Sienna leaned heavily against Larkson’s side. He had her good arm slung over his shoulder as they struggled up the rise in the snow. Sornir lurked behind them. The ice cuffs kept him compliant to their lead—for now.
Sienna was fading in and out of red-black pain, the snowflakes welcome splotches of cold against her face. As one of Larkson’s personal guard, she had never suffered an injury until now. As a soldier, she had suffered constantly—sometimes in training, sometimes in battle, and sometimes on a routine tour of the kingdom. There was never really a moment she wasn’t nursing some wound or ache.
As Larksin’s bodyguard, she’d lived a relatively easy life. The training was harder—now including poisons, private messages, and even some diplomacy. But it was less scrapes and aches. The prince was not in such danger quite so often as the common soldier, but when he was, that was the moment her life became nothing. She was a human shield.
She could have had it much worse. Every one of the others had been killed. The highly trained crown guards, years of expense and skill snuffed out in one go. And Sienna would have gone with them, had not Larkson personally defended her as she defended him.
Sienna shut her eyes against the hypnotizing swirl of white. They had done their job. The prince had survived, and now she was the only one left. She was too deep in the black to tell what Sornir was doing behind them. There were a lot of stunts he could try to pull with her in this state and the prince half supporting her through snow drifts—even with the cuffs on.
“There,” Larkson said, his voice both close and muffled by the blizzard. “We’ll just make it to that overhang.” They had been traveling through the mountains, before the snow had begun in earnest. Before the undead goras had left a bloodbath in the white.
For a moment, Sienna wondered if any of this was worth it. Kingdoms rose and fell, along with their queens and princes. Maybe she wouldn’t continue on with any of this, but it was different with Sornir here. She had two different men on her hands. It would be far more dangerous to switch her plans now.
Larkson had to clear the snow from the cave entrance for them to enter. Their shelter left them in sudden quiet from the relentless snow and wind.
Larkson set her down heavily on the dry ground. Sornir melted down to the stone close by, smiling in that faintly unctuous way he always did when he was about to turn the tables.
Sienna eyed him in warning, even as she began to pull her arm from her sleeve. Larkson knelt before her, drawing a kit from their solitary haversack. Sienna didn’t wait for him. She snapped the arrow and began to yank it out of her own shoulder, before the lightheadedness made her pause.
Larkson laid a hand over hers, stopping her. “Let me. Ready?” But he didn’t wait for her to reply. He’d already slid the shaft from her shoulder and pressed a clean pad to the wound on either side.
She stared at his hairline, the nearest part of him as he bent over her wound. His sandy hair hung over his forehead, damp with a mixture of sweat and melted snow. Sienna imagined pushing it back, but the very thought disgusted her.
For the next several moments, there was tense silence as he ministered to her injury. He stared intently at the bandage while winding it around her arm. “I thought I’d lost you back there.”
He paused long enough to glance at her face. She stared blankly over his shoulder. “It seems you were determined not to.”
He leaned back, finally out of her space and handed over their carefully rationed food. There wasn’t much to say, really. They had watched all those men and women die, and they had to keep going.