Page 39 of The Iron Hex

“There are still noble guards.” Hugo said sharply, but his answer didn’t add up to Eira.

“But... I don’t think you were guarding my family anymore. Otherwise you’d have been looking for me for years... right?”

“You’re right, I didn’t guard your family after the uprising.” Hugo physically grew tenser with each answer he gave to Eira.

“Whatdidyou do, then?” An increasing feeling of sickness was creeping up her throat.

“I think you already know the answer to that question,” Hugo growled.

“I need you to say it.” Eira’s fear settled in her chest.

“I was in the Iron Retinue,” he answered, even more gruffly than before.

Eira almost vomited. “Arthur, stop,” she said, reaching for the reins and, once she realized she couldn’t reach them, trying to scramble off of the horse. Before Hugo could stop her she jumped, screaming in pain as she landed, rolling her ankle. She watched Hugo wheel Arthur around and jump off, running to her side as the horse made a concerned whinny.

“Why would you do that?” Hugo’s hands hovered over Eira, trying to figure out why she’d screamed in pain.

Eira painstakingly stood, pushing his hands away when he tried to steady her. “Hugo Venton, you tell me right now what role you played in the uprising,” she said, gasping through the pain in her ankle. She could put weight on it, which meant it wasn’t broken.

“Are you okay?” He stood in front of her, the concern in his eyes mixed with anger and frustration.

Eira balked—as if Hugo had any right to be frustrated with her in this moment. “Tell me right now!” Eira shoved Hugo away from her.

“This is not the place for this conversation,” he answered.

“Did you kill my family? Was that your job?” Eira asked, frantic.

“What?” he exclaimed on a laugh, incredulous. “I didn’t kill anyone in the Westcotte family. Why would you even say that? I was sworn to protect you—that was my highest calling!”

“Higher than rebelling against the very nobility you protected?” Eira may not have had memories of life before the uprising, but she knew that swaths of the nobility were culled during the uprising. Only those who immediately bowed down to the Iron Empire kept their titles—and their heads.

“Yes.” He placed a hand on her arm and Eira shook it off.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Okay.” He put his hands up. “I’ve left some things out, and I can understand why that would scare you. But this is not the place to—”

Hugo was interrupted by an arrow as it shot past them, burying itself in a nearby tree and narrowly missing his head.

They turned to see three soldiers approaching them from the woods, Iron Retinue sigils on their armor.

“Run,” Hugo whispered.

“And go where?” Eira hissed back. They were nearly an hour’s ride outside of Fallstead, and who knew how far outside of another town.

“How do they keepfindingme?” Hugo said to himself as he unsheathed his sword and another arrow flew over his shoulder, narrowly missing Eira this time.

As soon as Hugo unsheathed his sword, the two archers fell back. Eira watched them put away their bows, swapping them for dark iron daggers.

Hugo strode to the big one in the armor, and Eira hoped that it was just a normal human—not whatever the horrible specter had been that they’d fought before.

“Sir Patrick,” he said, somehow knowing the soldier without him ever speaking. “I’d recognize those slumped shoulders anywhere.”

“Hugo Venton,” a deep voice boomed out of the helmeted head. “You are a traitor to the Iron Empire, and an enemy of the lord general. You have been sentenced to death—your iron is rusted.”

Eira had still been staring at the large knight until she noticed the other two soldiers, these two smaller and leather-clad, creeping forward. One of them was moving directly toward her.

She felt around her pockets quickly for the dagger she always kept on her person, the dagger that had dispatched the other monstrous knight, pulling it out of the pocket in her skirt and holding it out in front of her. She silently thanked Hugo for picking it up off the ground that night; she’d been so focused on his wound that she’d have forgotten it... and been left without anything to fight with at all right now.