Archer released the tension on his bowstring and lowered the weapon. “We’re moving camp.”
Lew got to his feet. “I’ll fetch the horses.”
“We can’t go to Narrowmar now,” Briar said. “Whoever is guarding the place might know we’re here after this.” She had thought their mission stood a chance of succeeding when her parents didn’t know they were coming, but if any of the patrol had escaped …
“We are not giving up,” Archer said.
Briar faced him, trying not to say too much in front of the others. “I told you it would be impossible if anyone knows we’re here.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Archer—”
He cut her off harshly. “I am going into that fortress whether you come with me or not. You claimed you were up for the challenge. You claimed you wanted to help the weak. If you’re going to leave that pregnant girl at the hands of anyone who tries to hurt her, then you’re not who I thought you were.”
Briar’s mouth tightened, and the old destructive urge rose up to batter against the seawall of his anger. He might be upset and desperate, but that didn’t give him the right to fling what she’d told him back in her face. Her fingers twitched, wishing for a paintbrush. Her father had warned her that personal crusades were messy. “You can’t let your clients’ passions interfere with your work.”
“And who are you, Archer?” she shot back. “Or are you going to keep denying that this quest is personal?”
Archer stared at her, chest heaving as if he was trying to master his anger. None of the others so much as breathed.
“I’m nobody,” he said. “At least not anymore. Regardless of my personal history with the Larkes, I am not going to let them and their allies win. If you’re going to leave, do it now.”
He marched over to the horses and began saddling the bay. His tall shape looked even larger in the shadows cast by the scattered coals, almost menacing. Tension showed in the lines of his body and the jerky movements of his hands.
The urge to run roiled in Briar’s chest. She’d spent the past year trying to avoid her parents’ notice, hiding in the outer counties, changing her name. Leaving would be the logical thing to do, but it was spineless too. She had taken the coward’s way out when she left High Lure. Breaking her parents’ magical defenses and slinking out of the city wasn’t the way to show them her strength. And you thought you were so talented.
Briar had thought she could live a better and more ethical life away from them, but she’d failed at that too. Instead of using curse magic for good, she’d added evil to the world, bit by tiny bit. She didn’t know how to turn it into anything else.
Then Archer looked up from his saddlebags, his eyes finding hers. There was a challenge in them but also a hint of compassion, of understanding, of a desire to fix something in the world despite what he’d become.
She remembered what he’d said to her in the moonlight. “Your soul matters.” She might have failed in her bid for goodness, but she was trying. She was struggling against her parents’ legacy every day. That mattered. And even though they frightened her, maybe it was time to stand up and fight her parents directly. Thwarting them and their clients’ schemes might be the only good she had to offer the world.
“I’m still in,” she said at last. “No matter who is guarding Narrowmar.”
“Good.” Archer gave a grim nod, as if he could read her thoughts in the blaze of her eyes. “What do you say we go peel that place open like an orange?”
Chapter 18
As Archer marshalled his companions in the woods near New Chester, the captain of the Narrowmar garrison marched down the stronghold’s central corridor. His boots thudded on the stone floor, and his sword swung at his hip, the leather sheath creaking with each step. Now in his seventies, the captain had had command of the stronghold for thirty-eight years, each quieter and dustier than the last. His bones ached often, and he’d begun to wonder if it was time to resign his post.
No one had attempted an assault on the fortress in his lifetime. Narrowmar was so remote that it no longer made a viable target in wartime. In ancient days, it had been the heart and fist of another realm, but the centers of power had moved on, leaving a relic in the form of an impenetrable keep.
The stronghold was no traditional fort with turrets and towers and moats filled with sludge. Narrowmar was a natural wonder, a series of caves and tunnels cut deep into a mountainside. A spring burbled from its roots, and a great stone door guarded its only entrance. The formation was so perfectly suited for defense that some said the gods of the higher realms had built it to hold their darkest secrets. Whoever had won it from the gods must have been powerful, but these days, the fortress passed from father to son like a locked box.
The House of Larke had controlled the keep for generations but saw little need to maintain a large garrison. They’d built a grand castle near a major trade route and resented paying soldiers to sit in safety at the remote stronghold. The Larkes had stopped assigning recruits to Narrowmar nearly twenty years ago. The rooms had fallen into disrepair, and the vaulted ceilings sagged with the weight of years. Eventually, the remaining soldiers had moved into a single section of the underground barracks, giving the rest over to dust and spiders.
The old captain ran a hand through his thinning white hair, remembering the young wife who’d kept him company there for a time. Her laughter had filled the underground passageways, and the
