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Heath wanted to watch the camp, but the sister pushed them further away into the woods around it. Yet he could still hear the chaos and the flames engulfing the tent.
“You did that,” he said, stopping to lean against a tree and look back the way they had come. No one was following them. No one was chasing them.
“They will believe that she did.”
“That might not be enough to keep us safe,” Heath stammered. He had followed this woman, after all. He believed there was a reason he had found her in the first instance and that he was the one to watch over her now. Although why that was, he had no idea.
Frayne watched silently from the sidelines. He looked serious, as though thinking over what had happened, and he was yet to say a word. He wouldn’t like it, Heath could tell that from the way he stood. He would share that this was dangerous and would lead to trouble. The kind of trouble they wouldn’t be able to escape from and might endanger their parents. But he remained silent.
“I thought you wanted to help her,” Heath said.
“We will,” she said, watching the flames. Something odd in her eyes reflected the light, despite the distance and trees between them.
“Do you want to tell us about that soldier?” he asked. “He was something very different.”
“He was,” she said quietly, “and yet just the same.”
“You know him?”
“He is my brother,” she said, lifting her chin as though to defy him to question her. She appeared much younger than her years for a moment, a girl lost to powers greater than herself.
“He is looking for you,” Frayne said.
She nodded without looking towards him.
“He is the reason—you are the reason,” he corrected, taking a breath, “that my father left Sunsong Castle.”
She turned then, searching his face. And she shook her head once.
“He thinks you are,” Frayne said, pointing back towards the camp. Heath was surprised by the tremor he noticed in his brother’s outstretched arm.
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “And it doesn’t matter if he believes me or not. He will kill me this time.”
“He’s your brother,” Heath stammered, looking again at Frayne.
“Once he learnt what I was, I was no longer his sister.”
“A witch,” Frayne murmured. Although Heath expected anger and hatred, there was none of that in his voice.
“A witch,” she repeated. “What will you do?”
“I think the question is what will you do?” he asked.
“I am not the threat he claims,” she said, turning back to the camp. “I don’t know if we can reach her,” she added.
“She can stay where she is,” Frayne mumbled.
“No,” Heath said, although he wasn’t sure where the determination came from. She was a girl, a very beautiful girl, and they would torture and kill her. If she wasn’t already dead.
“This is a bad idea,” Frayne said.
Heath didn’t want to believe that, but he trusted Frayne with everything he had.
“You may not be able to do anything to help her,” the sister replied. Heath looked at her then, her dress tattered. She still smelt of smoke, and he wondered if that was from the fire at the convent or the one she had just created from her fingers in the tent.
“Did you burn down the convent?” he asked. She looked hurt for a moment and then took a small step backwards. “I just need to know,” he said.
She took another step, and he wondered if she would run from them. But then Frayne was standing between them, the man who didn’t want to follow, didn’t want to help. He crossed his arms and shook his head. “She would not have tried to save the child if she had. She would not have run in fear, and she would not have worried of the risk she exposed Papa to.”
Heath looked down to the ground. He knew that. He trusted that, and it was why he had followed her in the first place. And yet, knowing she was a witch, something niggled at the back of his mind that no matter what he thought or felt about this woman, she could not be trusted. A witch could never be trusted.
So why was he keen to run into a camp overflowing with experienced soldiers to save one he had never met? He didn’t even know what power she had. He couldn’t leave her there. He just couldn’t.
Frayne still stood between them, and the sister had stopped moving. The name would have been given to her by the convent, he realised. Her mother would not have provided such a name. “What is your name?” he asked.
He had lost sight of her around his brother’s bulk, but he did hear her sigh. “Sister Patience,” she eventually said.
“Is that the name my father called you by?”
There was a longer silence, and Frayne turned to look at her.
“It is not a name anyone should use,” she whispered.
“Please,” Heath begged, although he was unsure why it was so important. He needed to understand the woman she was, the reason he had been so willing to follow her, help her, and now why he was filled with such guilt.
She took a step forward as he did, and the three of them stood together. “You cannot use it.” She appeared as fearful as she had been in the forest when he’d first found her. He wondered then at the power in a name. Both brothers nodded at the same time. “Nelda. Nelda Graewyth.”
“Can we not use it because it holds some power, or because of who you are?” Frayne whispered in response.
“The king wants me dead. If I were found, no matter your connection, you would follow me.”
“Would they burn you?” Heath asked, a wobble to his voice he hadn’t expected. But he had heard the stories over the years. He glanced back towards the camp.
“They can’t,” she said. “They would find another way. Something slow and painful. Drowning, perhaps.”
Heath turned back to the look of horror on his brother’s face.
“Why would they drown you?” Frayne asked. Despite his brother usually being the quiet and aloof one, he appeared quite taken aback by the idea.
“It would be frightening,” she said, not looking as afraid as he would be at the idea. Maybe she had lived with the knowledge for longer than he had. “And for someone with fire, water would be the ideal end.”
Heath looked at her hands clenched before her. The tight hold and whitening knuckles gave away just how frightened she was.
“Why does he want you dead?” he asked, wondering if this was something he wanted to know. Did his father understand this? Was it the reason he no longer worked at the castle?
“I’m a witch,” she whispered, leaning in closer. “A witch who was in his service.”
Frayne crossed his arms, and Heath thought he didn’t believe her. Although Heath was sure that what she said was right, there was something she was holding back.
“He believes,” she said softly, her focus on the ground before them, “that I was the cause of the fire that took his son.”
“And your brother believes the same,” Frayne said.
She nodded.
“But you didn’t start it,” Frayne said, something certain in the way he spoke.
“No,” she said, her honey-coloured eyes staring at him. “I did not.”
“Is the king the reason the cardinal is burning his way across the kingdom?” Heath asked.
“I don’t know the answer to that. He was a young man when I knew him, but I imagine him full of hate.”
Frayne nodded again and then looked towards the camp. “They will use her to find you.”
“If my brother suspects I am out here, that I am alive, then yes, they will.”
“Will she survive?” Heath asked.
But the sister, Nelda, was looking out towards the camp. The shine had gone from her eyes. “You should return home,” she said after too long in silence staring at the camp. “I need to pray.”
“You aren’t a real sister,” Heath said quickly. She gave him a puzzled look and then smiled, making her appear so much younger than he thought she was.
“I have lived and prayed for half my life in that convent. I am a sister of the Goddess.”
Heath believed that she believed that, but he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the idea. She had hidden there. He could have hidden amongst the troops of the king’s army he could see beyond the trees, and yet it wouldn’t make him a soldier.
He had so many questions, but she was walking away then, moving further from the camp. He glanced at Frayne, who gave him a look like he wasn’t sure what they should do next, and they were following her through the trees.
Frayne put out a hand to stop Heath when she knelt on the forest floor. The sticks and leaflitter must have pressed into her skin, only separated by the thin cloth of her dress. But she knelt, her back rigid, her eyes closed, and her hands held out before her with palms to the sky.
“Don’t they need something of the Goddess to pray to?” Heath asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Everything you see around you is the making of the Goddess,” she said.
Frayne scowled at him. Heath felt so conflicted around this woman. Like he shouldn’t trust her, should let the soldiers know she was here—and yet he wanted to protect her. As with the woman who had been chained to a post within the camp. And Frayne, who only ever cared about himself, appeared to want the same.
“What is it with her?” Heath asked, indicating the kneeling woman with his chin.
“That she can pray in such conditions, or that we are willing to follow?”
Heath nodded slowly.
“I don’t know,” Frayne said, his voice low as he turned Heath away from the woman. The witch. “But there is something in her I trust. Papa trusts her.”
“Is that enough?” Heath asked.
“That Papa and I understand there is something to trust in this woman?”
Heath opened his mouth and then closed it. “We don’t know her.”
“Papa did.”
“Before we were even born. So much could have happened in that time.”
“She might even have become a sister of the Goddess,” Frayne murmured, a smirk Heath rarely saw lighting up his features.
Heath wasn’t sure he could explain how he was feeling to his brother. Whether he would laugh at him or understand, he couldn’t guess. Instead he turned back to the woman kneeling in the forest, praying to a Goddess he didn’t understand and unmoved since he had last looked at her.
“What is it?” Frayne asked, his voice gentle as he rested a hand on Heath’s shoulder.
“It is like she understands us too well, better than we understand ourselves. I wonder if she can see some aspect of our future we don’t want uncovered.”
“That is a very specific and odd thought to have,” Frayne said, his smile genuine. “But I understand it.”
“I am conflicted,” Heath admitted.
“As though your mind and heart work in opposite directions,” Frayne said. And Heath nodded. “I understand we should not trust her. She is a witch, and one the king is determined to hunt down and kill. And yet there is something about her, as though she is family, as though she is someone we have to look out for.”
Heath stared at his brother, consciously working to close his mouth. He nodded, unable to stop the motion. Frayne reached out, took his face between his hands, and rested his forehead against Heath’s. It was something they used to do as boys; it was comfortable and connected. It scared him, and he didn’t know why.