Haven (War of the Princes) (14 page)

“Why?” she asked me directly.

I wasn’t expecting a question like that. Why wouldn’t I want to see the person whom I had helped yesterday? Dylan shrugged with disinterest.

“I just wanted to see how he’s doing,” I said awkwardly. Rune had told me that while no one wanted him to die, no one cared that he lived. I figured that was what I was seeing here.

“Just this way,” the woman said neutrally. Dylan stayed behind as she led me down a whitewashed hallway and into one of many small rooms. This one had a single bed facing a large window and a door leading out to a wide, stone balcony with a railing much sturdier than mine. The beach and the town behind it were beautiful in the gradually dimming light of dusk. On one wall there was a breathtaking painting of a white, leafless tree clinging to a rock in the midst of a dark and stormy ocean. The depth of light and shadow accomplished in the painting was commendable. Aside from that, the room was quite plain, and very, very clean.

Rune lay in the bed, his eyes closed, though I could see his chest moving beneath the sheets as he inhaled and exhaled slowly.

“I know you’re the one who was with him last night,” the woman doctor said, doing a routine check on her patient without so much as looking at me. “I don’t know why you care to check up on him. Idle curiosity? Well, we’ll settle that. He’s recovering. Almost lost his arm to infection but we managed to save it. The fever has finally passed, so he’s out of most of the danger. He kept muttering ‘ghost’ in his sleep.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“Does that mean something to you?” she asked me, finally looking me over.

“I helped him last night,” I said honestly. “He could barely stand.”

“Well, you’ve done us all a service by recovering a Dragoon, if that’s true,” the woman said, shielding her expression by turning away to check the bandaging on his arm. Her voice was absolutely devoid of care. “As soon as he’s well, he’ll be back in service.”

“I’m just glad he’s okay,” I said with earnest relief. “He’s the only friend I’ve got.”

           
“Then you don’t have any. Dragoons keep no connections,” she said sternly, facing me. “You’re a strange girl not to know that much.”

           
“You can’t tell me who my friends are,” I said, affronted. It seemed a stupid thing to argue over, but this place was entirely foreign to me, and even such a simple thing as a friend meant everything to me.

           
“He can’t have friends, he’s a Dragoon,” she said sounding none too pleased with me. “We are all grateful for his sacrifice, but he’s a soldier for the Margrave. He’s dead to us. No family, no connections…
no
friends.”

           
I knew it was rude for me to talk back to a Doctor, but I couldn’t contain my irritation. What she was saying didn’t make the least bit of sense to me. Rune had called me a friend, his “wish,” and now that even my clothes had been taken from me, he was the only familiar connection I had with my way home.

           
“Who are
you
to say that?” I demanded, stubbornly.

           
She turned her back to me abruptly. “I was his
mother
.”

           
She walked away from me just like that, leaving me shocked at his bedside.

Chapter 15: My Only Friend

           
“Satisfied?” Dylan asked, sauntering into the room and collapsing into the armchair beside the window of Rune’s sickbed.

           
I was still dumbfounded that the woman without the slightest hint of sympathy in her voice was Rune’s mother. In all honesty, she reminded me of
my
mother... my real mother, who was more concerned with her work than her husband or daughter. We had that in common, it seemed.

           
I looked down at Rune. His brush with death was evident by the pallor of his slightly gaunt face. The rise and fall of his steady, rhythmic breathing was a growing comfort to me. He may not have been awake, but he was alive, and that meant I wasn’t alone here.

           
“How could I be satisfied?” I said, dejected, clinging to the hope of escape.

           
“You tell me. There’s obviously nothing here to see. Shall we be on our way?” he asked flippantly.

I may have saved Rune, but what did I bring him back to?

Turning, I looked Dylan in the face.

“Do you know him?” I asked abruptly.

“I wouldn’t say I do anymore,” he said cryptically.

I was at my wits end. “You know what I mean. Past and present included.”

“Of course,” Dylan said, looking away from me for once. It appeared he found the view of the beach much more interesting. “We went to school together before he became a Dragoon. He was- is a few years older than me. He was my brother’s friend more than mine, but we all got on well. Now he’s a Dragoon, so that old book is closed. I suppose it’s possible that you don’t know. Dragoons are allowed no connections. No friends, no family.”

“So I keep hearing,” I muttered, gazing back at Rune’s peaceful face.

I almost didn’t believe my eyes when I saw his lips part and heard his voice whisper, “Katelyn.”

My pained expression must have given me away. Dylan leaned back in his seat. “So, you must be Katelyn?”

He got a nod from me, but my eyes were fixed on Rune. The wounded Dragoon just went on sleeping as though he hadn’t said my name at all.

“I’ll have to thank him for introducing us,” Dylan grinned.

I ignored him. He was really beginning to get on my nerves.

Dylan groaned and pulled himself up out of the chair, stalking over to me, and put his hands on my shoulders to turn me to face him. The physical contact and the closeness to such an unbearably handsome guy made my heart race involuntarily. I hated that I reacted that way. I wished I didn’t know him.

“Listen, Katelyn,” he said, trying my name out. “I don’t know if this is some grand façade or if you really don’t understand the dynamic with Dragoons. How can I put this to you gently? When Rune Thayer wakes up, he’s not going to speak to you. He’ll act like he doesn’t know you or like you’re not there.
Lurcher
venom, even if a wound isn’t infected, will cause severe hallucinations. I’ve heard they can reduce a soldier to the vulnerability of a child. I don’t know what impression he gave you while he was suffering from fevers and
Lurcher
venom, but that wasn’t him. Don’t expect much when he wakes up, or better yet, don’t expect anything.”

I stood there disliking every single word that came out of his mouth. I wanted to deny the possibility that Rune would act that way. I hated what he told me even more because it all fit with what Rune himself had said from the beginning. No connections. I didn’t want to believe that Rune would cast me aside. I saved his life, and he might be the only person who I could trust to help me. I couldn’t imagine that the person who asked about my favorite things in life, who told me about his love of painting and about his little sister, wouldn’t acknowledge my existence.

He had called me an angel. He
was
hallucinating.

I was so distracted by my thoughts that it almost escaped me that Dylan’s hands were still on my shoulders, his face just close enough to be too close.

“You have silver eyes,” he said in awe. The perfect corners of his lips curved upward, teasing me with the hint of an irresistible smile. From this close, I could see that his were a warm hazel, another eye color I had never seen before. I wished I wasn’t mesmerized. “I thought maybe they were blue-gray… but they’re not. They’re
silver
. I’ve never seen silver eyes. Is that normal where you come from, or do they find you just as unique as I do?”

Pulling away, I broke the spell. “Yes, its normal.”

It was evident that Rune wouldn’t be waking up any time soon. I might as well have my “tour guide” show me around so I could get a better handle on how to escape. I knew that there was a good chance that if I set my mind to finding home, my luck would take me just the right way to avoid trouble, but the stakes were high and I didn’t want to mess things up. I’d have to be very careful.

“We can go now,” I said, moving to leave the room. I stole one backward glance at Rune, but he lay unchanged.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Dylan said brightly, following me out.

     
*
         
*
         
*

Breakwater Keep was the strangest structure I’d ever explored. The Axton brothers weren’t the only people who lived in it, though they were the only ones who resided in the topmost story. A relatively small handful of keep workers, cooks, maids and guards, lived in apartments on the third floor so that they were close at hand. Dylan kept me well away from certain corridors, and I could only speculate they were areas that a stranger like me was barred to trespass.

He did make a point of showing me to the kitchens, the dining hall (which was something like the one in my school, only much nicer), and the games room that was only open to keep personnel. He was kind enough to leave the cells in the bottom of the keep off of our tour. I had already seen them, and didn’t care to again.

I asked Dylan if he would show me around Breakwater, but he said the shops had already closed for the evening and that he was more than happy to take me through town the following morning. It was better than nothing.

With sunset barely sustaining itself under the smothering embrace of night, the most impressive place to show me was the observatory. It bubbled up atop the fourth floor in a glass dome. The brass telescopes that filled it were like metal, many-limbed trees. Most of their eyes were facing out over the sea.

Dylan led me out through a side door that took us to the roof. The last of the light resisting nightfall threw breathtaking arcs of red, pink and purple across the sky. The colors blazed behind a silhouette of towering mountains. They were
my
mountains: the infallible range that surrounded Haven Valley. Home was just beyond them. I could feel it.

My thoughts drifted to wondering what my parents were doing. Had Ruby and Kyle already given up looking for me, chalking it all up to my usual flightiness? I missed them so much, and it had only been one day. My vision blurred.

“I know it was a bit extravagant, but I didn’t want to make you cry,” Dylan muttered guiltily.

My attention broke from the light receding away from me, touching my home more than it was touching me. I wanted to chase after it. I wanted the sunset to take me with it, just as far as
Rivermarch
. How weird a concept was that?

           
 
When I looked down I noticed two things for the first time: Breakwater at night, and a picnic laid out for us on the roof.

From this height and in the darkness the town didn’t seem too different from
Rivermarch
. All the details were obscured save for the cheerily glowing street lights, cottage windows, and lanterns that bobbed from the prows of reed gondolas.

           
The thick blanket laid out with cushions and the stool topped with a large platter of covered food was a much more unusual sight than the city below.

           
“What is this?” I asked, wondering if I had been better off in the cell than overwhelmed by Dylan’s attentions.

           
“It’s the only thing I could think of to make sure you’d eat something. The door we came through is locked and we’re not going back in until you’ve eaten,” he said, jingling the iron key in his hand. “Maybe the cold will be a motivator. It only gets worse. But there’s a shawl for you if you want it.”

           
I glared at him for trying to force me to eat, but it was true that I had avoided everything that was offered to me when we passed through the dining hall. I wished that I could defy him
and
my hunger, but I was feeling weak and shaky. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right, I needed to eat.

           
Being alone at night on the rooftop with a guy I hardly knew was plenty enough to make me feel uncomfortable, not even counting the fact that I was a prisoner and far away from home. In more ways than one, Dylan’s charms made him seem more like a storybook prince, and less of a creepy stranger, and that distinction was the only thing that held me back from throwing myself against the observatory door and screaming for help.

           
If he had wanted to do anything terrible to me, there were plenty of chances before this one. I was under his watch all night and all day, and he had only treated me with courtesy.

           
I relaxed a bit as I considered everything and forced myself to sit on the blanket beside the food.

           
His smile looked a little overly smug for my taste. He was clearly too pleased with himself to be phased by the icy lance of my continuous glare. He was ridiculously gorgeous, and well mannered too, but his cocky attitude infuriated me. It was like he decided he had won some great battle when I finally gave in to sitting down.