Page 103 of Harbinger

TWENTY

The weathered stone pillar at the crossroads feels older than the road itself, as if it’s been waiting for these kinds of choices longer than I’ve been alive. I reach the ancient milestone with my heart still lodged somewhere behind me, pounding like it’s trying to catch up. Above me, constellations burn as though nothing in the world is out of place. Except for that single star blazing in the Night’s Scar—and now me.

I pull my cloak tighter around my shoulders and try not to imagine Bishop standing at the window, reading the note I left behind. He won’t find it until morning—after I’m long gone. Thankfully, I have a new problem to deal with: the crossroads are deserted. A sharp jab of panic rises past my already crippling anxiety.

“Because I needed one more thing to worry about,” I grumble as my mind begins racing with all the potential disasters keeping Kieren away.

But before I can turn around, Kieren emerges, breathless, from the dark with a pack slung over his shoulder. Relief floods his face when he sees me. He grins like this is an adventure instead of an escape, but there’s a weariness in his dark eyes.

“You came.” He sounds genuinely surprised as he gives me a quick hug.

“I couldn’t let you get into all the trouble without me.” Joy surges through the fear I’ve felt since I left Miradores. A quick burst of sunlight on a cloudy day.

“Let’s get going.” He grabs my bag and throws it over his other shoulder as if it weighs no more than a sack of flour before I can protest.

We walk side by side toward Wolf’s Keep, our footsteps the only sound on the empty road. Kieren fills the silence the way he always does when he senses I’m retreating into myself. He talks about ships and places where no one knows our names.

It’s almost enough to keep my thoughts from wandering back to the crumbling estate I left behind or the uncertainty facing us. For the first time, I notice he isn’t wearing his sword, and my heart sinks a few inches. “How are we paying for this?”

“I sold some things. The astrolabe. Other stuff.” His grin is sheepish. “I know it wasn’t really mine.”

But I shrug. It’s probably better that my brother doesn’t have a way to reach him. And Broderic’s wrath is the least of our problems right now. “It can’t have been worth much.”

“It wasn’t,” he says grimly, “but it’s enough to secure our passage.”

“And what exactly are we going to do once we get there?”

“I don’t know.” But he doesn’t sound worried. I’m glad one of us is optimistic, especially since I keep listening for the sounds of people coming to drag the deserter and the harbinger back. “I figure I can work on the boat, and I hear sailors love Liar’s Hand. I can make some money that way.”

I question his sources. “Where did you hear that?”

“The guys who taught me how to play this afternoon in the Commons.”

I resist the urge to grimace. “I’m not sure gambling is a solid plan.”

Especially betting on a game he only learned a few hours ago.

“Life is a gamble.” He bumps his broad shoulder against mine. “The only way to lose is if you don’t play.”

“There are other ways to lose,” I point out, but his excitement is infectious. Still, my fingers keep checking the clasp of my cloak, as if the mark below it might burn through the fabric if I stop touching it and give us away somehow.

“And who knows if I can make something of myself on the continent,” he says lightly. “Maybe I’ll come back with enough coin that Isidore won’t pretend I’m invisible anymore.”

I don’t have the heart to remind him that he’ll be charged with treason if he comes back. It doesn’t matter if he’s moved on to predicting how long we’ll be at sea.

I let his voice wash over me, the sound comforting after weeks apart. It’s the sound of my childhood. Of afternoons spent listening to him in the fields, the two of us flinging dirt clods at each other when it was too hot to work—and Broderic wasn’t watching.

He’s technically a guard, but that title never fit him. He was always beside me in those fields, our boots muddy as we navigated every painfully awkward moment of growing up. Like when he caught Coen Hawthorn giving me my first kiss in the barn and made puckering faces at me for weeks behind everyone else’s backs. Or when I found him with Hanna Aster by the plow shed two summers later and made the same face behind her back. Kieren turned beet red and chased me halfway across the orchard. Probably afraid I’d tell Isidore.

He stayed by my side the night my mother died, when I couldn’t believe the sun would rise in the morning. Held my hand when we lost my father. He’s been with me every step. Maybe that’s why coming to Vennaro never felt right. He wasn’t here. And as terrified as I am of leaving all I’ve ever known behind, with him, it will be an adventure.

“You’re quiet again,” he says after a few more minutes of him carrying the conversation. “Are you afraid?”

“Yes,” I admit. Only a fool wouldn’t be.

“Of going to the Lost Continent?” he asks softly.

I know he’ll understand. The trouble is, I don’t quite understand it myself.