Night came, cloudy and moonless. Daerious had gathered some wood for their fire before rushing off to the food cart to get his bread and some potatoes to roast over the flames. They made camp in a forest. Distant flames glinted near the trees all around her. Wherever she looked, men sat around campfires.
A twig snapped behind her and she turned. "Oh, hello," she said.
Michael sat down beside her and held his hands to the flame. "Cold tonight."
"It's the wind," she said looking up at the subtle wave of the leaves above.
"I have some news from the castle."
Curious, but too fearful to learn the progress of Kirin's recovery, Aurelie let the time drag on.
"They got you to do it?" Aurelie touched the fire with the tips of her fingers. "I'll get them to send someone else."
"Why?" He was more handsome now that he could not groom it. It was dark in color, even darker than his hair.
"You know why," she said, keeping her eyes on the flame. His demeanor changed. Perhaps, she should have let it go but his nonchalant behavior irritated her. It wasn't genuine. That or she snapped because she was irritated. The latter, it was definitely the latter.
Aurelie exhaled slowly.
"You should be glad, he's recovering," he said, placing emphasis on the word, making Aurelie understand that he felt the opposite of the issue. His nostrils were flared just enough to make Aurelie look away from his face.
"I am glad."
"He called your name," he said with some venom.
She turned toward him and blinked while her eyes adjusted to the darkness after spending so much time looking at the flame. "He did?"
"Right after he belittled you and called for his father to let him go so that he could kill you."
Aurelie smiled and shook her head, inhaling the cold night air. The was a freshness in it. She'd have to seek shelter that evening. The grass beneath Valice's wing perhaps. Days ago, she declined the cabin they had built for her. It seemed unfair to use it while the others slept on glass and ground.
"Why him?" he asked after a long period of silence.
"You're handsome," she said, still feeling the ghost of the pain he inflicted on her with his news. "You are everything I once imagined I'd want in a husband. When I put my daisy crown on my head and wore my mother's dresses, I thought of you. A brave, smart handsome warrior!" She wasn't being cruel or sarcastic. In retrospect, she was indeed everything she had wanted and more.
"So I bored you?"
"Michael,"Aurelie cocked her head, "could you have loved any of the girls you had before you met me?"
He stayed silent but his face went completely blank. From what Aurelie could tell, he wasn't very happy with being compared to those girls.
""Every day I wake and he's the first thing I think about . . . and the last."
"You haven't even given me a chance." He was almost begging her now.
"It's not something that can be given," Aurelie said, feeling him tug at her heartstrings. What did he want? For her to love him out of pity? There was something so pathetic in that. You cannot ask someone to love you. It is selfish and quite frankly, you'd be asking the impossible. There isn't a person in the world who stood up one day and just agreed to love a person just because they asked them too. Love grabs you when you least expect it and ensnares you. Love does not ask but it can be earned. You either do or you don't, there's nothing in between. Those who have loved know this all too well. "I will never love anyone the way I love him.
He dropped his head in both thought and shame. Aurelie put her hand on his shoulder. "Kirin and I were separated at our peak. I've turned him into a god of sortsâOh, how I laughed at poor Peter about this very same thingâso any comparison is simply unjust. No man can compete with a god. We burnt so brightly, and the flames never had the chance to settle. So I feel this fierceness toward him. I'll always long for it and search for it. I want you to find it for yourself. And it won't happen with me, because despite how perfect you are, you weren't the first, and our flame will die down, and even if I give you what you want, you'll always feel like you're fighting a ghost."
"You haven't even given me a chance."
"It's not something that can be given."
The grass crunched below the flattening of feet. Daerious appeared with two slices of bread in one hand and two potatoes in the other.
"Oh, should I go back? I've only brought food for two."
Michael stood then. "No, thank you, I've already eaten. I'll leave you to it. Enjoy your supper."
"Thank you," Daerious said and slumped down beside Aurelie. He put a slice of bread on Aurelie's cloak and bit into the other one.
Michael walked off into the darkness and Aurelie's heart sunk a little. The few days on the road reminded her where she came from and the crown on her head squeezed too tightly and weighed too much. The castle, the servants, the politics, she hated all of it. She hated the death, the jealousy, the constant threat that came with power. By whatever means the victory came, she understood now that no matter what the outcome is, she could never go back to that life. She had a grey shroud hanging over her whole body and her soul.
"Are you going to eat that?" Daerious asked, bringing her out of her thoughts.
"Here," she said, passing the bread.
She watched him while he chewed his bread. The light from the campfire chased the shadows on his face, moving back and forth with the wind. "Will you mourn me?" she asked.
Daerious coughed, choking on his bread. "What?"
"If I die, do you think you'll mourn me very much?"
"Uhâwell, yes. Why?" he deliberated, eyes wide, and mouth slowly chewing the last of the bread that remained in his mouth. "Are you planning to die?"
"No, I guess, I just want you not to, if it comes to that."
"Oh, yes, that's how it works," he said, shook his head, and took another bite of bread.
"I just want you to know that I will be happy either way. Dead or alive. And that I love you very much."
Daerious narrowed his eyes and flicked a dismissive hand toward her. "Oh, shut up!"
Aurelie wrapped her cloak tightly around herself and lay down with her back to the fire, using her arm as a cushion, watching Daerious chew up the last of his bread. Watching him eat was quite entertaining. He had no table manners and stuffed his face like a curious toddler. "Oh, I really enjoyed that rabbit you were supposedly going to hunt, by the way."
"Yeah, yeah. You try finding anything in those woods other than humans with the number of men we have out here."
"Sounds like an excuse to me," she said, smiling.
*****
By midafternoon, so much rain had poured down that the cart's wheels had stood halfway in the mud. Pulling them out would have wasted time and effort as they were close to empty, and thus mostly useless. The border to the Icelands was less than a day away.
The men picked up what they could stuff into their pockets. The witches attempted to divide it as best they could. Naturally, Daerious had been first in line, and by using Aurelie's name, managed to get jerky, a whole loaf of bread, six potatoes, a block of cheese the size of his arm and four apples. Which the two of them shared with three other guards that had not been as fortunate, and received no food at all.
Her cloak grew heavy, but despite not making her any warmer, kept the wind away. The ground below them turned into soft mud, and walking took three times more energy than it should have, delaying their journey by at least half a day. They should have been by the border that evening. Instead, they would arrive early the next morning.
Without the carts, the witches could no longer grow the vegetables on the move, and the food supply came to a slow end. They did as much as they could in the evenings, but by then, the walking had taken most of their energy.
"Have you spoken to Jermyn at all?" Aurelie asked Daerious, wondering if he had finally chosen to preserve himself instead, and take up another forest for himself.
"Before we left, yes." Daerious nodded. "He went off to Karmijar to speak to the queen."
Aurelie cocked her head. "He can't be."
"Well, he is. He is going to ask her to come to your aid."
"I can't believe he'd do that." Aurelie felt a lump rise in her throat.
"He's sick of it like the rest of us. The bigger our army, the less of us die, and the quicker we end this."
"He was so protective of her and the rest of the forest creatures. I never expected him to actually go to her because of the curse, never mind to ask her to send her creatures to our aid."
"You'll be surprised at how many people actually care for you."
Aurelie smiled. "Not really." she winked. "I bet I can count them all on my fingers."
"Some have less than that."
"I don't want any more, Daerious. You're enough. Orken is enough, and so are Kaiden and Jermyn."
"You have Kirin too," he said.
"These days, I'm not so sure."
They walked all through the night, resting the horses for an hour or so in between. The heavy rain had stopped, but it still drizzled a little, and walking had been the only reason most of them had not frozen themselves half to death that night.
Aurelie felt the end creep up on them. Tension lingered in the atmosphere. All laughter had stopped and the men walked through the night with their heads bent and their stomachs rumbling. It all switched rather quickly. All along the journey, cries of laughter and a murmur of conversation rang all around her, and then suddenly when they had come out of the forest, and found themselves at the top of a steep hill, they saw the tall snowy mountains of the Icelands, and the sight of them silenced ten thousand men.
The stomp of their footsteps began to sound like a slow beating war drum.
While it was still dark out, they reached the border and found the Redayran army camp. Aurelie had wondered many times whether they would be waiting for them there, and seeing their actual presence lifted a giant weight off of her shoulders.
So, Nic lives to see another day.
Their rectangular tents looked steady. They had pointed roofs and dim lights glowing from the inside of the dark grey material. Their outer campfires had all turned to ash and apart from a few men on patrol, the grounds were silent. Her army made camp behind them, the men and horses alike were dead tired from the grueling journey.
She walked through a narrow passage between rows of Redayran tents, and found an isolated stop at the very back of them, by a tall tree. She rested her back against it and dozed off with much less effort than she had during all the previous evenings.
She dreamt that they won, and remembered feeling nothing. No joy, no satisfaction from finally getting her revenge. In the great battle, she found Lukas standing before her.
She drove her dagger through his heart, and instead of red, he bled grey. The grey crept along the blade of the dagger and clung to her fingers. It spread from her hand and ran up to her face, closing her eyes and her nostrils and then dripped down to the tips of her toes. She could not move. Suddenly she felt fingers rubbing at the liquid that sealed her eyes. When she looked up, she saw her grandfather wearing Lukas' clothing, the dagger sticking out of his chest.
"We're all going to die now," her voice sounded, but her lips were still sealed by the blood.