Bound by Blood and Fire

Three Days

She left the chamber before her expression could betray anything else, and didn't stop walking until she reached the tree line at the edge of the compound, where the borrowed torchlight gave way to real dark.

The woods here weren't the woods she'd grown up sneaking into. Those were three days' ride from here, further north, closer to a border she hadn't gone near in six years on purpose. But the smell was close enough — pine and cold dirt and something electric under it that she'd never been able to name, not even as a girl, not even when she'd had someone beside her who might have known the word for it.

She hadn't let herself think about him in a long time. It was easier not to. Six years was long enough to build a life around the shape of an absence, if you were careful, if you didn't look at it too directly.

Three days, she thought, and pressed the heel of her hand against her collarbone, over the scar she never let anyone see. Three days, and then I get to find out if he's even still there.

She didn't let herself finish the thought — didn't let herself ask whether some small, foolish, sixteen-year-old part of her wanted the answer to be yes.