Leda

Chapter Thirty-One: Contrition

Marc was dead. Marc was dead! And Meracad...was alive. These two simple truths circled Hal's head like rooks preparing to roost at dusk. Despair crushed hope, hope outpaced despair; her emotions fighting a battle so harsh she felt sick. Creased over in her saddle, Hal released the contents of her stomach, vomiting onto the forest floor. Up ahead, Jools turned, reined in her horse and raised a hand, shaking her head. The others stopped and stared. Hal waited for the nausea to pass, spitting out a few strings of bile. Then she forced herself upright.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Carry on."

Magda narrowed her eyes and glared, whisked her horse around and continued without a word. Sharing her saddle, Lauré resting with her head between Magda's shoulder blades, her arms wrapped around Magda's waist.

"Are you sure?" Jools asked.

"Yes. Yes, I'm certain. Carry on."

But the weight of loss ˗ of so much loss ˗ crushed her. Her head swam, her heart craved Meracad, her mind revolved around that night ˗ those words, spoken with such cruelty. Why, she couldn't even recall. Who had she been? What had she become? She stared at Magda and Lauré as they wound their way between the trees, ever further from Colvé. She should have been burying Marc, begging Meracad's forgiveness. Instead, she was riding through the dark woodlands of the west astride a horse taken from a man she'd killed the day before. She'd rejoiced as his hot blood hit her face. And what little Magda knew of Meracad's fate now remained a locked secret. Because Magda ˗ whose lip she'd split, whose pride she'd wounded ˗ would no longer utter a word to her, but stared at her as if she were a nothing. Worse than a nothing, an enemy.

The others kept their distance too, peering at her with contempt or with a kind of pity which caused the hairs to rise on the back of her neck. She avoided their gaze, travelling behind them as they picked their way through endless forest, stopping only to hunt and eat.

Salvesté reined in his horse until he was level with her. She kept her gaze fixed on the ground ahead, on the leaves and roots and damp, dark earth, refusing to look at him.

"You know," Salvesté said at last, "she believes in you."

"What?" Hal muttered.

"Jools ˗ she and Kris. They never tired of talking about you. Of your courage and loyalty. The adventures they'd had with you. They'd go on and on ˗ it was hard to get them to talk of anything else."

"Really?" She bit her lip, her knuckles whitening as she clutched the reins.

"Really. I can see she's disappointed, though."

"Don't." Hal shook her head. "Don't say anymore."

"I see it." He ignored her. "And if you carry on disappointing her, Hal Hannac, me and my razor'll give you more than just a haircut."

She winced, her hand rising instinctively to her hair ˗ now shorn short with the help of Jools' dagger and Salvesté's razor ˗ conscious of the wind licking her bare neck.

"People change," Hal muttered.

"That's it, is it? Your excuse?" Salvesté snorted with contempt. "You'll have to do better than that. I risked my neck to save you and Lord Roc."

"What?" Hal turned to stare at him now. She registered the hardness in his eyes and the way his sharp features twisted with scorn.

"Magda came that night. She told us what had happened to you and Roc."

"Magda?"

"Yes. Magda. If that's how you treat your friends, Hal, I'd hate to see what you do to your enemies. Magda insisted that we get you ˗ and Lauré ˗ out. And without Roc, our plans would have failed altogether."