‘She’s not dead.’ Aris let the front door slam behind him as he strode down the short corridor of the cabin to the room he had designated his office, holding the small slip of paper carrying the news. ‘The leech isn’t dead.’

Karlani emerged from the room they shared at nights. ‘But it was one of the Immortal knives, wasn’t it?’

Aris sucked his rage up his nose and blew it out through his mouth. ‘Yes, of course. But they must have stopped her bleeding out. I would have finished the job myself if it weren’t . . .’

Karlani moved in close to him, but she had the wherewithal to know now wasn’t the time to touch him. ‘It’s not a weakness to love. You were practically his father.’

‘More so than his own ever was.’ Despite his best efforts, he was calming down. What was it about the soothing words of a good woman? ‘That girl’s been trouble since the moment she got under Jonas’s skin. Now, with him I knew where I stood . . .’

‘But you’ve got me now.’

Aris turned to her, appraising her figure. ‘Yes.’ He drew her into him, kissed her lips. She, along with the return of his powers, made him feel young again.

‘Is it true the tree can heal her? Even from wounds inflicted by Immortal knives?’ To anyone else, it might have sounded like a passing comment, an innocent question.

Aris looked at Karlani now. The woman was beautiful, it was true, but she also had moments of being useful. His eyes dipped to her cleavage – the woman knew how to dress – and lifted to meet her eyes. Multi-talented.

‘He will take her to it,’ he said, a smile warming his face. ‘She lives, but he won’t leave the little leech to heal on her own. He will take her to the tree and we will follow. And then we will get there first.’ He pulled the Syakaran woman into him and kissed her deeply. ‘You, my enchantress, are—’ He breathed her in, like a drug. ‘—perfection.’ She beamed back at him.

Impending victory always did make for good lovemaking.

Taither was still hours away from waking. Unlike the ex-gold mining town of Cheer, the military-dominated Taither had a much quieter nightlife. A few youthful soldiers were still stumbling their way back to the barracks, but only a few, and all off duty, Llew guessed.

A small crowd, however, did stand at the entrance to the Ajnai garden. Kept at bay by tall iron gates and a pair of sober, on-duty guards, they milled, peering in at the glowing tree. Its pulsating light bounced off their cheeks and wide eyes. Luckily, everyone seemed to be regarding the garden with wonder, not hostility, easing Llew’s nerves.

Jonas reined Chino in.

‘What is that?’ Braph asked.

Jonas looked over his shoulder at Llew. She couldn’t see his expression in the low light, but figured he was questioning the light. She shrugged at him. She didn’t fully understand why the tree glowed, either, although its twin voices went a long way to filling the blanks.

Jonas turned back. Even a good ten yards back from the garden gate, a soft glow lit his features.

‘It’s Llew’s tree,’ he murmured.

‘Llew’s . . .’ Braph began. He turned to Jonas sharply. ‘Ajnai—?’

Jonas hushed him.

‘They don’t know?’ Braph’s fascination at their deception was evident in his humorous tone.

‘The citizens don’t, no,’ said Jonas.

Although, Llew doubted it would stay secret for long. Hopefully they could spread the truth about the trees before anyone did anything drastic. Right now, though, the Quaven public wasn’t ready to hear what an Aenuk had to say. Even an Aenuk standing beside their Syakaran hero.

‘I didn’t know they glowed like that.’ Braph sounded awed, as he should.

Llew kept her lips sealed. Mercifully, Jonas did too.

Without looking, Llew could hear their escort shifting in their saddles, no doubt curious, too.

One of the on-duty guards saluted Jonas, soon followed by the other. Jonas acknowledged with a salute of his own. For tonight, at least, the tree was safe.

They exited Taither’s limits in total darkness. The sun was several hours from rising, and the night sky was blanketed in thick cloud. By the time the darkness began to lift, a light fall of snow had begun. Llew pulled a blanket over herself and huddled up as best she could in the bumpy cart.

They pushed on past the smaller towns huddled close to Taither and stopped for a late breakfast in the middle of nowhere, still avoiding people.

They were forced to sleep in the open that first night. While there had been towns and hotels, they wanted to go as far as they could each day to reach the Turhmos border as quickly as possible. Hisham and a couple of the guards hunted game, supplementing their rations, and providing the extra needed by the Kara in their group, which was all, except Llew.

Alongside dinner preparations, they boiled a pot of water and let it sit to cool. Jonas and Llew excused themselves to place a couple of rows of trees between them and the rest of the group so he could help her keep her wounds clean.

Llew stood facing Jonas, who knelt before her. Using a boiled cloth, and with hands gloved, as always, he wiped over her wounds with the boiled water. It was something close to the most intimate touch she’d had in weeks, and still there was a distance. There had to be.

‘The red’s goin’ down,’ he said. He squeezed out the cloth, and swept it across her belly again, following the line of the cuts, then dabbing lightly across them, shifting dirt and scab alike.

Scab. Llew had never had a need of the word. Now she knew they itched and stung when she bent or twisted the wrong way.

Softened by the water, the crusty build-up was swept away by his strokes. Looking down on the top of his head, Llew wondered how Jonas could ever look at her again. Not look at her look at her. Of course he could see her. But how could he ever see past all the grossness and mess to see her as someone he’d like to be close to again? In a romantic capacity. Maybe not romantic, as such. The other stuff. Assuming that would, one day, be an option again.

Jonas applied a salve given to them by the doctor back at the barracks. It was cold to the touch, not that he would notice, with leather between the cream and his skin. Its tangy aroma wafted up Llew’s nostrils and she sneezed and muttered a quiet ‘Ow.’

‘It’s looking good.’ Jonas pushed himself up to standing, fixed her with a gaze somewhere between intense and cheeky fun, lips curled in one corner. The kind of quirk that used to make her fear her own desires. Now it was the look that reminded her of Braph and what he’d done to her. She looked down.

The Quaven undergrowth was strangely similar and dissimilar to that of Aghacia. There were mosses and ferns of a kind, but not quite the same. Llew barely wanted to spare a thought for the Quaven fauna. Nearly all of it scared her. The huntsmen were at least three times the size she was used to, and never mind snuffling mammals she couldn’t put a name to. It had been one thing to deal with such things on her journey to Taither. It was quite another doing so with brutal injuries preventing her from running or defending herself. It took all her self-control not to be the jumpy girl of the group.

‘You’ll be fine.’ Jonas’s hand settled on her shoulder.

Llew grunted her non-committal reply.

At least, with such a large group, she wasn’t needed for night watch duty, and a good night’s sleep went a long way towards helping her feel normal. That was, until she struggled free of her bedroll and clambered into the cart, both of which left her achy and frustrated.

The Turhmos border couldn’t come soon enough.

Riding through a town a couple of days later, Llew’s eye was caught by a woman maybe a year or two her senior, standing to the side of the road, watching them pass, her hand resting on the shoulder of a child. The toddler’s resemblance to Jonas was almost complete, from the shape of her eyes, the slight up-turn of her nose, and even the shade of her hair.

It seemed Jonas couldn’t take his eyes off her, either. The mother smiled and waved, and Jonas reined in.

‘Say hello to your father, Immy,’ the young woman said. Llew had heard such a sentence before, usually spoken in spite. But this woman stated it simply as fact.

The toddler looked up from admiring Chino and, immediately on making eye-contact with Jonas, turned to bury her face in her mother’s dress.

The mother smiled her apologies.

‘She’s beautiful, Lissle,’ Jonas said.

Lissle grew bashful. ‘You remembered?’

Jonas’s cheeks colored. ‘No one forgets their first.’

Llew looked at Lissle again, seeing the wavy, mousy hair and big brown eyes, and decided that Jonas had been lucky as far as unforgettables went. A flash of pale, loose skin filled her mind’s eye and Llew shuddered. Her first had been a skinny, sickly man who socialized with her pa over cards and alcohol.

‘She looks well,’ Jonas continued, and waved to the little girl when she peered out. She waved back. Her smile, so like Jonas’s, brought an ache to Llew’s chest and a hollowness to her gut where, only weeks before, she had carried this little girl’s half-sisters or brothers.

Lissle smiled at Llew like she knew what she was thinking. Llew doubted it. She smiled back, polite like.

‘Is she . . .?’ Jonas started.

‘Too early to tell yet.’ Lissle chuckled. ‘You should know.’

‘Been a long time since I was that small.’

‘S’pose so.’ Lissle reached a hand out to rest on her daughter’s head as the little girl reached for Chino’s lowered nose.

The young mother gave off a warmth Llew hadn’t expected. She’d assumed these women had been unwilling partners in Quaver’s quest for more Syakara, like the young girl they’d passed on their way to Taither. Or, if they had been willing, she’d been of a mind they’d be jilted lovers left in Jonas’s wake. Not only did Lissle present her daughter with pride, she smiled at Jonas like he was an old friend, nothing more.

With a friendly wave to the mother and daughter, the group pushed on.

Not much farther along the road, a smacking sound, Jonas’s puzzled exclamation and Chino’s protest brought Llew’s attention round in time to see the large, soft tomato fall to the mud at Chino’s feet. The question of its origin was soon answered as another tomato came at Jonas. This time more alert, his hand came up to catch it, resulting in not only tomato juice splattering in his face and on his shirt, but juice and pulp oozing between his fingers and dribbling down his arm.

A woman bent to gather a handful of mud from the road. Hisham was off the cart and over to her in a moment, shaking the mud from her fist and pulling her arms behind her. This was more like the legacy Llew had expected from Aris’s breeding program.

‘You owe me a child!’ the woman screeched. ‘A living child!’

Llew couldn’t help it. She felt terrible on behalf of the woman, knowing that Quaver wouldn’t look after her without a Karan child to raise. And the only way she could think to help was one she wouldn’t float willingly.

Two of their Karan escort soldiers took over subduing the woman, freeing Hisham to return to the cart, and the rest moved onward.

‘That’s right.’ The woman’s desperation turned to accusation. ‘You just ride on through and ride on out!’

Jonas rode ahead, stiff in his saddle. Llew felt just as bad as he must have, and she wasn’t the one with the power to help the woman. But he couldn’t do it anymore. It was time for things to change.

They rode on, subdued, the two soldiers they’d left behind catching up when they stopped for lunch.

‘Guess I should be pleased I’m just about home.’

Jonas gave Braph a sideways glance. A long ways from his half-brother’s home, yet, far as he could tell. But he supposed that had been the point of the comment. Was Turhmos truly home to Braph anymore? They’d cut off half his arm. Maybe to claim his magic device. Maybe to render him weak. Either way, they’d achieved both.

The Kulverdeen River. A massive volume of water that swept from the high-altitude Lake Rhoina – the only landscape feature to touch each of Quaver, Brurun, and Turhmos – out west and joined Lake Kalough, a huge body of water that stretched well into both Quaver and Turhmos and out to the Far Country, giving the two enemies a relatively narrow stretch of shared border.

The Kulverdeen River. The natural divide between Turhmos and Quaver. The shallowest and the narrowest parts of which were heavily guarded on both sides. And they had a cart to get across . . . without causing Llew any more damage. And picking the deepest, widest part of the river gave no guarantee of emerging on a deserted stretch of Turhmos. More likely, perhaps, but neither side was ignorant enough to leave such stretches of the river out of their surveys and sweeps.

Which was why Jonas opted to cross alone.

Llew thought it reasonable to dislike the suggestion, but she had nothing else to offer.

She was pleased to have a chance to sit off the edge of the stationary cart. Her body felt battered from all the jostling. It didn’t seem to matter how many bedrolls they put under her, the leaf springs didn’t absorb enough bumps to protect her from belly aches, and so she tensed, and then other parts of her began to hurt. Sometimes she wondered if riding would have been better after all. Looking to Amico now, she wished she could. He looked utterly bored tied to the back of the cart. Her hand twitched with an unconscious desire to pat him, and she very consciously curled her fingers. She looked down at them, curling and uncurling them. She could put her gloves on. She should put her gloves on. It was freezing cold. Wearing gloves was what normal people did in the middle of winter. But Llew wasn’t normal. She was an Aenuk carrying wounds inflicted by a Syakaran knife. Wearing gloves might be sensible, but it also signified defeat. And while she felt defeated in many, many ways – needing help to get in and out of the cart, needing help to pee – choosing not to wear gloves constantly felt like a win.

‘I’d save us both the heart-attack,’ said Hisham, casually leaning against the cart, arms folded, as Jonas made his preparations for the crossing – checking his crossbow and knives, just in case. ‘But at times we have to let those we love do what they do best. If it makes you feel any better . . .’ He peered one way and then the other for little more reason than to add a dramatic pause. ‘It’s just as likely he could come back to find us all slaughtered by some sneaky Turhmosian troops as it is him getting injured on the way over. Which, given we’ve seven and a half Kara here, is very unlikely.’ He attempted a smile, but perhaps realized his words weren’t all that reassuring and gave up. ‘He’ll be fine.’

Llew watched Jonas reload his crossbow after cleaning it and checking its mechanism. If everything went to plan, he wouldn’t need it.

He’d removed his shirt and donned his knife vest and Llew lost herself for a moment, watching the muscles in his forearms writhe beneath his skin, the way she imagined his gryphon tattoo alive beneath his leather vest.

He hooked the weapon to his belt and turned to Llew. Hisham stepped away.

‘I practically lived on this border a few years back.’ Jonas hooked her hair behind her ear with his gloved hand and she pressed her cheek into the non-touch. ‘This is what I trained for. This is what I do.’

Llew nodded. She understood. He was a soldier. And he was Syakaran. Didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to worry.

‘Your tree’s just over there.’ He pointed across the water. ‘Your ma’s a little farther afield.’ He waved his hand, indicating the greater distance, and their uncertainty of her exact location. ‘But she’s there somewhere, too.’ He turned back to her. ‘And my son is there.’ His eyes searched hers for something. She didn’t know what. All she could do was nod her agreement. Yes, they had to cross. Yes, he’d made his argument for going across alone clear.

He gripped her thighs gently, leaned close. At another time she might have thought he was thinking of kissing her. Maybe he was. She was thinking of kissing him. But she couldn’t, and wouldn’t.

He leaned closer.

Llew drew her chin back. What was he doing?

He breathed out a laugh as a grin spread across his face. The kind Braph couldn’t do.

So fast she barely had time to register it, he closed the gap, bringing their lips together and apart again, leaving only the ghost of the touch and the tingle of energy passing between them. He touched two gloved fingers to his lips and pulled them back with a flourish. See? I’m fine.

‘I’m comin’ back for more.’

He turned from her, paused to take a breath, and then strode over to the rest of their crew, where several raised eyebrows and looks of disgust either followed him or lingered on Llew.

Without looking at any of them Jonas raised a hand as he walked, singling out a soldier.

‘Hanah, you’re in charge while I’m gone.’

The soldier’s jaw dropped, and she looked to Hisham, who nodded at his own feet, lips tight.

Hanah looked back to where Jonas was about to wade out into the water, gaped a couple of times and brought fingers to her temple. ‘Yes, sir.’