The Essence
Page 37

And, for that, Brook had been grateful.
That gratitude had faded, however, as days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months. Aron’s scars had blanched, blending into his skin until they were practically imperceptible, unless you knew the right places to look for them. Brook had allowed herself to forget what he’d gone through, allowed herself to believe that nothing had changed between them because of it. In her eyes, they were the same Brook and Aron they’d always been.
But that wasn’t the case, she was reminded as she stared at the tiny white fractures marring his otherwise perfect complexion.
Nothing was the same anymore.
“You don’t know. I could be the best marksman in Ludania. You wouldn’t want to waste a skill like that on horse duty, would you?”
“It wouldn’t exactly be wasted, we need the horses as badly as we need another gunman, maybe more. In fact . . .” She shivered, clutching herself tightly, her teeth just starting to chatter. “Until we find Charlie, that’s all that matters.”
She hadn’t realized how loud she’d been speaking until several sets of eyes turned in her direction.
Aron got up and made his way to her side of the fire, lifting both hands in mock surrender. “Fine, I give. I’ll be a stable boy, or whatever you need me to be.” He settled down beside her, dropping one arm around her shoulder and pulling her close to him.
Despite herself, she found herself leaning into him. He was warmer than he should be, considering the temperature, and she felt like a moth, drawn to that kind of heat.
“We’ll find her,” he promised, leaning his chin against the top of her head, his voice growing distant and thoughtful. “If it’s the last thing we do, we’ll find her.”
xii
There had to be some sort of mistake.
I repeated those same words to myself over and over again, long after we’d left the confined walls of the rank cottage and Florence had taken us to his main house, a place only somewhat larger, but vastly cleaner and more homelike. It had real floors, real wooden walls, and smelled far less like manure than the other building had.
But no matter how hard I tried to deny it, I’d seen the map with my own two eyes, and even though no one else had been able to read the scribblings in that unfamiliar language, I had. I knew what it said. I knew that whoever had written the notes had inside information, dates and times of each of my stops. Information that only someone from the palace could have known. Information that had been meant to be secret.
Someone had betrayed me.
Florence sat with his elbows on a table made from unfinished lumber. The candle that flickered in front of him was casting strange shadows over his sharp features and making the thin wisps of his hair look like smog rising from his scalp. “Get Her Majesty some soup,” he snapped at the woman who’d quietly slipped into the room. She kept her head down, her gaze lowered, in the same way we were once required to do when someone of higher status was speaking in our presence. During Sabara’s rule.
I watched the woman for a moment, wondering how she’d come to be here, in this place, with someone like Florence. Was she a criminal, or had she been born out here, in the Scablands, never to leave once she was old enough to make her own decision? I wondered if she could possibly be his wife, although she seemed too young by half.
“It’s okay. Really, I’m fine,” I said, but Florence waved away my refusal.
“Soup!” Spittle sprayed from his lips, but he wasn’t talking to me, his gaze was directed solely on her. “Now!”
She scurried to pull a misshapen bowl from a shelf that hung beside the open hearth, and she wound the stained apron she wore around her hand as she reached for the ladle inside the pot. I didn’t know what kind of soup it was, but as soon as she stirred the simmering liquid, the savory aroma filled the room and my stomach growled in response.
Florence shot me a knowing look. “She’s not much ta look at, but the girl can cook.”
She kept her head bowed as she set the bowl before me. “What’s your name?” I asked her quietly.
Florence bit off a chunk of seeded brown bread. “Doesn’t have one.”
I jerked in response to his words. “What?”
“She doesn’t have a name. Doesn’t need one,” he clarified, as if the explanation made perfect sense. He picked up his own bowl and slurped his soup from the edge of it.
I glanced around, realizing there were no spoons. “Of course she needs a name. Everyone does.”
He glanced at me, over the rim of his bowl, which was still poised at his lips. He looked perplexed, confused by my inability to comprehend. “Out here, it’s just us. Her, me, and my boy.” He flicked his gaze toward Jeremiah, standing silently near the door, just as he’d done in the cottage.
“Jeremiah? Is he . . . is he your son?”
Florence nodded, his eyebrows raised. “Little light in the brains department, but he’s strong, and tougher’n most soldiers. And ain’t no one more willing to break a sweat.”
I looked at the woman, at her limp brown hair and her calloused hands, and wondered who she was. She wasn’t old enough to be Jeremiah’s mother. I wondered if she was Florence’s daughter, and the thought made my fingers squeeze into fists beneath the table. How could someone go her entire life without so much as a name? How did a woman, any citizen of the realm of Ludania—Scablander or not—end up here, living with a man who treated her no better than