“What were you thinking, jumping in after me?” she asked, her voice pitched low as she pulled her boots off one after the other.
A cynical chuckle erupted from him. “Was I supposed to let you drown? Don’t answer. I’m sure you would expect exactly that from me.”
She paused in the act of peeling a stocking from her leg. The accusation was fair: him risking his own neck for her was too foreign to comprehend.
“You don’t seem like you wanted to die,” Jaoven continued, “but you don’t act very grateful that you’re safe, either.”
“And your first words to me, far from questioning my well-being, were to wonder why I didn’t try to swim when I had three yards of fabric entangling my legs.”
They both twisted around to glare at one another. His attention dropped to her neckline and he instantly averted his gaze. The tips of his ears burned red.
Iona, having momentarily forgotten her state of undress, swiveled around again. She wrung the water from one stocking. “I didn’t jump in on purpose,” she said quietly, “and once the water had me, it only dragged me down. I’d be dead if not for you.”
The truth of those words slammed into her, puncturing through the haze of shock that had allowed her to keep her wits together. She took a shuddering inhale, panic spiking her pulse. A rustling sounded behind her, and a hand touched her shoulder in concern.
She wrenched away. “Don’t look at me!” It wasn’t her underclothes that prompted this shriek, but the raw emotions that left her far more exposed. She scrabbled backward until her spine hit the wall of the ravine, her hands covering her face. “I can’t—! I can’t think about this now! There’s not enough time, and if I don’t—!”
Jaoven gripped her shoulders, his palms a spot of warmth in the numbness that encased her. “You need to breathe. Breathe deep, Iona, in and out. You’re not dead. We can make it through this. Look at me, look me in the eye. You are safe and you are fine.”
His face provided her a focal point. She gulped in air, bridling the onslaught of emotions, boxing them deep within her soul. As she forced herself into a steady breathing pattern, her control returned and the panic attack reduced from a boil to a simmer at the edges of her mind.
The prince sat back on his haunches, a wry expression on his face. “So you’re human after all. I almost wondered if you were fae instead.”
The comment caught her off-guard. To her frown he elaborated.
“You were always aloof and in control, never reacting to our taunts, never acknowledging our pranks against you. You’d rather walk half a mile on a sprained ankle than ask anyone for help, and when you broke your arm, you barely even flinched, so that no one realized it had happened until hours later. I hated that about you.”
She shook her head, the bald declaration shifting her back into this moment and the dozen feats that lay before her. Silently she gathered up her discarded clothes and started twisting the water from them, rolling them together as tight as she could.
Jaoven settled to one side, studying her as she staunchly ignored him. “There it is again, the aloofness, the control.”
“I have every intention of floating downriver within the hour,” Iona said. “If you plan on doing the same, I suggest you at least prepare yourself.”
“I don’t want to drown.”
“You’d rather freeze or starve to death, I suppose. The choice is yours. I won’t make you come with me.”
“Someone will come looking,” he said.
“No. They will presume us dead and drag the river for our bodies where it empties into the western basin. This ravine only extends for another mile or two before the cliffs drop down again. We can cover that distance before dark, and with the water level this high, we should be able to climb out.”
“Assuming we survive.”
“We won’t survive here,” Iona brusquely said.
A muscle rippled along his jaw. Reluctantly he sat up and started unlacing his boots. She went back to work, stripping the laces from her shoes and setting them aside. After retrieving her sodden cloak, she twisted it to wring the excess water from its lengths and then spread it out like a blanket. There she piled her bundled belongings.
Grudgingly she said, “If you want to go barefoot, you can throw your boots and stockings in with mine.”
He dropped his shoes onto the pile, a furrow between his brows. Then he stripped his coat and the waistcoat beneath and added them to the pile. His white shirt, soaking wet, clung to well-formed muscles. Iona forcibly averted her gaze.
Jaoven, oblivious, said, “I think I understand now how you were always the last one caught in the Hunt.”
She deigned not to answer. As she tied her shoelaces together to form a longer strand, he pulled a length of rope from somewhere on his person and proffered it to her to use instead.
Iona paused. “You carry rope?” It was thin and sturdy, but only ten to fifteen feet at most.
“I carry a lot of things,” he said, dropping the cord in front of her and shifting his attention elsewhere. “Are you sure about how long this ravine is? How do you know?”
“A man once walked the Awinrea from Sorrow’s Linn to the western shore. He recorded the topography. The book is in the king’s library, with maps that detail the river’s path down from the mountains. None of the ravines are exceptionally long.”
The prince only grunted.
When she moved to roll the cloak, though, he stooped to help her. “Let me,” he said, and he knelt on the bundle to compress it tight. They bound it into a hard, wet packet, which he then tied to his belt. He met her gaze. “You probably won’t like this, but we should tie ourselves together as well.”
Her stomach flip-flopped. “There’s no more rope.”
But, to her surprise, he produced a second length. “Call me paranoid,” he said as he offered her one end to tie around her waist. “During the war, I learned never to underestimate the value of a good, strong piece of rope.”
She looped the cord around her waist, but before she could knot it he asked, “Do you know how to tie a bowline?”
Iona shook her head.
“May I?” he asked, and he tentatively extracted the two sides of the rope from her hands. She fought a rising blush at the unintentional intimacy of the task, her attention on the rushing waters, as his knuckles grazed against her through her shift. He worked quick, securing the rope in place before repeating the action with the other end around himself. The result only allowed roughly three feet between them.
“I still think this is a horrible idea,” he said.
“But you don’t have a better one,” she replied. Even if they tied both lengths of rope together, it wouldn’t make a cord long enough to reach the top of the ravine high above them, and they had nothing to secure it with anyway. The river was the logical choice.
“Keep near the edges as much as you can. We want to avoid the direct current.”
She nodded, steeling her nerves against the ordeal before them.
The prince extended his hand. Reluctantly she took it, and together they waded back into the frigid water. It was almost a relief against the self-conscious heat that had taken possession of her. She dropped quickly, allowing the pool to cover her state of undress. Jaoven did the same, with their packet of clothes sinking beside him.
The edge of the current caught and carried them. They swam from one boulder to the next, positioning themselves for frequent rest and always plotting their intended course before they pushed off into the deep again. The ravine narrowed and then widened, its urgency ebbing in that broader expanse. As the afternoon shadows stretched, the stony ridges above sloped lower. Oak trees that grew from high cracks and crevices bent their branches ever nearer to the waterlogged pair.
In the sunnier, slower currents, they could float together and conserve energy. After half an hour, though, Iona’s teeth chattered and her fingers were numb. Jaoven pulled her into a sheltered nook and pointed downstream. “There’s a split i
n the ridge on the other side. It looks like we can climb up from there. Do you think you can make it?”
She nodded, and they pushed off the wall into the main current. Exhaustion ate at her bones, the cold water taking its toll for her passage through its depths. The river lay completely in shadow now, the sun out of sight in its final descent toward the horizon. At the center of the flow, the current pulled her away from Jaoven, but the rope between them stretched taut and the bowline knots held fast. One final surge of energy carried her to the opposite wall and the water swept them both toward the flooded fissure.
Iona caught its edge first and pushed herself into the sheltered space. Jaoven squeezed in behind her. Roots crowded the split, creating a pathway up to the top of the ravine. He sidled past her, grasped the most likely support, and hoisted himself up.
She followed close, the rope between them requiring as much. Her body seemed to weigh a thousand pounds as she left the water. With trembling limbs she poured the last of her strength into this final ascent, and they surfaced beneath the far-flung branches of a massive oak, with the light of a dying sun filtering through the trees and bracken.
Jaoven rolled flat onto his back, huffing as he stared up into the fluttering leaves. Iona dropped to his side, too weak even to untie the knot that bound her to him, relishing the heat that lingered on the stone beneath, and on the dappled sun that touched her face and arms.
“We need a fire,” he said. “Your lips are blue, and no doubt so are mine.”
Her eyes slid shut. She took a moment to breathe deep, rubbing her stiffened fingers against her palms to restore the circulation. The cold of the river had seeped deep into her bones, and now she wondered if she would ever be truly warm again. A fire seemed too blissful of a dream. “How will we light it?” she asked.
“I have a knife. We can strike it against a rock if we can find kindling dry enough.”
She rolled her head, peering at him in disbelief. “You have a knife?”
He met her gaze. “I always have a knife. Or three. Or however many I can comfortably carry without anyone noticing.”
Her stomach fluttered. Was it from paranoia, like his lengths of rope? But Capria had been at war up until a few months ago, and likely there yet existed pockets of rebels who would gladly strike at their newly elevated crown prince. Of course he would carry extra weapons.
She experienced an odd pang of jealousy, that she had never outfitted herself with any similar precautions. But then, before today, she’d never believed Lisenn would actually try to kill her.
On a short, despairing breath she sat up, picking at the rope.
“What are you doing?” Jaoven asked.
“Untying myself so I can go look for kindling.”
“In your underclothes?”
She paused to favor him with an exasperated glare.
“You’re the one who was so concerned about anyone seeing you like that,” he said, rolling to a seated position to start on his side of the rope.
She hadn’t been concerned about just anyone seeing her. She’d been concerned about him, Jaoven of Deraval, her one-time foe. Though her stays were boned and layered and the material of her shift had a stiff, tight weave, its wetness still clung to her, exposing far more than she cared for an enemy to see. With a huff she scooted around so her back was to him. As soon as she pried her end of the rope free, she tossed it aside and picked herself up.
Her legs were like jelly, her muscles overextended from their labors of the past hour. Tremors still racked her, but forcing herself to move helped counteract the cold. With a self-conscious glance behind her, she gathered the hem of her shift around her knees and wrung out as much water as she could. Then she trudged amid the bracken, seeking broken twigs or fallen branches to collect.
The supply was meager. She returned with an armful, none of it very dry.
Jaoven, meanwhile, had undone the packet of clothes and shoes. He held one end of her cloak up for her to take. “We can wring more water out if we work together.”
They twisted in opposite directions until the length of heavy cloth was tight and water no longer bled from it. It was a mess of wrinkles once unwound, but hardly damp. Iona fastened it in place around her shoulders and felt warmer in that simple act alone. She rubbed her bare arms beneath, unable to banish the gooseflesh there in full.
Jaoven, meanwhile, produced a small, sharp knife from within his boot and started breaking down their paltry supply of wood. The centers of the collected branches were dry enough for kindling. By the time Iona returned with a second batch, he’d constructed a decent pile.
“Do you happen to have a flint as well?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Neven always carries one. An oversight on my part not to bring him along.”
She bit her lower lip, contemplating the events that must have reconciled the two men. According to Clervie and Denoela, many of the lower nobles had turned against the crown when the war broke out. Neven, though, had sided with the upper ranks. He had established his place among them solidly enough that the crown prince now viewed him as an equal.
Perhaps people truly could change.
“Why did you jump in after me?” she asked. “You said yourself that you hate me.”
He looked up from the stick he was splitting. “Is that what I said?”
She arched a brow. Was he really going to pretend otherwise? “You said I was aloof and that you always hated me because of it.”
“I said you were aloof and that I hated that about you,” he corrected, and he returned to splintering more wood. The distinction seemed petty to her. As she turned away on a muted huff, he elaborated. “How could someone of seeming low birth and scant fortune make the son of a duke feel unworthy to be in her presence? I hated how capable you were. I hated that you could vanish into a stretch of woodland for three days straight, that you could walk on a twisted ankle without flinching, and that you could effortlessly hide the pain of a broken arm. I hated that you never needed anything from anyone.” He ended this speech with a chopping downward motion, and the branch that was wedged upon his blade cracked in half.
Under his breath, he added. “You made me feel inferior. You still do, but at least now I understand why.”
The candid confession, so outside of what she knew of his character, discomfited her. “Is that why you jumped into the river, then? Because you thought I needed you to?”
A muscle clenched in his jaw as he met her gaze, a controlled exhale in his nostrils. “I didn’t think. I arrived at the river’s edge as you hit the water, and your sister was standing there, frozen in shock, and she turned to me with such panic in her eyes that I just reacted. You still have never said how you came to fall in the first place, or why you were even running that direction.”
Iona opened her mouth and then shut it again. Lisenn had been in shock? Had she regretted the push after it was done? Had she never intended such a potentially fatal consequence?
“She’s worried about you,” Jaoven said. “She speaks highly of your talent, of your art, but she doesn’t know why you’re so cold to her.”
Her insides curdled. Lisenn wasn’t worried. She had a façade to maintain, and Jaoven had already accepted it as her true face. If she looked surprised when he arrived at the river, it was likely because he had appeared on the scene of her murderous act. It was shock not for Iona’s fall but for her own undoing if he had witnessed the part she played.
But of course he could never believe ill of the beautiful, compassionate Lisenn.
“So you jumped in for my sister’s sake.”
He made an irritated noise. “It wasn’t for anyone’s sake, I told you. I acted without thinking.”
Silence stretched between them, punctured only by the sound of his knife splitting through the dead branches. Regardless of his motives, he had jumped headlong into a raging river, and she stood here now because of it.
“Thank you,” she quietly said.
Jaoven paused,
lifting huge eyes. “Are you dying?”
She scowled. “What?”
“Gratitude from the queen of ice? Let me feel your forehead. You must be deathly ill.”
When he started forward, she recoiled, wrapping her cloak tighter to her. Jaoven only tipped his head, a challenge in his eyes.
Iona, with a snort, padded deeper into the underbrush on the pretense of finding more fuel. When she encountered a bed of chickweed in the falling darkness, she decided to forage instead. By the time she returned with a bundle of greens gathered in her cloak, Jaoven was nursing the beginnings of a fire.
He eyed the offering with distaste. “What, no mushrooms?”
She dipped into the bundle and withdrew a brown-capped specimen. “You’ll have to roast it over the fire before you eat it.”
“And how do you know it’s not toxic?”
“It’s not.” She replaced the mushroom with the rest of her foraged goods and lowered to a cross-legged position, there to sort through the horde in her lap. Negligently she offered Jaoven a dandelion, the flower almost closed for the night.
He took it with reluctant fingers. “How sweet of you. But isn’t the man supposed to bring flowers to the woman?”
Iona, unamused, shot him a warning glance. “You’re more than welcome to find your own dinner.”
In response, he angled the plant into his mouth and chewed it whole.
They skewered mushrooms on sticks and roasted them. The pile of greens, though bitter, took the edge off their hunger, and the fire at last banished the penetrating cold from their bones.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you know which plants are edible,” Jaoven said.
She pitched a lightness to her voice. “When you plan to spend a full week in the woods, it’s important to know what you can and can’t eat.”
“A full w—!” He bucked his head. “The Hunt never lasted that long. Sometimes it didn’t even start until half the week was gone.”
Iona met and held his gaze. “Was I supposed to plan around anything less than the worst possible circumstances?”
The Heir and the Spare Page 13