Chapter 58 — Who Goes East

The argument over who would ride lasted longer than I expected, each of us weighing loyalties and responsibilities that pulled in a dozen directions at once. Kael wanted to go himself, and I understood why — his authority, his guard, his raw physical strength would all serve well against whatever danger waited at the journey's end. But Arlen argued, with grim practicality, that Draven's Alpha vanishing from his own territory for the better part of a week, during exactly the period when Vane's suspicion ran highest, would raise questions neither of us could afford to answer honestly.

"I'll go," Maren said finally, cutting through the circling debate with her usual blunt decisiveness. "I've no title to protect, no political position Vane watches closely. An old woman traveling east to visit family draws no particular notice, and I've killed more men than most of you have years to your name. I can handle whatever this agent intends, if it comes to that."

"You shouldn't go alone," I said.

"I don't intend to." Maren's eyes moved to me, steady and assessing. "You're coming with me, girl. Whatever that family turns out to be, they'll trust a fellow Veilborn's blood far more readily than an old soldier's word alone, and you'll need the practice regardless — using what you've learned, reading a stranger's danger correctly, making decisions when there's no one standing behind you to catch the mistake."

Kael's jaw tightened visibly at that, though he said nothing immediately, and I understood, watching the careful restraint in his expression, exactly how much that silence cost him.

"I don't like it," he said finally. "Every instinct I have says the two of you riding into unknown danger, this far from any help I could reasonably provide in time, is exactly the kind of risk we should be avoiding right now."

"I know," I said gently. "But Maren's right. I can't keep standing behind walls while everyone else bleeds to protect me. If there's any chance of reaching that family before Vane's agent does, I need to be the one standing there when we find them — someone who can prove, in ways words alone can't manage, that I understand exactly what they're facing."

Arlen, who had watched the exchange with careful attention, finally spoke. "I'll remain here, to watch Vane and manage whatever he attempts in your absence. Seraphine—" his eyes moved to her, something gentler in his expression than I'd yet seen him show anyone beyond myself, "—I need you to continue exactly as you have been. Composed, watchful, giving him no reason to suspect anything has changed."

Seraphine nodded, though her eyes stayed fixed on me with an unmistakable fear she made no effort to hide. "Promise me you'll be careful," she said. "Both of you. I've only just gotten you back properly, Liora. I don't intend to lose you to a coastal village three days' ride from anyone who could actually help if something goes wrong."

"I promise," I said, though some small, honest part of me understood, even as I said it, how easily a promise like that could prove impossible to keep.

Kael caught my hand as the practical details of departure began to consume the room's attention, pulling me gently toward the glasshouse's quieter corner. "Come back to me," he said, low enough that only I could hear it, his gray eyes dark with a worry he rarely let surface so plainly. "Whatever you find out there, whatever it costs — come back."

"I intend to," I said, and found, searching his face in the dim light, that I meant the promise more fully than I had meant almost anything else in either of my two strange, doubled lives.

He did not let go of my hand immediately, his thumb tracing an absent, grounding circle against my knuckles that steadied something in me I hadn't realized needed steadying. "I know I have no right to ask this of you," he said quietly, "given everything we've already agreed about not demanding, not owning, not trying to control what you choose to risk. But I need you to understand what it costs me, watching you ride into danger I can't follow into."

"I understand," I said. "Better than you might think. I've spent weeks watching you ride into danger on my behalf, trusting that you knew what you were doing even when every instinct in me wanted to beg you to stay."

"And did you? Beg?"

"No," I admitted, something rueful in the admission. "I bit my tongue and trusted you instead. I suppose it's only fair you extend me the same courtesy now."

A ghost of a smile crossed his face, brief but genuine, cutting through the worry that had governed his expression since Arlen's warning first arrived. "Fair enough," he said. "Though I reserve the right to worry regardless. Trust and worry aren't mutually exclusive, whatever either of us might prefer to believe."

"No," I agreed softly. "I don't suppose they are."

He pressed a kiss to my knuckles, brief and formal and somehow more intimate for its restraint than anything bolder might have managed, and released my hand at last, stepping back to let the practical business of departure finally claim the room's full attention.

Arlen returned shortly after dawn, as promised, with a narrower fragment of the coastal road marked clearly on his rough map and a grim, exhausted satisfaction at having salvaged what little remained of the burned message. "Thornmere," he said, tapping the small village marked along the coast. "A fishing village, several days east, small enough to have escaped most notice from the Concord or any of the greater packs. It fits the profile of exactly the kind of obscurity a family might choose, if they'd learned, the way your own mother learned, that obscurity was the safest shield available."

"How confident are you?" Kael asked.

"Confident enough to send them," Arlen said, "though not confident enough to promise certainty. If I'm wrong, we'll have burned days we can't easily recover. If I'm right, we may yet reach that family before Vane's agent does." His eyes moved to me, grave and searching. "Are you prepared for this, Liora? Truly? Whatever training you've gathered these past weeks, this will test it in ways a practice yard never fully can."

"I don't know if I'm prepared," I admitted. "I only know I can't live with the alternative — staying safely behind these walls while someone else pays the price for my caution."

Arlen studied me a long moment, something that might have been pride, carefully restrained, crossing his weathered face. "Your mother would have said much the same thing, I think, at your age. I only hope this road treats you more gently than it ultimately treated her."

The words settled heavy and unresolved in the morning air, and none of us found anything further to say to ease them, and so we simply turned, together, to the last practical preparations the coming journey demanded.