The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(68)

“Omair knew what he was doing,” she told him. “He made a choice.”

“I owe him my life,” the boy said heatedly.

She could feel the warmth and the sorrow coming off him in waves, and she wanted to touch him more, touch him better than a mere hand to the back. To press so close against his skin she could draw the hurt out like a poultice draws poison from a wound.

“We’ll save him,” she said fiercely. “If we go back now, there’s nothing we can do. We’ll just be prisoners—corpses, even. But if we can make it to Yunis, I swear to you I’ll return with an army, and I’ll free Omair. Once my cousin is defeated, it’ll be the first thing I do.”

Behind his tears, she saw something else: a flicker of calculation in their black depths sparking to life and burning away his tears. There was something familiar in it. Perhaps he was not so different from her, after all.

“Why should I trust you?” the boy asked, shrugging her hand off as though he had only just noticed it.

Good question. There were plenty of lines she could feed him. Pretty notions of honor and civility and the word of royalty. Promises from the empire that had murdered his family and razed all sign or substance of his home from the earth. None of which would mean a damned thing to him.

“You don’t have a choice,” she said instead. “Either we trust each other, or we have no one. Is that good enough for you?”

Surprise flickered over his face. Finally, he nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. This bargain of necessity, this acquiescence to the distasteful needs of survival—this was something he understood. An ugly language that they now shared.

Lu stood and offered her hand. “Come on, then. Let’s save Omair.”

Nokhai stood on his own, but when he was upright he took her hand and shook it grimly.

“Let’s save the empire,” he said dryly.

Then he dropped her hand as though he couldn’t bear to hold it a moment longer. His face was still red and swollen, but his tears were gone.



They stopped for the night in a clearing far enough from the path that they wouldn’t immediately be seen by passersby. The air was cool, so Nokhai built a small fire. Because they had scarcely seen anyone all day, Lu reasoned, the blaze was unlikely to attract any attention.

As Nokhai worked, she inspected the rucksack Omair had given them before they fled. Lu unpacked two wool cloaks, a small jar of strong-smelling salve—she would have to ask Nokhai about its use later—a few rolls of cotton bandages, a sack of roasted chestnuts still in their husks, several sachets of dried teas and herbs, and a stack of some sort of fried flat-cakes bound in a clean cloth.

She kept the cloaks and the flat-cakes in her lap, then carefully replaced everything else. When she held up the flat-cakes in victory, though, she found Nok had moved from building a fire—now a pleasantly crackling blaze—to rubbing down the horse.

He had already removed its saddle and blanket and slung them over the low branch of a nearby tree, and in lieu of a comb, he was rubbing his fingers in a circular motion through the stallion’s coat.

“It’s all right, boy,” he murmured. “You can rest now.”

The sound of his voice was so unguarded that Lu found her shout of “Dinner!” dying upon her lips.

He must have sensed her stare; when he turned, the mask of suspicion had dropped down once more over his face.

“Omair packed . . .” Too late did it occur to her just hearing the name might inflict pain. “There was food in the bag,” she finished awkwardly.

Nokhai came over and examined the bundles. “Turnip cakes. Good.”

“There were some nuts, too. I thought we should save those for later.”

But the boy had set down the bundle and was now fingering a cluster of softly lobed leaves on the ground by his feet. “Sweet purple.”

“Sweet what?”

The boy worked his knife under where the leaves joined, and with a grunt, he pried a fat wine-colored tuber from the soft earth. He faced her with grim satisfaction. “Dinner. Goes well with turnip cakes.”

Lu frowned doubtfully. “Is it edible?”

“Would it be dinner if it weren’t?”

“But it’s from the forest.”

He stared at her. “What do you eat when you’re out on a hunt?”

“Whatever game we catch,” she responded, folding her arms across her chest.

“And what if you don’t catch anything?”

“The cooks make a meal from the food stores we bring with us—”

“And where do the food stores come from?”

“Our crop fields.”

“And where do you think those crops came from?”

“Not the forest!”

“Maybe not, but they came out of the mud same as anything. Same as these sweet purples.” He shook the roots. Clods of dirt rained to the ground.

“I suppose you’re correct,” she sniffed.

“Of course I’m correct.”

As he cooked, Lu polished the edges of her sword until the blade gleamed white in the firelight. Nokhai’s back was to her, but when she leaned to the side she could see the purple tubers resting on a raised bed of stones around which he stacked pine needles and twigs. He lit the kindling with his flint.