“I should check the perimeter,” he said, starting to gingerly push himself up to standing, leaning on the wall for support.
“Oh, I can do that,” Elodie said, stepping toward the cave’s entrance. The oath latched onto him painfully, about to thrust him toward her like a puppet.
“No!” he said quickly. “No, let me. There could be…something dangerous out there.” The urgency of the vision rose in his mind again, and this time he couldn’t shake it off. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to be more cautious than usual until he could ascertain if there was indeed a threat.
Elodie scoffed but paused. “And if there is, what, you’re going to fight it off? Let me help you.”
He stooped carefully to sweep up his sword from where it had been lying at his side and re-sheathed it. “I can fight it off well enough if I need to.”
“Give me my dagger back and I can help,” she insisted.
“No.” It wasn’t so much that he was worried she would hurt him if he armed her—he’d seen the amateurish way she’d held the dagger earlier—but more that it was viciously satisfying to see her defenseless. To see her fearful, even if it was him she was fearful for.
He shook his head, disgusted with both her and himself, and hobbled to the cave’s entrance.
The snow had stopped falling. It was a deep, quiet hour of the night, and stars glimmered icily through the gaps in the thinning clouds. Shafts of viscous moonlight dappled a landscape made new: snowbanks heaped in unfamiliar patterns, carved and reshaped by the blizzard’s gales. As Tal was observing this, the gusting wind wailed one last time and then died, and all was calm and still and picturesque.
“The snow will have buried the bodies,” Elodie said from behind him, sounding regretful.
Tal didn’t turn. “You wished to have done it yourself?” His words were biting but he couldn’t help it. There had been innocent servants among the dead, people like him who had no choice but to serve those who oppressed them. It angered him to hear her treat their loss so casually—and unlike any time before in his service to her, he could now speak his true feelings aloud without fear of reprisal. It felt like lancing a wound: painful, but carrying with it an unexpected relief.
“Of course not,” Elodie answered. “I only wish there’d been more time to search them for anything useful first.”
Tal wasn’t sure what expression he made then, but it must have shown in the tension of his shoulders and back, because Elodie sighed deeply and said, “What? You wish I would mourn them? Weep and gnash my teeth and perhaps sing some poetry over their poor sad corpses, bury them with my own two hands six feet deep in the permafrost? We have already established that the girl you care about is not among those bodies, and I neither remember nor grieve any of them. If they were alive right now, I’m sure you would convince me to rescue them too, but they are not, and we are, and I will do what it takes to keep us that way.”
Tal spotted the mostly-buried edge of the sled just outside the entrance to the cave. He leaned down to grab the rope and pulled, careful not to upset his injury further in the process. “You were right before,” he said.
“About what?”
“You are not a kind person.”
Elodie didn’t respond, but there was a scuff of stone. She had taken a step back. “Not kind, no,” she said softly, almost to herself. “But I can only be what I am.”
“That is true,” Tal bit out.
Elodie stepped forward and snatched the rope from his hands, yanking it with all her strength—which wasn’t a lot, as the Destroyer had rarely done physical work of any kind. But she was still more capable than him in his current condition and also very determined, and after a few moments, the sled slid free.
“Lucky for you,” Elodie panted, dropping the rope and sweeping her hair up into a loose knot that she tied with a shred of fabric, “what I am, is willing to drag you back to civilization on this sled. Get on. The storm is over, and we need to leave before whatever predator that lives here returns.”
Tal drew a breath to argue but then released it without speaking. She was right. He was in no condition to go traipsing across the mountain range. He’d barely been able to make it to the front of the cave, and he had had a wall to brace himself on then. And they did need to leave the den as quickly as possible. Time was running out, and not only because a predator might be on its way back. “Very well.”
Elodie smiled. “At last, you see sense.” She kicked at the snow atop the sled until its surface was mostly clean, then she went to fetch the bundle of clothing that comprised all of their supplies for survival.
“We are going to need food,” Tal said, easing himself down to sit on the sled.
Elodie dumped the stained clothing atop him. “Maybe I can wrestle another stoat.”
To Tal’s surprise, a quick chuckle slid through his guard. Elodie grinned in unabashed triumph at the sign of his humor. The expression was dazzling, and so unlike the Destroyer that for a moment Tal felt like he was seeing double. So disorienting was it that he smiled in response. Before he could return to himself and wipe the expression from his face, Elodie had turned her back and moved to the front of the sled.
He bowed his head, confused and ashamed. He shouldn’t be smiling with her. How could she rouse any emotion but hatred in him? But at least it might have had the effect of softening her further toward him,
