Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(63)
By the time we moved on from the little village, I was glad to be alone with Hal. We fell easily back into a rhythm of chores and routines as we traveled; he hunted dinner while I gathered herbs for seasoning and built our fires or shelter. He fixed breakfast and I cleaned up our campsites to erase all evidence of our passage. Knowing that Nismae had spies everywhere, we stayed clear of the main road even once we found it, exchanging the quicker pace of road travel for the shelter of the ever-taller trees so that it was harder to see us from the sky.
Deep in the mountains with Corovja only a day’s walk away, we made camp in a meadow full of swaying grass and bright wildflowers. After our night there, silver light had barely kissed the horizon when I woke to Hal stirring the coals back to life for our breakfast. Waking to the rush of the river brought a certain kind of bliss, the music of water singing me into the day.
I rolled onto my side and watched Hal from beneath lashes still heavy with sleep, admiring the strength of his arms as he nestled two large stones into the embers of last night’s fire. He readied a rabbit with confident hands, slicing and adding spices to the meat while the rocks warmed. As the rabbit cooked, he tossed horseroot with other greens and herbs. Finally, he arranged the meal on a leaf as large and round as a plate. Our food may have been scavenged from what we had at hand, but his care with it turned it into something truly special. The knowledge that he’d done it for me made a warm feeling spread through me, enough to counteract the morning chill.
The intoxicating smell of the rabbit had me half sitting up, but before I could call to him, Hal turned away from the fire and strode over to a patch of yellow clover blossoms just opening to greet the sun. He murmured something inaudible over the flowers and then severed a single stem. I lay back down and closed my eyes, turning my face into my cloak to hide the smile threatening to give my wakefulness away. His footfalls hissed through the dewy grass to where I lay, and then he crouched down beside me with the leaf plate in his hands.
I opened my eyes as if seeing him for the first time.
“Good morning!” The words were the same as every other time he’d spoken them, but when I looked at the plate he’d brought me, with the single yellow flower alongside my food, I knew that this time it was different.
Until this moment I hadn’t let myself see the way he had begun to look at me—as though my dirty face on the other side of our campfire in the morning was dawn breaking over the edge of his world.
I held his gaze. His eyes were so warm, so soft, so dark—as comforting as a starry summer night on the mountain. They were now as familiar as the place I had grown up and thought I would always call home.
I picked up the flower between my fingers and twirled it, the yellow center bright with pollen. A pointless thing, that tiny yellow flower beside my breakfast, but I knew when he cut it that it was meant to be a promise.
He smiled. Even on someone who had been raised a criminal, love looked so innocent. I smiled back, though somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, Ina’s ghost rose unbidden, pressing the jagged blade of betrayal into my back. I pushed the thought away.
“Thank you,” I said. Then I traced the flower down his nose, leaving a trail of yellow dust on his brown skin.
It felt good to be loved.
It felt good, for once, not to be the one who loved more, who loved too much, who loved until she lost herself in something beautiful and reckless and dangerous that could only end in blood and death.
CHAPTER 24
WE REACHED COROVJA THE NEXT MORNING, AND FOR the first time in days I felt the tiniest bit of hope. The Fatestone was somewhere here—I just had to find it and the key to changing the past would be mine. The city began in the bottom of a valley filled with farmers’ fields, growing more densely populated as it angled up the side of a mountain that Hal and I had only just begun to climb. The sun shone down on us and a cool breeze nipped at our heels as we walked. Big fluffy dogs with tails that curled over their backs trotted alongside most of the people passing by. The road carved a wide path through the city until it made a sharp switchback to the palace at the top, a castle made of white marble that glistened in the sun almost as brightly as the snow-capped peaks beyond it. The Grand Temple stood not far from the castle, its stained-glass windows glimmering like gemstones in the sunlight.
“I’d almost forgotten how spectacular the views are,” Hal remarked. Tall trees, green hillsides, and patchwork farmland seemed to extend for leagues in the valley below.
“They’ll be even better from the Grand Temple,” I said. The promise of finding the Fatestone put a spring in my step, and I kept a keen eye on my surroundings, as if clues to Atheon’s location might suddenly appear. Along the road, narrow shops pressed tightly together, advertising everything from jewelry, books, and crystals to food and herbal spirits—anything a person could want. The smell from a bakeshop wafted over us, making my mouth water.
“How does anyone get around in the winter?” I asked. Even though it was summer, the altitude was high enough that old snow still lingered in shadowy nooks the sun couldn’t touch.
“Snowshoes, ice cleats, dogsled, and, if it gets really bad, tunnels.” Hal ticked off each one. “Sometimes it’s deep enough that the smaller houses get buried.”
The homes and storefronts grew taller the closer we got to the top of the mountain. Instead of simple A-frames like the homes in Amalska, these were built with roofs angled only on one side, pitched to the south to deflect the worst of the wind. Even the most humble of buildings bore snow cleats tacked into them. Glittering prisms hung from the eaves, catching sunlight to cast rainbows on the whitewashed walls of other structures nearby.