ve served with for the last year and a half. I’m boggled.

“Wallace tried to grab you, but Ulrich put a knife in his gut before he could get to you.”

Lirra doesn’t pretty up any of the truth. I lie on the bed, overwhelmed and shocked as the day I found out Saul had been murdered. This sort of mutiny in the king’s guard is unprecedented. Men must pass vigorous mental and physical tests to be considered for the elite force. It’s an honor and a status of lower nobility to be on the king’s guard. I cannot fathom why Ulrich would turn on us.

“Wallace is dead.” I let out a slow breath. It’s my duty to inform his young wife once I’m on my feet again. Didn’t know the man well, but I knew his wife had a babe months ago. I lost my father last year. At least I had him till I was grown. But Wallace’s little one is still in swaddling.

“You’re lucky I got there in time to help.” Her chin jerks at my arm. “Else you would’ve been . . .”

Like Wallace is what it seems like she’s going to say. But she goes quiet as she crosses the room to a small table and picks up a satchel. She withdraws a pinch of herbs, which she drops into a bowl and starts to grind with an iron pestle.

I study the crack in the plaster overhead, puzzling out the parts of Lirra’s story that make no sense. Every speck of me aches like I’ve been squashed, but I’m here and I’m alive. That cliff was at least a hundred arm spans high. I should be dead. Nobody falls that far and breaks an arm and a few ribs. My memory may be foggier than a winter night, but I remember the drop. The cliff had a sheer face. Nothing on the side of that cliff would’ve been large enough to break my fall or provide a soft landing spot.