The Untold Tale

Sixteen

I cannot manage to make the campfire grow beyond a sizzling, popping misery of smoke and embers, which is probably a good thing. We are chilled, but the light of the fire would probably attract some of the less savory denizens of a graveyard, if there are any.

There is not enough time before nightfall to backtrack out of the Valley of the Tombs, and I don't know how much farther it is to the exit on the other side, either. Neither of us wanted to be caught here after dark, but we have no other options. We are too heartsick, and the horses too tired, to go on.

Desperate for shelter but still wanting to be respectful, we build our campfire and lay our sleeping rolls on the marble balcony of King Chailin's portico. It is just wide enough for Pip and I to wind together under the blankets without fear of tumbling down the three steps to the ground. The fire is at our feet, and the horses are crowded up as close as they are able to come. Karl and Dauntless refuse the gray-green grass and must be nose-bagged. They champ warily on oats and watch the mist, flanks shuddering.

What little light the fire offers is reflected in the sparks of precious metal that have been hammered into the veins of the marble around us. It throws up a sort of eerie luminescence that makes it hard for me to fall asleep. Pip drops off as soon as she's snugged in beside me, head on my shoulder and knee hitched up along my hip, breathing even and slow, if shallow. She is tense in my embrace, ready to wake at any moment.

I don't recall drifting off, which is why, when I awaken, it takes a moment for me to figure out what's changed. I can hear Pip—her soft, low moan, the unbearably sexy intake of her breath—but the blankets beside me are cold, thrown back to allow the chill in. I shiver all over and stand, pulling on my boots and wrapping my belt around me, adjusting the fall of my sword against my leg as I trot down the stairs. Pip makes that incredible hitching sound that always lodges in her chest when she is close to her peak, and I am both aroused and confused as to why she is making such sounds elsewhere.

Surely she hadn't decided to wander off, alone, into a potentially haunted graveyard to pleasure herself, when all she had to do was wake me if she was feeling like she needed attention. Surely?

"Pip?" I call softly, hoping she'll be able to hear me over the sounds she's making. I can only just follow them, the noises strangely muffled by the mist.

Another moan, this time louder, almost as if in answer. I pluck at my flies to relieve the pressure and round King Chailin's daughter's tomb. "Pip, what are you doing out here? Come back to bed."

This time, the moan sounds like a word: "No."

"No?" I echo, and peer around the corner, smiling, ready to tease. "Why do you say—"

I stop. Shock slams into me, so profound that it feels as if my feet have been grabbed by corpses and I am being pulled under the topsoil.

Pip is standing, half curled over a man's arm in the moonlit mist. She has got her hands in his pale wrist, digging in with her fingernails and drawing blood. Her face is hidden by the ebony fall of her hair, but what little of her neck and jaw I can see is red with rage, or arousal. She is sobbing; I am close enough to hear it now, pained and frustrated. And, clearly, it has been going on for a while. It reminds me sharply, shamefully, of the terrible crying jags to which I had accidentally borne witness in Turn Hall. It occurs to me that I am a stupid twat for believing they had simply stopped as soon as we'd begun our adventure together.

Pip's knees are so bent that it's a wonder she hasn't fallen to the damp grass, and it can't just be her grip on the man's forearm that keeps her upright. No, now that I am looking, I can see it—a thin black chest. She is kneeling on it.

I recognize it as easily as I recognized Kintyre's knife in the tomb mosaic. It is my chest. The one from the hayloft; the one with my Shadow Hand accouterments secreted inside. The one that no one but me can open.