“What about Arhys?”
“I will attempt to help her as I can, but if you—we—make it back to your time, we can change the present, and she will not need me. All will be as it should, and there will be plenty of Weapons to protect her.
“So, do you have a suitor?”
“Um . . .” She swallowed hard. It was plain he had given this some thought. “My father tried to marry me off.”
Cade dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “But is there anyone special? A man in your life, one whose arms you will return to?”
She bit her bottom lip and looked away. “There is no guarantee I’ll find a way home, even if we free Lhean and don’t get killed in the process.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
There was a man back in her Sacor City. Did he wait for her, or had he forgotten her already? He’d have married Estora by now if their timelines were running parallel. Day of Aeryon had come and gone—not that they called the Longest Day that here.
“Karigan,” Cade said softly. He reached across the table, placed his fingers under her chin, and gently steered her gaze back toward him. “I need to know.”
King Zachary might await her as a king awaits a missing messenger, but he was not hers to claim. He had his queen, and Karigan was no more than his servant. She would not return to be held in his arms. She pulled up the barriers inside because it was a loss to accept it, to know it. She allowed nothing to show outwardly. There was just the scalding pain of emptiness inside.
“No, there is no one,” she told Cade.
He searched her eyes with an intense gaze, then nodded and stood a little too abruptly. “Good. I will go now.”
“Go?” she asked, perplexed by his sudden change in course. “Where are you going?”
“The wagon. You wanted your things, didn’t you?”
She nodded and sagged in her chair, exhausted. She’d been feeling better, but now the day was catching up with her. That’s what she told herself at least. She pushed her plate aside and pillowed her head on her arms on the table. She’d known there was that something between them, but when he’d declared his intent to be a celibate Weapon, she’d set aside—or tried to, at least—any expectation that their attraction would progress. She was well practiced in this setting-aside thing, first with Alton, then with King Zachary.
Did Cade expect to forego being a Weapon, if they made it to her time? Otherwise, why ask her the “suitor” question. He didn’t want to go to the past, give up all he knew, just for her, did he? Surely not. She must pose the question to him, make sure that she wouldn’t have to carry that added responsibility on her shoulders, as well. It was comforting, however, to think she would not be going home alone.
The next thing she knew, Cade was shaking her awake again. She’d dozed off.
“Careful,” he told her when she went to rub her eyes. He grabbed her wrist.
“What?” Upon examination, she saw that her hand was covered in mushed up potatoes and butter. Not only had she fallen asleep at the table, but her hand had ended up on her plate.
Cade set the satchel on one of the bunks, and after Karigan cleaned her hands, she wasted no time in digging into it.
“One of the guards saw me shifting the casks around and asked me what I was up to.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Told him I was redistributing the weight to make it easier on the mules. I then had to listen to him complain about all his aching joints and bodily functions before he finally moved on and left me alone. Thankfully he did not offer to help.”
Karigan set aside uniform pieces while Cade watched on in interest. While she sought the shard of the looking mask rolled up somewhere in her greatcoat, he examined her uniform trousers with its rent pant leg and dark, crusted stains. When she found the shard, she held it up in triumph, then perceived Cade’s gaze on her as his hand hovered over the tattered trousers.
“You really are . . .” He faltered.
“What?” Karigan asked.
“A Green Rider.”
Karigan raised an eyebrow. “I thought we’d already been over this.”
“I know, I know.” He raked his hand through his hair. “I’ve seen your uniform before . . . even on you, though I didn’t know what it was at the time. But . . . seeing it here, now, with you, it’s more real.” The awe in his voice was the same as she’d heard when she’d shown him her ability with the staff, back in the old mill. He took the sleeve of her greatcoat, touching the winged horse in gold thread as if he’d never seen embroidery before.
He’d been to the tombs, had even seen her brooch, and now he was impressed by her simple uniform?
“It has truly sunk in,” he said to himself, shaking his head. “Tell me, what was it like? Going into Blackveil?”
“I already told you and the professor about it.”
“You gave us the story but not the details. What was it really like?”
Karigan sat on the bunk. “Very unpleasant.” A bit of white caught her eye among the folds of her greatcoat, and she pulled out the feather of the winter owl. She twirled it before her eyes and shuddered with memory.
When Cade gave her a plaintive look, she told him about the wet and chill, the depressing murk, and how everything in the forest possessed an awareness, a hidden intelligence that seemed to watch them at all times. She told him how they lost their first companion to a flock of murderous hummingbirds like the ones Dr. Silk had exhibited at his dinner party, and how they lost their second companion to a tree root come to life like a massive tentacle. She described ruins, poisonous vegetation, and strange creatures, explaining in more detail this time much of what had passed at Castle Argenthyne, including the death of their Eletian leader, Graelalea. She stroked the feather. It had proven resilient, remained uncrushed and unbroken despite all it had been through, including being rolled up in her greatcoat and stashed in a satchel.