Prince and the Throne (Fedosian Wars #2)

10. Save Me

ten

Save Me

No one followed them as they slipped out of the den, and Sofia thought it was because they hadn’t expected Aleksei to leave that night. He didn’t hand his duty over or speak to his brother. He was just pissed.

They rode through the wailing storm moaning and moaning about the world it hurled itself upon. The wind was on their backs, adding speed to their mounts, and the snow didn’t lash onto their faces, but under the moonless, starless sky, the night was blind.

As the dawn silvered and the blizzard passed, the whole earth had turned white. They’d veered off the road and had no idea where they were.

“I’m sorry,” said Aleksei, his breath steaming and his lashes frozen over the scarlet eyes. “I shouldn’t have left the den in anger. Are you cold?”

“I’m all right.” Sofia pulled down the scarf iced from her breath. As far as they could see, it was bare white terrain, nothing like the evergreen hills she was used to. “But the horses probably need a rest.” As soon as she said ‘horses’, Charger gave her the side eye. She could swear that creature understood language more than a horse should.

“Yeah,” Aleksei said, twisting in his saddle to look around. “We’re supposed to be heading southeast, so let’s just go that way and hope we get back on the road.”

Now that the weather allowed it, she talked while she rode alongside Aleksei, though Charger was compelled to lead even if by a few inches and kept pulling ahead. The snow crunched and the tack on both horses jingled in the eerily still morning as the sun rose red and deep purple in front of them. The sky hadn’t cleared and hung heavy. If they didn’t find shelter before nightfall, they’d be caught in the snow again. No wonder the harvest failed. They were getting too much wet weather both in the cold and the warm. Also, the winterkill was causing wildlife to starve when the snow was too deep for the creatures to find grass underneath to graze. It’d been years since Sofia had seen a deer when they used to be everywhere when she was a girl. The starving wolves grew more aggressive, attacking stables and venturing into the city… It was as if Fedosia had been bewitched the last four years.

She asked Aleksei about his arm, and if the cold hurt it because the splint was steel, and he said, “It could be worse.” Then he continued, “Thank you for saving us in the den, but I guess you’ll get nothing for your bravery and wit because you’re saddled to me.”

“Well, that’s not nothing,” she said. “My life is far better riding through the storm with you than sitting by the fireplace at the Illeivich estate.”

“The count?” Aleksei looked back because Charger was pulling forward and trying to leave Sofia behind. “I’m glad he’s dead.”

“I killed him,” Sofia said because he wouldn’t remember that.

“Then he deserved to die.” He tightened his reins to slow down the ill tempered gelding.

“Probably not. He had daughters,” she said.

“Oh, well, it’s Fedosia,” was his answer.

“Why did Niko turn on you? Just over the Chartorisky? I’m afraid he’s been influenced by Eugene. I hear he has a grudge against the House of Silver.”

“I’d say Niko’s ego is being inflated because now commanders are kneeling to him, but he’s done things like this before, blindsiding me with decisions that seem to come from nowhere. It’s as though he gets possessed sometimes… I think he killed our father. Burkhard was very powerful was the reason I doubted, but if he could kill Kseniya and a dozen watchmen, he could kill Burkhard too. There was no one else. I was on duty that night, and the only one to go in and out of the duke’s quarters was Niko.”

“Aleksei.” Sofia kicked her horse and caught up to him. “How did Niko manage to do that? The queen, I mean. Not saying it was a bad thing because he saved you, but I don’t understand.”

“I’d rather not say it because you’re a Guard. Forgive me.”

“That doesn’t sound very trusting, Aleksei.”

“It’ll frighten you, Sofia.”

“Something to do with dark magic, then,” she said. “That would explain the corruption of gold. Dark magic leaves residue and taints your blood for a long time, or so my uncle used to say. It’s hard to separate the truth from the politics when dealing with the church… They’d take something true and twist it into complete horse manure. People had a way of turning into necromancers and heretics when they had a dispute with the synod. I wonder how many innocents the archmage convicted with his way of… questioning.”

“He hadn’t been terrible. At least there had been order,” Aleksei said.

“You only say that because you don’t remember he tortured you.”

“Maybe,” said Aleksei, and they rode on.

The blizzard was wicked, worsened after sundown, and they only realized they were riding through a town because a man had opened his door, to go piss perhaps, and they saw the light. All windows had been boarded.

The villager had no room in his house and no stables for their horses but was kind enough to lead them on foot through the storm to the church which had both. A silver coin helped, as it always did.

The church was wooden, and the keeper was a brown cloaked parson. Sofia didn’t drop her Guard name because that would have invited too many questions. Instead, she put silver coins on the collection plate to get warm stables, feed for the horses, and permission to stay the night in the church.

The nave had a bare wooden floor, faded smooth and bent inward where the aisle was, and the boards were fresher where the benches would normally be. They were stacked and stowed against the wall tonight.

The parson brought them a clay pot of hot soup and a brazier like a cauldron with iron legs. Guard churches had tall spiraling roofs with an upward draft and the smoke wouldn’t bother them, but the coal would remain warm for hours.

Sofia showed her gratitude with more silver and the old parson’s grin widened. He lived right next door, he said, and to knock if they needed anything else. Then Sofia sat with Aleksei in the dark red glow of the coal burning brazier, eating much needed warm food even if that was potato soup. The wind howled around them, and the wooden church groaned and creaked.

Afterward, Aleksei made a bed for them on the floor with cloaks and walked to the altar with his hands clasped behind him, his face tipped to the painted saints above the dais. “Do you suppose they are real?” he asked.

“They were once people like you and me.” Sofia sat on the cloak and searched her saddlebag for the wool stockings she knew she packed. “But whether they still live, only dver knows.”

“The first time I’d been to a church, I was twelve and I’d run away from home because I drowned Niko. He was five. It was the Church of All Saints in Krakova, and I begged and begged the saints to return my brother.

“Then, Niko returned. The reasonable part of me wants to believe Niko survived and found his way home, but I know I killed him. He was dead. They answered my prayers.” He held up his broken hand to the saints. “Now they forsake me for breaking my promise. I swore to be good but paid their mercy and grace with Pyotr Guard’s blood. They are angry with me, I sense it. Kseniya going off on me, I believe that was my atonement, and I’d be thankful if that was all, but now I worry they’re going to take you from me.”

“No one is taking me away from you,” Sofia said. She’d found her wool stockings and was putting them on. “You have more faith than any Guard I know, and that includes the archmage. More than likely, they are just dead men. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so much misery in the world with the blessing of so many saints.”

“Hush, Sofia. Maybe they do hear.”

If he truly believed the prince returned from the dead, that wasn’t the saints but quite the opposite. He knew so, and so did she, and this unsaid thing hung between them like a wet cloak.

“Come, Aleksei.” She held out her hand. “Let’s go to sleep and hope the weather is better tomorrow.”

“My lady.” He came to her, kissed her hand, and allowed her to pull him down.

Now that Sofia had dry stockings on, she’d sleep wearing her spare boots. It was too cold otherwise. She hiked a leg over him as he lay down beside her.

“If you want to make another promise to the saints, I’d accept it as a lady of Guard.” Sofia laid her head on his chest, feeling his warmth and strength through the layers of wool and cotton between them. “So as long as you don’t break this one promise, you’re absolved from all your past transgressions.” Blasphemy really, but she hoped to be forgiven because her intentions were good.

“What is it, Sofia?” he whispered, his voice barely audible over the crying winds.

“You will not harm Lev. I realize there may arise situations where you have no control,” she said. “I’m not speaking of other men’s actions if you have no say, but you, Aleksei, shall not put steel in my brother or order others to do it for you. I’m not certain I can get over that, so that may be the only thing to take me away from you.”

“Is that all?” he asked.

“That’s all.”

“Then, I swear it, Sofia, and I’d die before I break it.”

“Thank you.” She gave him a quick touch on his lips, but he held her nape and it turned into a slow, sweet, pining, and longing type of kiss.

“I see.” He sighed afterward. “That’s how that is.” He lay on his back looking up at the painted saints. “You save me from despair, Sofia. The sun on your crest, it’s hope. Had you not been here, I would have nothing. Yet I have everything. You are the difference between nothing and everything.”

She could say the same about him, and feeling mighty wealthy was part of loving and being loved, she was learning, and happily, she’d been falling asleep when the presence of the stranger startled her out of the pleasantness.

“What’s wrong?” Aleksei asked because she’d jolted.

“Nothing. Just had a falling dream.” She closed her eyes though very aware of the shadow circling them.

She had invited darkness onto hallowed ground when she cursed the archmage, and this thing was growing more brazen by the day. She had to figure out what he was and get rid of him. His growing menace made her skin crawl like the sound of metal grating on glass.

“Are you cold?” Aleksei asked, embracing her tighter.

She shivered, she supposed. “Yeah… But I’m all right now.”

Listening to Aleksei sleep, she stayed up for a while and only closed her eyes when she was certain the stranger had left.