Page 40 of Homeward for a Spell

“No, you were taught.” Sage takes her turn to interrupt. “I remember what they used to tell us as children, even in the schoolhouses of the Rookery. That the wall protects us from wild creatures. But not really. Not from all of them.”

“But there are monsters in the Northlands, you said it yourself!”

“There are wilder and more terrifying creatures in the Northlands, to be sure. There are bound to be where there’s far fewer people. No roads carved through their hunting grounds, nobody burning their woods to make way for estates or slums or barracks, nobody to pillage their nests for the magical properties of their eggs and feathers and claws. Nobody but adventurers,” she amends. “Some creatures are caught by the wards if they roam too far south. But mostly, the wall is to keep out creatures of a certain size and intelligence. That’s what the wards were designed for.”

“People, you mean?”

Sage nods. “Those who refuse to pledge themselves—or their taxes—to the crown.”

“But…” The bard’s brow furrows, and Sage gives her the time to compose her thoughts. “Has nobody questioned the nature of the runes, then? Surely someone has spoken out. One of the soldiers, one of the mages?”

“Sure, they have. But the crown claims it’s to keep out invaders, should the pirates of the Upper Islands try to enter through the Northlands, or some current neighbor-turned-enemy, as Perpignan was so recently. Still, it keeps out people born in Harrow all the same, and it always has. Now, we should get to sleep,” Sage finishes her command, turning her back on the bard once more. “The sooner we do, the sooner we start traveling tomorrow.” She lowers the wick on the lamp and extinguishes the flame, then crosses to her cot. Kicking off her boots, she lays her knife down on the hardened earth at the head of the pallet, then tucks herself in without another word.

It’s really much easier if they don’t talk. Ideally they’ll never speak again. Every time they do, she remembers Araphi’s murmurings of pleasure as Sage licked a stripe from her shoulder to her collarbone, tasting the mineral-rich water of the hot springs and sweet skin, and something entirely unique to the bard that could have been a figment of her imagination, conjured by the inescapable scent of lemons.

She also remembers the whisper of hurt in Araphi’s voice when she asked, Who’s Ollie? her fingers stilling inside Sage.

She’s an idiot for letting this happen, not once but twice. Letting herself kiss somebody she’d have to share a campfire with the next morning, and the day after that. Worse, somebody she wants to share a campfire with. And worst of all, an engaged somebody—which wasn’t even a consideration last time.

Curse the gods; she’s been so careful for so long.

But it’s all right. She’ll be much more careful going forward. She’ll keep her distance in every way possible, even when stuffed together in the same tent. She’ll—

“I don’t think I can sleep,” Araphi complains from her side of the tent.

“You haven’t even tried. You’re not even lying down!” She can see the shape of Araphi silhouetted against the canvas wall, faintly lit from the outside by snow and starlight.

Araphi tips stiffly onto her side, and Sage rolls over to face her own tent wall and close her eyes.

“Well, now I can’t stop thinking about the Northlands, with all this talk of them. How cold will it be?”

Sage sighs. “Cold.”

“Have you traveled there before?”

“Twice.”

“In winter?”

“No.”

“Denby says his father used to be an adventurer, before he discovered and claimed the Oreborn mines. He lost three toes to frostbite in the Northlands in his youth. He smelted a new set for himself when he got back.”

“How fascinating,” Sage grits out. “Such a remarkable story your fiancé has told you about something that didn’t happen to him.”

Silence falls. Hopefully, Araphi is too stung to speak further.

But a moment later: “I don’t love him, you know. I don’t even like him.” She says this with no more passion than if she were mentioning a distaste for kidney beans. “Of course, you will have guessed that the marriage is entirely political—and financial. Once Yael abandoned their post as heir, it fell upon me to take it up. So you see, Denby doesn’t care in the slightest what I do or how I feel, so long as I turn up at the altar at winter’s end.”

“Oh…” Sage says when no better response comes to mind.

“He would not, for instance, care one bit that I now know you’re warmer on the inside than a hot spring.”

Sage shivers even as her whole body flushes. “Don’t, Bard,” she commands, summoning her authority as party leader even as she feels entirely out of control.

“Apologies, Ranger,” Araphi murmurs. “Just…tell me this. Would Ollie care?”

Her words are so soft that Sage could pretend she hasn’t heard them. And for a moment, she considers it. If she wants to shore up the invisible wall she’s built between them over the past three days, her silence now would be a powerful rune.