Farideh was right, she thought. Whatever hopes she had that she might take back what Farideh’s deal had stolen from her, they were shriveling into nothing. Her glaive might as well be a hoe for all the skill she had wielding it. She couldn’t stop having nightmares that splintered her sleep into spans so short she might as well have been blinking. And Brin thought she was a stupid little girl—a millstone, a nuisance.
She heard him start up the steep path behind her, but she didn’t dare look back.
“I don’t . . .” he started. He fell silent for a moment. “I don’t think you were a fool for going into Farideh’s room that night. I just . . . I just wish you hadn’t. Or maybe that you’d waited for me.”
Havilar hauled herself over a short wall of rock, up to another plateau. “Then you would have been trapped in the Hells too.”
Brin gave a short, bitter laugh. “Do you think I haven’t been?”
“I think the court of Suzail is a far cry from the Hells.”
“It’s not as far as you think.”
Havilar looked back at him. “Are there devils and lava fields and things?”
“No, but there are assassins and stupid rules and noblewomen who spend their days trying to trick you into marriage so they can be queen, even though that’s not an option.”
Havilar flushed. “Armies of princesses,” she said, ignoring the twist in her stomach. “Got it.” She scrambled up the next bit of slope, crushing moss and sending little stones tumbling down.
“Ye gods,” she heard Brin sigh behind her. “I’m not bragging.”
“Didn’t think you were,” Havilar said, her eyes on her hands and her face on fire.
“Havi,” he called. “Havi, stlarn it, wait!”
She kept climbing, up over another rock wall slick with melt and moss. When she hauled herself up onto the wide ledge beyond, her throat felt as if it would close around her panting breath. You knew this would happen, she thought. Why wouldn’t it? You’re no one.
Brin’s hand grasped the edge of the rock. “Help me up?” he asked. Reluctantly, she grasped his hand, pulling him up the cliff. For a moment, they stood so close, Havilar fancied she could taste the grassy smell of waybread on his breath. She stepped backward. He held onto her hand.
“I know you don’t want to talk about this,” Brin said. “But we’re going to have to. Please—whatever you’re going to say, I’ve imagined it, I promise.” He looked down at her hand in his. “It’s not armies. It’s not bragging. It’s not even pleasant. I could quite frankly be a sparring dummy in fancy clothes, and I’d be just as much of an interest to them. There’s one—this noblewoman—who has actually taken to telling people we have a secret understanding, because once—once mind you—I walked with her. I said four words altogether, and she’s well convinced we’re in love. But you—”
“Have you told her to heave off?” Havilar interrupted, taking her hand back. She walked across the rocky ledge, considering the slope above. It was gentler, and the trees were thinner. She could see, high above between the trees, the edge of the mountain’s peak.
“I’ve been told not to,” Brin said bitterly. “She ought to know, so no need to make a scene.” He turned back the way they came, and Havilar followed his gaze out over the thick forest, the setting sun reflecting off low clouds and staining the sky pink and crimson.
“This must be where he meant,” Brin said. “Or at least, it’s a good spot to make camp. Do you want—”
“You should just say you’re not in love with her,” Havilar said. “That’s not something it’s fair to sit on.”
“I know that.”
“You shouldn’t leave her wondering.”
Brin stared at her for an uncomfortable moment. “Are we talking about Arietta?”
Havilar’s cheeks burned and she turned toward the slope again. “Let’s just make the fire.”
He shook his head, still staring. “Havi, you are killing me—”
A shadow crossed the sun, more than a cloud. Wrong, out of place—old instinct made Havilar leap back, out of reach, under the tree branches. Yank her glaive free of its harness and get it between her and whatever shouldn’t be there. Whatever was making the wind shift as it dived.
“Brin! Duck!” she shouted. At the same moment, a ring of teeth flashed across her field of view, a lamprey with a mouth made for sucking the lifeblood out of dragons. Havilar jumped toward it and slashed with the glaive, catching the fine membrane of its wings. She shoved upward, the skin breaking with a pop that shook her weapon. The monster screeched.
Brin had hit the ground flat and rolled back to his feet as the creature, hissing and spitting, swung its eyeless head toward Havilar. Brin shouted her name, but Havilar only had eyes for the monster.
The wing, the wound—she hit it again, tearing the hole larger, knocking the beast to the ground. The mouth—catch it on the blade, the heavy shaft, twist the head down. Black blood poured out through that ring of teeth. Its whole wing slapped her, hard enough to shake her focus a moment. The mouth flexed, grasping at the space near her.
It screamed. Brin’s sword pinned the narrow point of its triangular body to the ground. The creature lashed and squalled, still trying to find Havilar even as it struggled to pull itself free. Its wing slapped Brin and knocked him off his feet.
Havilar brought the end of her glaive up under its head, driving it up, ready for her next strike to plunge up into its throat. It rolled and slammed her into the rocky ground, driving the air out of her and sending a lightning bolt of pain through her ribs.
Brin cursed a steady stream. Havilar gasped, as the creature loomed over her, mouth grasping toward her. But even as it descended, Havilar pulled her weapon up, tearing into the soft underside of the creature and spraying her with blood and slippery viscera. It jerked back, as if to escape, rolling onto its wounded wing. Havilar swept the glaive toward it, across its belly, spilling more blood out on the frozen ground. The thing screamed and flopped like a fish in the bottom of a boat, and died.
The woods were silent but for the sound of Brin and Havilar’s panting breaths.
Havilar eased herself up onto her feet, surveying the monster—well and truly dead. Well and truly dead by her hand. “Gods,” she said. “Gods! That was fantastic!” She thrust her glaive skyward. “Ha!—oof!”
Brin caught her around the middle and squeezed her tight enough that her ribs spasmed. “Never, never do that again!” he shouted. “Watching Gods—you could have been hurt!”
“What? Why?”
“You’re not invincible!”
Havilar didn’t want to push him away, but that was too much. “I killed it. I’m invincible enough for a flying lamprey monster.”
“Veserab,” Brin said. He shook his head. “Don’t. Please. I can’t just stand there and . . . I lost you once already, I can’t do it again.”
Havilar felt her face grow hot, unsure of what to say—it was more, so much more, than he’d uttered the entire trip, but none of it was right. “I’m fine,” she said, and tentatively brushed a chunk of veserab off his shoulder. “I know you’re thinking—”
“You don’t know, all right?” he said fiercely. “You don’t know what it’s like. You had your share of horrors, but you didn’t get this one—you didn’t have to face the fact that I was gone and you couldn’t get me back. Maybe you would have dealt with it better, or been braver, or got to a place where you didn’t care, but I didn’t. And if you’re going to start barreling around, throwing yourself into the clutches of monsters . . .” He shook his head again, as if he were trying to shake away the sudden emotion that grabbed at his voice. “You can’t ask me to just duck.”
“Well,” Havilar said, “you didn’t just duck. You pinned the tail—that was really quick and clever.”
Brin gave her half a smile. “You hardly needed it, I suppose.”
“I needed it,” Havilar admitted. “But you needed me too.” She smiled—and she felt a little more like hers
elf again. “And I killed it.”
He looked over the creature’s corpse. “We must be near. Only Shadovar ride them. Unless there’s some Shadowfell portal around here, it must belong to the Netherese camp.” He turned to Havilar again. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Wonderful,” she said, unable to suppress her grin. “Except for the rib.”
“Broken?”
She shook her head. “Maybe.” She stretched up and winced as the twang of pain hit her again. “Or just sprained.”
“Bad enough.”
She shut her eyes and smiled. “It was worth it.”
Brin shook his head. “Here.” He set his hands around her battered ribs, one just under her breast and the other in the middle of her back. He murmured the prayer to Torm, but Havilar didn’t hear a word of it. When the sound of a whetstone ringing came and the injury faded, there was still only the feeling of Brin’s hands encircling her. He wouldn’t look at her. But then, he didn’t let her go.
You killed it, she thought. You took the glaive back.
You’re out of excuses.
“Brin, I love you,” she said, feeling as torn open as the veserab. There was no hiding the declaration, no smothering it anymore with “wait until” and “not yet.” It wasn’t something you sat on, after all. “I love you,” she said again. “Still. And that’s . . . Maybe that’s not all right, maybe you have all those princesses, and maybe you don’t want me. But you should know. I love you.”
He didn’t say a word, for so long. But he didn’t let her go either.
“There is not a thing in my life,” he finally said, “that I regret like I do not telling you how much I loved you then. I was scared, and I was stupid, and if I’d known she was going to take you from me . . .” He swallowed hard. “I loved you, Havi. I should have said it.” He pulled her nearer. “I love you still.”
He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. And it didn’t matter that her hands were still clumsy or that they were both covered in gore or that the ground was cold and hard: he still loved her.
Chapter Twenty
26 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) The Lost Peaks
Havilar woke to the sun streaming through a low break in the clouds, through the gap in the trees. Every bit of her was sore, but that, too, was worth it. She smiled to herself. She reached for Brin, but found him already dressed and stirring up the fire under a cook pot. Her clothes were thrown over a nearby tree’s low branches. The smell of the veserab was a faint mustiness on the cold air, almost hidden in the woodsmoke.
Brin stared into the empty air, still looking sad and distant. Like there was a cloud over him, keeping out the sun and turning everything dark again.
“Good morning,” Havilar said after another moment. He turned to her, and the cloud over him lifted. He smiled, and something similarly cloudy lifted off Havilar.
“Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep all right?”
“Well enough.” Havilar smiled, feeling suddenly shy. She nodded at the pot. “What’s for morningfeast?”
Brin grinned. “Bathwater. There’s a little waterfall near here, but it’s basically flowing ice. I figured this would be nicer for you.”
Havilar wrapped her cloak around herself and went to sit beside him, not saying that she was pretty used to washing in cold streams. It was too nice of him. She leaned against him.
“How long do you think we have before they find us?”
“Hopefully, we get a little more time,” Brin said. He slipped an arm around her, over the cloak, and drew her close, nuzzling her behind the ear. “If a godsbedamned devil shows up now, I swear to every Watching God . . .”
Havilar giggled. “Which is worse right now? A devil or Mehen?”
“A fair point,” Brin said, but he didn’t stop. “I suppose you ought to put some clothes on.”
“I suppose. When I’m ready,” Havilar said, arranging her cloak over her knees. “You’ve had a lot more . . . practice, haven’t you?”
Brin chuckled softly. “A little less clumsy, yes?”
Havilar wet her mouth. “How . . . much practice?”
He pulled back, far enough to look her in the eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t really keep track of the times.”
“More than one girl?”
He seemed to search her face. “Yes,” he said.
A weight lifted off her chest. If it had just been one girl for all those years, then he was surely in love with someone else and Lorcan was right, it was all going to end badly. But it wasn’t. “More than a hundred?” she asked.
Brin burst out laughing. “Do you think I became a heartwarder while you were gone? Quit eating and sleeping? Gods.”
Havilar crossed her legs over, pulling herself tighter in. “I don’t know.”
His expression softened and he pulled her close again. “Hey, sorry. It’s three,” he said. “Just three.”
Three—why was that worse than “more than one, less than a hundred”? Havilar shifted. “Do you . . . Did you love them?”
Brin hesitated. “I tried to. I thought I could let go of you. I thought I had to.”
“Did you?”
He rested his chin on her shoulder and sighed. “What do you think?”
Havilar bit her lip. She thought it was still too lucky to believe. She thought it was still too wonderful for there not to be some secret trap nestled in the middle of it that she hadn’t found yet. She still wondered why he looked so troubled when he thought she wasn’t looking.
Havilar considered the water, still working toward steaming. “What were you thinking of before?” she asked. “While I was sleeping? You looked awfully unhappy.”
“Court things,” he said, brushing her hair back. “Cormyr’s mired, badly.” He kissed her jaw. “As I said, I probably shouldn’t have left. And before . . . all I wanted was to be sure you were all right. Not send you running because you were already completely overwhelmed by everything under the sun, and suddenly here I am, asking you how you feel about me.” A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “For all I knew, you wanted to be away from everyone. I couldn’t make that harder.”
“That’s good of you,” Havilar managed. She leaned into him again. “What would you have done if that was the case?” Marry the crazy noblewoman, she thought. Fall in love with one of those other three.
“Kept waiting?” Brin said. “I could love you from any distance closer than the Hells, and my life would be happier for it. But this . . . I like this best.” He was silent a moment, before adding, “I would fight an army of devils to keep this.”
Havilar smiled. “Me too.”
She could have gladly stayed there, beside the fire, curled so close to her love. She could have sat on the cold stone for seven and a half years, for twenty-five, for an eternity. And then her thoughts started drifting—the Harpers were coming, Farideh was in trouble, there were still devils afoot.
“Water’s ready,” Brin said.
Reluctantly, Havilar left him there, so she could scrub the last of the veserab from her skin and dress in her still-damp clothes. She had mastered the glaive again, Brin was hers once more, and now they were going to save Farideh. Everything was going right again.
Unless . . .
She stopped, midway through lacing her blouse, struck by a sudden fear. What if Farideh was the thing that would go wrong? What if Havilar got back everything she’d lost, except Farideh? She was still furious with her twin, but she didn’t want that.
It doesn’t work that way, she told herself. But her fingers suddenly felt stiff and shaking, and the sense that she’d somehow ruined things lurked in the back of her thoughts.
It wouldn’t go wrong, she told herself. She put the amulet of Selûne on once more, and slipped the ruby necklace into her pocket. It wouldn’t go wrong because she wouldn’t let it.
She’d finished braiding her wet hair and begun cleaning the corners and crevices of her glaive she’d missed the nig
ht before, when the sound of another group approaching from the north end of the ledge reached them. Havilar stood, peering out into the distance for some hint of who it was.
At the lead were the Harpers from Tam’s office that awful night, trailed by robed wizards and shambling ghouls. Elves, carrying bows and arrows. A litter hauled by horrible-looking beasts, and something straight out of one of Havilar’s worst nightmares. But she hardly noticed any of them, because Mehen himself broke from the group and ran toward her.
He caught her up in a fierce embrace, and Havilar found a part of herself wanting to weep all over again. She hadn’t realized just how badly she missed Mehen, how awful it had been to leave, until then.
“What were you thinking?” he muttered.
Shame bloomed in Havilar’s heart. “Sorry,” she said, but only for making Mehen worry, for leaving so abruptly. She would have done the same thing over again a second time, she felt sure—waiting in Waterdeep even a breath longer would have killed her. “But you found me,” she offered. “And now we can find Farideh.”
Mehen held her a moment longer. “If I could send you safely back, I would.”
“I promise to be careful.”
He gave a short laugh. “How long has it been since I heard that?” He let her go finally. She saw Mehen’s gaze sweep the camp, lingering on the bedrolls that were packed and set together, then finding Brin beside the fire. He narrowed his eyes. “How long were you waiting?”
“Just a night and the morning,” Brin said, not quite meeting Mehen’s gaze.
Mehen made a low growling sound in his throat. He looked down at Havilar—she grinned back.
“I killed a veserab,” she told him. “It’s a flying lamprey thing.”
“Well done,” he said, setting an enormous hand on the back of her head. Mehen looked back as the Harpers came to stand beside them. They introduced themselves to Havilar.
“Zahnya says the camp is at the top,” Vescaras said. “Unless we’re waiting for further instructions? From a demon prince perhaps?”
Mehen scowled at him, then looked up the last slope of the mountain. “Is there a path?”
The Adversary Page 42