Daughters of the King |✓|

Chapter Twelve

I didn't know how far we walked. I didn't care. We stopped at a river to wash up, the water turning pink from the blood, and then I laid under the sun on the banks to dry.

"How's your shoulder?" I asked Gunnar, the first words spoken in a long time.

"Not great," he grunted, standing in the water half-naked trying to get his skin clean of his sins.

I stared at the bared wound in his shoulder. The stitches had torn, but there was no chance of us finding another doctor to fix it any time soon. Thankfully, it didn't appear to be bleeding too much, not uncontrollably like before.

Our few spare items of clothing, on the other hand, had gotten horribly messed, but we'd washed them as best we could and laid them out on a flat rock to dry in the late midday sun. Not that we had much time to be doing laundry. We would have to get moving again soon, if we wanted to make it somewhere safe for the night.

I'd have to act like I trusted him now. After what had happened, there was a sort of comradeship that had developed between us, and I'd have to do my best to keep it that way.

His words from earlier resonated at the back of my mind. "I am nothing to you," he'd said to me at the inn. A conversation that seemed to have happened a lifetime ago. But I kept the words close, because they served to remind me of how fragile our current partnership was.

"My mother sent you?" I asked, since we'd never properly finished that conversation.

He glanced at me briefly over his shoulder, something sparking in his eyes. "Yes."

"Why?" I asked,

He didn't give me the response I was expecting. "Because the new king wished it."

"The king?" I repeated, not understanding. "Why the king?"

"Because your mother married him," he said.

My mind stalled for a second, before picking up fast. My mother; the woman who'd sworn on my life she would never marry.

I wanted to ask more questions, but a howling scream pierced the quiet of the forest, and Gunnar and I both startled, still on high alert. Gunnar's head snapped up as he scanned the wall of trees, and he hurriedly sloshed out of the river towards his clothes. The gun and the satchel with the ammunition were laid beside them, and I moved closer to collect them.

At the sound of my footsteps, he whipped towards me and his eyes hardened. "Don't you dare run again."

I froze under the weight of his gaze. I couldn't tell if he was angry or scared or something else entirely.

"I won't," I lied quickly. "I need you out here."

He studied me for truth, then laughed humorlessly. "You're a shit liar. What does a person like you need help with?"

The way he said a person like you didn't sound like a compliment, but I didn't comment on that.

"Savages," I answered his question instead. "They work by a whole different set of rules. Specifically, they have none, and they won't be easily managed."

I knew these things because I was one such creature myself. Unpredictable. Dangerous.

But Gunnar didn't appear convinced. In the end, though, it wouldn't matter. Someone suddenly crashed into the river, and we both spun towards the noise. I recognized the military uniform first, then his face. He was the same soldier who'd stopped me when I'd tried to run.

He froze when he saw us, and he yelled unintelligibly, almost comically.

Gunnar and I looked on with bewilderment as the soldier bolted backwards in a panic. A wall of savages materialized amidst the trees, and the distraught soldier halted and fell to his knees, caught between us. Two unstoppable forces.