“The way they see it, if Queen Vanora starts getting pieces of her little brother shipped back to her encased in blocks of ice, she might just surrender that chunk of territory. You understand now?”
“I understand,” I murmur.
“Good.”
He rises to his feet and begins unfurling the bedrolls, arranging them in a circle around the fire. I help him in silence, trying to keep my expression blank. But my thoughts are far beyond the reach of the fire’s soft glow, caught up in the ice-crusted woods Penn stalked into shortly after our arrival, a hunting bow slung over one shoulder.
If anyone should not be permitted to leave the group unattended, it’s him. Yet, he’s received no lecture. He’s not been chased down and given an emergency whistle in case enemies come upon him unexpectedly,
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about Penn,” Jac says, catching my eyes across the flames. “If the Reavers do find him, it’ll be their funeral pyres burning. Not his.”
“Worry?” A strangled laugh bursts from my lips. “I’m not worried. Don’t be absurd.”
“You look worried. Or you did a second ago.”
I ignore that. “Why on earth would I worry about him, Jac? He’s my enemy.”
“Ace—”
“The sooner he gets taken by Reavers or eaten by monsters, the sooner I can get off this blasted mountain and back where I belong!”
“And where’s that, huh? The Midlands?” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t seem like there’s much worth going back to in that miserable place. Or have you forgotten they almost hanged you?”
“It doesn’t matter where I go, just so long as I’m nothere!” I hiss, heart thundering with fury and something that might be fear. “I don’t want anything to do with whatever is waiting for me in Dyved. I don’t want anything to do withany of this. All I want—all I have ever wanted—is a simple life. No more talk of Remnants. No more running from Reavers. No more sleepless nights.” I’m breathing hard, practically panting. “But I’ll never get what I want so long as your precious princeling is getting whathewants. The specifics of which, I might add, he hasn’t bothered to share with me.”
“He’s been a bit busy keeping you alive.”
I narrow my eyes. “And why is that, Jac? What’s his endgame here? Why does he need me in the first place?”
“I don’t know, Ace. That’s above my pay grade. All I know is, you’re mighty worked up for someone who claims to be indifferent to his existence.”
“For the last bloody time, I am not bloody worried about bloody Prince Pendefyre!” I seethe, holding tight to my anger. “As far as I’m concerned, if he dies, I’mfree.”
Jac’s expression flashes with disappointment. I don’t like seeing that look in his eyes as they behold me. I like even less that seeing it bothers me so much; that the thought of him holding me in poor regard is enough to shake my resolve.
I care what he thinks of me, I realize, aghast.
Even worse…
He’s right: Iamconcerned about Penn. And my sudden surge of hostility has as much to do with my own conflicted feelings as it does with Jac’s pointed insight. No matter how my mind insists that it is absurd to worry about the well-being of the man who hauled me, kicking and screaming, into the Northlands…my heart stubbornly rebuffs every bit of sound logic I present to it.
Horrifying as it might be, my gruff, monosyllabic, borderline savage captor…
Mattersto me.
I would care if he were killed.
I would care a great deal.
Jac is still looking at me like I’ve let him down. I open my mouth to smooth things over just as a dull thud sounds in the night. A dead doe hits the snow not two paces away. My gaze moves from her white-tufted chest to her sightless eyes to a set of black boots planted on the ground beside her.
The instant I look up into Penn’s carefully blank expression, I know he’s heard every word I said. All the blood drains from my face in one great whoosh. My throat works to swallow the knot of emotion lodged in it, but it is no use. The tangle of regret and shame is firmly stuck, blocking my airway.
If he dies, I’m free.
“Trust me,” Penn says, his voice completely devoid of feeling. He stares at me like I am a clump of dung clinging to the bottom of his horse’s shoe. “The feeling is entirely mutual.”
The following dayis, in a word, frigid. Not only the temperatures, but the attitudes of the men.