Because I like him.
My cheeks warm without my permission.
But just as quickly, panic sets in. Liking Torrin is what got me banished to the wild. I can’t like Soren.
But I do.
I hadn’t realized it before, but now it’s so obvious.
I like him. I want to help him, but I also have a promise to keep and fears to worry about and—
I put my focus into breathing and thinking. Breathing and thinking. That’s all I have to do.
I don’t want Soren to climb that mountain alone. I don’t want him to die. But I also need every move I make in the wild to draw me closer to killing the god.
And then I get an idea as I realize something.
It would never be enough to walk back into the village carrying Peruxolo’s head. He has the face of a man. No one would believe it was the god’s. If I’m to return home, I have to publicly kill Peruxolo. My father has to see the god’s powers and see me defeat him. Somehow.
But would Peruxolo come if I issued such a challenge? What if he laughs it off? What if he visits his wrath on the villages instead?
But then I realize—
He can’t. He wouldn’t.
Not if I tell him all the villages have been invited to watch the battle. He’d want to come and show off his powers. He’d want to put me in my place for all the people to see. Instilling fear and awe in mortals is what Peruxolo enjoys most. Surely he wouldn’t skip out on such an opportunity.
I only hope that I can find a way to come out on top.
“Soren,” I say, cutting off the boys’ argument, which I really hadn’t been listening to anyway. “When I’m ready to challenge Peruxolo, I’m going to do it publicly. I want all seven villages to witness the battle. But I can’t do that on my own. I’m forbidden to set foot in any village, but if you complete your task, you could deliver the invitations on my behalf. I will climb the mountain with you if you will travel to each of the seven villages and invite them to the battle.”
Silence.
“That’s not a terrible idea,” Iric says.
“You’d be traveling through the wild alone,” I say. “It could be dangerous—”
“I’ll do it,” Soren says. “It’s a deal. When do we leave?”
“First thing tomorrow?”
“Works for me.”
“Actually,” Iric says, “I’m going to need your help tomorrow before I can get started on Rasmira’s armor.”
“What are you going to make it out of?” I ask. “The god’s power deals with metal. Our iron armor can’t get through the barrier, but we haven’t had a chance to test other metals.”
Iric grins proudly. “I wasn’t planning on building you armor out of metal.”
“If you think you’re going to get away with making me wooden armor, you—”
Iric starts laughing. “I’m not going to build it out of wood, you impatient twit. I’m going to build it out of ziken hides.”
I’m taken aback. Ziken hides. That actually—“That’s brilliant!” I say. It’s durable. Strong. No metal involved. And—“Do you think it would heal itself after being struck?”
“Only one way to find out.”
“Iric, you are a genius.”
“I’m not sure whether to be touched, or offended that it’s taken you this long to realize that.”
“Touched,” Soren offers.
CHAPTER
17
The next morning, Soren and I pack for our trip up the mountain. It doesn’t take long. My few possessions are always in my pack. It’s mostly a matter of gathering food and blankets.
Then it’s catching ziken for my armor.
“Typical,” Iric says after the three of us have wandered for a quarter of an hour. “The beasts always show up when you don’t want them to, but the moment you actually need one they’re nowhere to be found!” He pauses after a few hundred yards to hack off the head of a snaketrap that’s grown into the path and casts it aside. He does this every time he comes across one.
“Hasn’t been able to stand the sight of the things after twisting his ankle in one,” Soren whispers to me. “Happened after the first month we were banished.”
I don’t blame Iric in the least. The plants are vile, and the smell of a slowly digesting and rotting snake is hardly something one could forget easily.
Eventually, a ziken does cross our path. It’s chasing some rodent through the undergrowth, but it stops as soon as it sees us. Soren, being the closest, decapitates it with two swings. One to knock it off balance and one to sever the head.
“Good,” Iric says. He looks between the dead ziken and me. Looks me up and down. “I’ll need two more to cover her in hides. Just in case.”
By the time we catch two more ziken and drag the carcasses to Iric’s forge, we’ve lost most of the day. Soren and I aren’t about to start the climb when the sun will set soon, so we postpone a day.
Soren doesn’t seem bothered by the delay. I would be beyond frustrated, and I’m impressed by his patience.
First thing tomorrow morning, we will start the climb.
* * *
AFTER A FULL NIGHT’S REST, Iric sees us off. “Don’t die. I will be very put out if I go through all this trouble to make you armor only to have you snuff out of existence before you get to try it on.”
I hide my grin. “Don’t worry about me. I’m good at staying alive.”
“Keep Soren alive for me, too.”
“Of course.”
Soren scoffs. “You’re talking as if I’m useless with an ax.”
“Nah,” Iric says. “I’m only worried you’ll be too distracted to keep an eye out for danger.”
Soren darts a glance in my direction and grins. “I’ll be fine.”
Iric looks between the two of us. He sighs. “Also, if you two want to, you know, be together, you now have my blessing.”
I blink several times before I can form words. “What are you talking about? We’re not holding ourselves back on your behalf.”
“Whatever you tell yourself, Raz. Do whatever you like on the mountain, just do not tell me about it when you return. Oh, and do hurry. Some of us have our own romantic attachments we’d like to get back to. Have a lovely time! I’m off to the forge.”
Iric spins on his heel and disappears down a trail. I’m left spluttering in his wake.
An awkward silence fills the space between Soren and me after that, so I start walking toward the road.
“You could have said something,” I say as Soren falls into step beside me.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. At the very least you could have smacked him upside the head.”
“I was so sure you were going to.”
“I was too stunned to do anything. He’s gotten cheekier.”
Soren actually grins at that. “He gets that way when he’s in a good mood. He’s excited to see Aros soon. Won’t you be in a good mood once you kill the god?”
“I don’t know how I’ll feel.” I sidestep a dangling branch and leap off a tilting rock on the ground.
“Me neither. I’ve spent so much time worrying about Iric, I haven’t had a chance to think about what completing my mattugr will mean for me.”
We veer around a tree so large, its base is twice the width of the tree house.
“Iric said you used to be different,” I say.
There’s a hitch in Soren’s stride. “What did he tell you?”
“You were arrogant and good at getting into trouble—and getting out of it. You were the best warrior in your village and the most sought after. Ladies hung off you.”
Soren drags a hand down his face. “Ladies did not hang off me.”
“No? What, then?”
“Well, they were there … It’s just…”
“I’m beyond amused watching you fumble for words.”
“It wasn’t like I was with a different girl every night. I had a lot of friends who were girls, and they
hung around, and—”
“So they did hang off you.”
Now he glares at me. Actually glares. “And I suppose men didn’t flock to you back in Seravin?”
“Are you joking? A girl acting in a man’s job? One who wasn’t delicate or feminine or pretty? They wouldn’t come near me.”
He huffs out a breath of air, as if waiting for me to turn it into a joke. Then he realizes I’m serious. He searches for the right words, and I’m suddenly mortified to think he’s trying to make me feel better.
“A man who finds his masculinity threatened by a powerful woman is no man at all,” he says. “You want someone who lifts you up, not tries to bring you down.”
I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but certainly not those words. “I like that. Let me know if you find any men who fit those requirements.”
He’s smiling at me, as if I’ve been left out of the joke. “There are men from Restin who fit those requirements.”
“I believe it. I rather like the two I’ve met so far.”
The thick foliage opens up into the clearing at the mountain’s base. Whatever Soren’s reply might have been, it’s cut off as he cranes his head back to take in the full height of the mountain.
“Just how long is it going to take us to climb this?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I’ve never climbed a mountain before. Let’s find out.” I take a step into the clearing. The god’s lair is far from here; I made sure we came out of the tree line nowhere near it.
We don’t climb straight up, but rather zigzag so as not to be so winded by the incline. It’s not terribly steep, but I imagine that after a few hours, we’ll really start to feel it. The trip is painfully slow. Every other step sends a sprinkling of rocks tumbling down after us, and Soren and I slip frequently, catching each other before tumbling head over feet. Despite the distance we’ve kept from his lair, I fear we will draw the god’s attention with the noise and tumbling rocks.
Eventually, we hit a patch of trees, and I relax because Peruxolo will no longer be able to spot us now that we have cover.
Soren, I notice, keeps glancing behind him. Not at the ground, exactly, but more like he’s looking in the direction of the tree house.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“This might have been a bad idea. We shouldn’t have left Iric alone.”
“You’re worried about him.”
“He’s not a warrior. Anything could happen while we’re gone.”
“He’s smart. He has his traps placed all around his forge and the tree house. He’ll be fine.”
“But what if something happens while we’re gone?”
I reach out a hand and touch his shoulder, stilling him a moment. “You’re a good friend to be concerned about him, but I think you’ve spent too much time worrying about Iric and not enough worrying about yourself.”
“Worrying about Iric is all I’ve done for the last year.”
“I know. You’re a selfless person. May the goddess take note of it, but it’s all right to take care of yourself as well. Iric forgave you, but you need to forgive yourself, too.”
Soren glances at my hand on his shoulder before meeting my gaze.
“Thank you,” he says. “I think you might be right, but it’s hard to change.”
“It’s something you have to work at. I know better than anyone.”
Soren reaches for my hand on his shoulder, and he threads our fingers together. “I like the changes you prompt in me.”
I stare at our clasped hands, unable to move for a moment. I wait for Torrin to surface, wait for his mocking laughter to whisper in my ears and the phantom pain of the bite to take root in my arm.
But they don’t come. Soren’s hand in mine grounds me in the present.
A bad thing happened to me back in the village. There’s no point in trying to pretend otherwise. I’ve spent so much time trying to forget. I put all my focus into killing the god, into helping Iric and Soren, because I couldn’t deal with what came before.
But it’s why I’m here. The goddess saw fit to test me in this overgrown, dangerous place. My own kind betrayed me, but I have survived nonetheless.
I’m glad I was banished.
The thought startles me, but I realize at once how true it is. If it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have met Iric and Soren, who have come to mean so much to me. I wouldn’t have learned so much about myself and what I can do. I wouldn’t have learned about teamwork and survival. I wouldn’t have learned so much about the god.
I may have lost much.
But I have also gained much.
And I am better for it.
Acceptance settles within me, and I finally look up.
“Are you all right?” Soren asks. “Is this okay?” He gives my hand a little squeeze so I know what he means.
“When we first met, you asked me if I had a boy waiting for me back in my village. I don’t.”
He grins at me, and we continue climbing, this time hand in hand.
* * *
EVENTUALLY, WE CONNECT WITH a thin stream of runoff during one of our cutbacks. We both pause to drink deeply from our canteens, then refill them.
“Where there’s water, there will be animals nearby,” Soren says.
He’s not wrong. We pass by no fewer than three goats in the next crossing. They have great, sweeping horns that jut over the tops of their heads, but they give us no trouble, hopping away as soon as we’re spotted. They have incredible strength in their back legs as they leap at least ten feet in the air to climb up ridges in the mountain.
“I wish I could jump like that,” Soren says.
“And what would you do with such an ability? Jump over everyone’s heads?”
“I’d make it up the tree house a lot faster.”
“Just think of how much more you’ll get done every day with the extra four seconds you save climbing the tree house.”
He smiles, but then his eyes catch on something over my shoulder. Soren launches himself at me. We both go down on the ground, hard. At least he gets an arm beneath my head so it doesn’t crack on the rocks below. Still, his weight nearly knocks the wind out of me. My armor clinks against the rocks, so if we’re hiding from something, I have a hard time believing we did a good job.
Soren puts a hand over my mouth, but one look at my incensed stare has him lifting it off and using that hand to take some of the weight off me. After several seconds, he dares to peek over the fallen log I now notice is blocking us.
His head shrinks back down almost as soon as it clears the wood.
My heart beats rapidly at the unknown danger. Is it the god? Could he be up here?
And then I notice just how close Soren is to me. I can feel every point on his body lined up with mine as he’s lying on top of me.
Soren isn’t looking at me, though. He takes another look over the log, and I push against his stomach, trying to get him off me.
He doesn’t budge, and a second later, a blur of brown vaults over the log we hide behind. I catch a glimpse of the underbelly. Tree-bark skin like the gunda, but unlike the gunda, it has four long legs that end in clawed paws. A tail whisks out behind it. It hits the ground several feet ahead of us and takes off running. Another goat ahead looks up from the stream in time to see the enormous cat and bolts with the feline close at its heels.
When they’re both long out of sight, I say, “Next time, get off me so I can help you fight it.”
“Sorry, I was too busy thinking about how I would get my ax off my back without it noticing.”
I shake my head. At first, I think to be angry with him, but then I realize I would have done the same thing. I would have protected whoever was next to me first.
It’s a warrior’s instinct.
“I vote we put some distance between us and that thing.” Soren stands and reaches a hand down to me.
I take it.
“Did you know cats could get that big?” he asks.
“No
,” I answer. There are a few kinds in the wild, but they’re small, preying on rodents and valder. Some would even dare to come into the villages at night. They’re harmless to people unless they feel threatened.
As we take to hiking once more, Soren looks over his shoulder frequently.
“If it caught the goat, it will be detained for some time, I’m sure.”
“It’s probably not the only cat on the mountain.”
Seemingly without even thinking about it, Soren reaches for my hand.
And this time, there is no overthinking. This time, there is only a rush of heat where our hands meet.
With Torrin, everything was new. My skin tingled at his touch, a giddy sensation would take over my stomach. I was so eager to experience everything for the first time.
But Soren …
He put his own life at risk to help me get away from the god. He brought me food when he knew I must be close to running out, even showed me how I could obtain more on my own. He recognized that I didn’t like accepting help from others, and he challenged me.
I like that.
I like him.
It’s not about giving in to the first boy who ever acted interested.
It’s about being interested in the boy who is finally worth it.
Soren was interested in me from the first time we met. He made that clear, but once he realized how that made me uncomfortable, he stopped. He found less obvious ways to be near me, to help me.
And now I find myself wanting to be for him what he is to me.
CHAPTER
18
As the day grows later, we decide to stop and figure out how we’re going to best survive the night.
“Climbing up a tree won’t help us this time,” Soren says. “Cats clearly love heights.”
Eventually, we find a section of the mountain so steep, it’s practically a wall, and it serves as an excellent cover for our backs.
“This will work great,” I say.
Soren and I get to work on building a fort similar to the one I first built in the wild. We use our axes to cut and shape tree branches. We prop them against the rock wall, leaving a small hollow underneath. It takes only an hour to get everything just right, piling on the branches so thickly that very little light can get in. It will certainly keep any animals from spotting us. A thick strip of fallen bark serves as a makeshift door. Bless the wild for all the sturdy wood.
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