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Nuris had known she was there. The moment they reached the inn, before the too-keen innkeeper had told them of the interesting family who had arrived with a mother and daughter dressed as sisters of the Goddess. He’d known. And now, as the building burned, brightening the night sky, sparks competing with the stars, he was even more certain—and more conflicted than he had been.
Finally, he had the opportunity to end this. To find the woman held responsible for so much death. And yet he knew to his very core it wasn’t her doing. Some unknown culprit had caused the destruction that day. Despite learning she was a witch, he wondered if it was that simple. Someone within Sunsong had started the fire that night, and it wouldn’t take witchcraft to do that. Two young men had just proved it to a camp full of soldiers.
“They are gone!” someone cried as the building creaked and groaned against the flames.
She wasn’t. Her flames moved amongst the ones the soldiers had started. Her fire controlled theirs, if fire could be controlled. He no longer knew.
He wouldn’t be able to explain to the king how he had lost her again. Not that they knew she’d been at the camp site. He had taken the young witch to try and lure her in, but it hadn’t worked. The child wasn’t helping, either. He glanced back at the cage left far from the flames. Her wide eyes reflected the orange glow, even at this distance. The soldier remained beside her. He was yet to leave her side, and Nuris wondered how the man would fare once they reached Sunsong Castle and their king asked for the girl’s head.
He watched the window where a torch had been thrown inside. Despite the flames moving around the building, the room itself had not been engulfed as he had expected. The torch burnt and yet didn’t. The old, brittle wood surrounding the room had been engulfed without much effort.
Someone appeared at the window then, flame glinting off shiny armour, but the light wasn’t right. Nuris walked slowly towards the building, feeling the heat of it against his face. The man in the window recoiled, looked up, and then disappeared.
He would find her. He had to. “They must have already left,” he murmured.
“I doubt that,” the cardinal spat. “They thought themselves too clever, too far ahead of us.”
“If they came this way,” Nuris said, turning his back on the flames to face the man still on his white horse. “Why would they come south? Why would they head towards the king determined to end them?”
“Or a brother determined to kill her?” he asked with a smirk. “Unless she knows different?”
“She is a witch, and I haven’t seen her since that day.”
“Despite your searching. I wonder that your king still has such faith in you.”
“I’ve delivered more witches than you—and killed fewer of the kingdom’s innocents in doing so.” He shouldn’t let this man get to him. He knew his place; the king understood his commitment. The only one to raise any concern was the cardinal himself. The man the king had demanded return. The one creating chaos in the kingdom.
He saw him then, through the window—the young man with the dark hair that had disappeared with the witch. Or at least he thought he had. Nuris wondered again if they were working with Nelda. And then he was gone. In a blink, the man he’d thought he saw had vanished. Nuris ran towards the flames before he thought about it, pushed against the heat of the building and the crackle of flames. The dangerous creak of a structure about to collapse made him pause before he took off again at a run towards the entrance.
There were too many soldiers to get past, an army surrounding a single tavern. As though in slow motion, the roof lurched and crashed down. Everyone stepped back, although Nuris was too close to the flames. He had to know if she was there. He had to know if she was inside. The same desperation that had overcome him when he’d searched for her all those years ago returned. The same fear of losing her. He rushed towards the door only to be grabbed by a strong hand. A soldier had him by the arm. Nuris couldn’t hear what he was saying through the helmet and the noise of the disintegrating building, and the soldier shook his head. He stopped, put his hand to his scarred face and took a breath. The smoke and noise filled his senses.
The frightening realisation that this time he would lose her overwhelmed all else as he searched for some sign of her. Something shimmered in the heat. He tried to focus as the sounds around him increased, the tearing of wood, sparks and flames spitting and crackling from the remains. As the last of the building collapsed on itself, he looked away.
The inn continued to burn as he made his way back to his horse.
“Disappointed that I did what you could not?” the cardinal asked.
“She has fire,” he murmured. “I doubt such a blaze would end her.”
“She didn’t emerge,” the cardinal said with a smirk.
“Perhaps she is waiting inside the flame until you leave,” Nuris said, climbing up onto his horse and directing it towards Sunsong. He had seen enough. Part of him hoped he was right, that she could have lived through that. The flames, perhaps. But not the crushing building. Nothing would have survived that.
He had only made it a short distance when a soldier stepped in front of his horse. The soldier who watched over the child. Despite his position, his focus was on the cage.
“What is it?” Nuris asked, trying to sound tired of the whole day. But his heart was thumping.
“The child said you should ride ahead.”
“I am riding ahead,” he murmured, looking over to the cage. The child was focused on the burning building. “Should we pay attention to the words of a child? A witch?”
“Perhaps,” the soldier said, coming around to stand beside him. But there was something in his look that gave Nuris pause.
“She said ‘the general must ride to save her’.”
“Save who? And if those in the inn survived and are on foot, my riding ahead of them wouldn’t assist.”
The man shrugged, but his hand rested on the horse. His fingers brushed the reins. Something made the hairs on the back of Nuris’s neck stand to attention as he looked from the hold of the soldier, as though he might try to stop him, to the child in the cage who now looked at him. She nodded once and then looked back to the fire.
He was seeing things where he shouldn’t be looking. There was a part of him that wanted to see her again, feared for her since he understood that she hadn’t started the fire—but then he knew, no matter what he thought he wanted, that she would still have to die.
As would the child, he thought, looking at her young profile. “Keep her safe,” he said, keeping his voice low as the soldier stepped back. He kicked the horse into action. It wasn’t something he wanted the cardinal to pick up on, but the man wasn’t even looking at him as he rode past. He was giving instructions to the soldiers to check the remains of the building, still burning brightly.
When Nuris looked back over his shoulder, the cardinal was looking at him, wearing a grin that made him look distinctly ungodlike. The soldier had returned to his post by the caged witch, and he couldn’t see her in the shadows. He pointed the horse back towards the road and headed south, towards the castle and further from the sister he was not quite sure about.
Nuris rode through the night, weary for the first time in too long. He wondered if he was reaching the limit of his ability to do as his king desired. He had travelled great distances previously, worked and hunted through several nights without complaint or concern that he couldn’t do his job. Behind much of that had been the drive to find Nelda and finish what he should have that night.
He focused on the road ahead, pushed the horse faster than she could maintain. When the lights of Sunsong Castle and the surrounding city were a distant glow, he pulled her to a stop. He sat for a time, looking towards the world he knew, but not wanting to return. Not alone. Nuris was tired of being alone. He wasn’t made for it. He shook the idea away and nudged the horse into a walk.
There would be much to talk to the king about, especially the cardinal and his unwillingness to follow instruction. But then, perhaps the king had a plan for that.
The sunrise was far away and yet people were moving around and stalls were being set up in the markets as he headed straight to the castle. When he had left, there was a plan, a directive, and yet he had known that he had to follow the cardinal—and that the man would lead him to where he needed to be. He didn’t know where to start in explaining that to his king.
He wanted to wash and change, but he wouldn’t have the opportunity just yet. A soldier met him as he dismounted, directing him towards the throne room. He took a deep breath and headed in that direction. He found the king deep in discussion with several tired-looking monks of the God. It appeared that the conversation had been underway for some time and was not going the way the king had anticipated.
The king looked up as Nuris entered the space, sighed, and ran his hands through his hair. “Did you find her?”
“Not quite,” he replied, bowing and looking over the men who stared at him openly.
“General,” the king murmured, “perhaps you could explain what you did see.”
“More dead innocents at the hands of the cardinal,” he said matter-of-factly. “Another convent burned to the ground.” There was a sharp intake of breath as the men looked at each other. “He has a child in a cage now.”
“Is she a witch?” the king asked.
Nuris nodded, although it made his head ache to do so.
“Even children are dangerous. What skill did she have?”
“None that I could see,” Nuris said, turning back towards the door.
“General,” the king called after him, an edge to his voice he knew he couldn’t ignore.
“Your Majesty,” he said, turning back and bowing.
“You lost one.” The king’s voice was dark.
“If the cardinal had not taken the majority of the soldiers to kill more women and children, she would have remained a prisoner.”
“She should have been dead,” one of the monks said. “They have talents we cannot fully understand. You have done more harm by allowing her escape,” he continued, the same anger in his voice the king had demonstrated.
“It was the cardinal’s choice to keep her alive. My guess is that she has returned to hiding.”
“Your guess is hardly reliable,” the monk continued. “We understand your strength as a soldier. We also understand your limitations and weakness.”
“My weakness?” he asked, trying to keep the anger from his voice.
“Your sister.”
Nuris growled then, turned and bowed to the king, and stalked from the room. He thought he had done enough to prove himself over the years. No one had questioned him or his loyalty. These were the cardinal’s men. He wondered why the king was entertaining them. Was he trying to influence the cardinal? Or who should be Cardinal?
Nuris pushed open the door to his quarters and, for the first time, longed to be far from the castle. Perhaps he should be placed with the other soldiers—not that they truly acknowledged him. He was outside the usual chain of command. At least until today, he he’d been understood to be the king’s man.
He stopped as the wind blew softly through the room, papers fluttering on the table, and the scent of jasmine reached him. He wanted to be excited about his visitor, but he didn’t have the strength for her either.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, pulling the heavy curtains back and stepping on the small terrace. For a soldier, he had a luxurious space here. He would be a fool to give it up for the barracks.
“Strange rumours have reached me,” Aphera said, her voice low. “I had to be sure.”
“Of what?” he asked, maintaining a distance, although he was tempted to wrap his arms around her waist and drag her against his chest. The woman had a strange hold over him. If he wasn’t so sure she wasn’t a witch, he might have thought it magic.
“That two boys kidnapped a witch from your watch.” She raised her eyebrows, but the smile didn’t reach her lips.
“There was a fire and...” He couldn’t tell her of Nelda and his concerns about her being wrongly accused. He still wasn’t sure what it meant.
“They distracted you?”
“It can happen.” He stepped forward to stand beside her and looked over the grounds that stretched out before them. His rooms were on the back wall of the castle. Unless someone was standing in the garden, they wouldn’t be seen together, and the terrace was only dimly lit from the room behind him. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you know them?”
“The witch or the boys?”
“Either,” she said, her voice soft, but he knew she was lying and unwilling to tell him just what she wanted from him. She never told him everything.
“No on the witch front—too young, and nothing about her I had seen before.”
“What magic did she have?”
“Earth,” he said matter-of-factly at the memory of her strange plant double.
“The boys. How old were they?”
He shrugged. He’d never been any good at guessing ages. “Twenty, maybe.”
She turned then and looked him over. “Are you certain?”
“No,” he admitted.
“They may have been younger?”
“Or older. What is it you aren’t telling me?” He turned his full attention to her, resting his hand on the railing.
She put her hand over his, its warmth moving through his body, and he leaned forward.
“It was a strange story, and I was curious.”
Nuris leaned back. He could taste the lie on the air between them. It frustrated him that he could do that. He wasn’t sure if it was because of how well he knew her or something else. He was desperate to ask why she’d thought he would know them. He was tempted to tell her that there was something familiar about them—but as he couldn’t work out what that was, he wasn’t going to say.
“What is with the meeting with the monks of the God?” he asked instead.
“I think Dunstan wants to remove the cardinal. The man won’t listen to him.”
“I doubt it will be that easy,” Nuris said, although he would quite happily take the man’s head if the king so desired.
“No sign of Nelda?” she asked.
Nuris was momentarily taken aback that she would use his sister’s name. It was one of those words that could cost someone more than their position if it was heard mentioned. The queen herself had been one of those calling for her death, given that Nelda was responsible for her son’s demise. He shook his head. He didn’t want to explain the feeling he had or that Nelda wasn’t responsible for the fire that had taken the prince. No one would believe him—or worse, he would become the hunted.
“I cared for her deeply,” Aphera said, taking a step forward to close the gap between them and running her hand along his arm. “The king’s Circle is pushing for an heir.”
“They want stability,” he said, watching her fingers rather than her face.
“You think I should allow him back into my bed?” She sounded hurt.
“You are the queen. He is the king, and your husband. I have never asked...” Her lips met his and her body followed, pressing against his dirty, worn travel wear. His hands closed around her back, pulling her tighter against him. And before he could fully appreciate her, she pulled back, brushed at the hair across his forehead, and stepped away.
He tried not to sigh with the frustration coursing through him. She was the queen, and he was exhausted.
“What if an heir appeared?” she asked. “I would never need to return to his bed or allow him entrance to mine.”
“A bastard?” Nuris asked, curious as to where such an idea would have come from.
She shrugged and turned towards the door, but he caught her fingers. She froze.
“This is a risk. It has always been a risk, and you know it would mean both of our heads. And yet it has never produced a child.”
“There are ways to prevent such things. If I were to produce an heir, allow him what he wants, then this would have to stop.”
“This?” Nuris wanted to smirk, but he also wanted to shake her. He knew what she meant, and yet he needed to hear her say it. For the first time, he realised she had never fully acknowledged what their relationship might be. There were promises whispered beneath the sheets, but not as he needed and not as he could allow himself to want.
She smiled and touched his cheek with her other hand, pulling gently at the fingers he had trapped. He released his hold on her. She moved through the curtains and, although he followed only steps behind, she was gone when he entered the room. He sighed. He hated that she did that. But he hated himself for allowing it to happen at all.