40. Killian

CHAPTER FORTY

KILLIAN

B eing home was awful, and for the first time, I truly understood why Mother had gone and gotten herself killed.

It wasn't just the boredom. While that was annoying, I could have lived with it. There were always books to do, or hells, books to read if I ran out of paperwork, which was frankly unlikely, after spending nearly a month away from home.

But there had been southerners in Hawk lands.

And four months earlier, southerners landing in that boat north of the wall as we'd traveled home. The southerners were, for the first time in centuries, trying new ways to get to us. To murder us.

Part of me was impressed that some of them had let go of their hidebound nonsense. Maybe soon they would bring their women with them on these expeditions, when they realized women often made the best tacticians.

But most of me was just frightened.

We'd had a solid way to hold the southerners back. To keep Nemeda safe. And they were taking that away from us. It made me want to fight back in the ways we never had before. Invade them, kill their people and take their land. The only way we could be sure they would stop attacking us forever was if we eradicated them. Wiped them from the face of the world.

But that was my anger talking. My frustration with my current inability to walk the wall and defend my people.

Things were more precarious than they had ever been in my lifetime. Twice, southerners had been seen inside Nemeda. Once a mere stone's throw from the homes of innocents who had no ability to fight them.

And there was me, sitting on my ass half the day because I wasn't healed enough to fight yet.

Worse still, people were fucking babying me. Bringing me lunch and checking in and asking me how I was . Like I was a sickly child and might take a turn for the worse at any moment.

It made me want to apologize to Hector for hiding him away from the wall and treating him like he was too precious to fight. I had, in fact, more than once.

The bastard had laughed at me and told me that I could say it again when I wasn't so annoyed with my own convalescence, if I truly meant it.

He wasn't wrong, but it was still annoying.

Maybe it was even more annoying because he was right.

A clatter in the hall outside my office snatched my attention, and I had a vision of the southerners crawling over Crane Palace like a horrific army of ants, covering every inch of the home my ancestors had built and defended for generations before my birth. Of course I would be the one to?—

The office door flew open to admit a harried young man, who had to stop and pant for breath, resting his hands on his knees, his whole body heaving with the effort.

I pressed up out of my chair, even knowing as I did that if they were attacking the wall, I wasn't allowed to join the fight.

Well, not unless things were so dire that we needed all hands. Even Hector.

But that had never happened. Half of me had been convinced they didn't even have enough men to launch such an attack anymore, with the way their numbers had seemed to thin over the decades. It was like they took the wall itself as a challenge. Scaling it alone was an honor, never mind if they were tossed directly off its peak.

"What is it? Are the southerners attacking? Is there a breach? Have they bypassed the wall again?"

The Raven had started sending parties crisscrossing both of our lands, searching for any signs of southern incursions by boat, but Minerva hadn't sent word of finding anything as yet.

The young man held up a hand, asking me to wait, and I quirked a brow at him. His face flushed even more than it had already been upon his arrival. "Sorry. M'lord. Man. Southerner." He still stopped and panted between each word, but he finally started speaking. Then he said the word that turned my blood to ice. "Smithy."

Without listening to another sound from him, I was up, rushing past, almost running down the hallway. My leg still wouldn't allow me to move as quickly as I wanted to, but I had to be there. I had to see Hector, to see him safe and hale and whole, immediately.

The young man who'd brought the stilted message started trying to follow, but he was even slower than myself.

I burst through the smithy doors with all the strength I had in me, barely keeping hold of my balance, and only too late remembering that I didn't even have a fucking weapon in my hands. Why carry a spear around the palace on days when I wasn't going to be allowed to fight? I certainly wasn't going to treat it like a fucking cane and balance my weight on it.

The smithy was silent, which in itself was unnatural. Oh, the fire still roared, but there was none of the usual clanging of hammers, hiss of hot metal put to water, or chatter of the workers there.

The workers all stood in a semi-circle with Hector and Abram on one end, looking at something in the middle. Nothing was happening, no fight, no shouting, not even conversation.

I didn't give two fucks about what they were looking at, because first I had to go to Hector. To put my hands on his skin and assure myself that he was well. I rushed to his side, grabbing his arm and spinning him to face me.

No blood. No expression of pain. No fear.

Well, until he laid eyes on me. "Killian. What are you doing here? Are you okay?"

"I sent Tad to tell him what happened," Abram said, his eyes still glued to the corner of the room.

I rolled my eyes at that. "He managed to make it to my office, and I believe his exact words were ‘man, southerner, smithy.' He was barely breathing. He's in quite poor shape for a smith worker."

"We don't usually do a lot of running," one of the other men defended, but it was half-hearted, and he didn't stop staring into the corner either.

Finally, I turned to look at what none but Hector seemed able to glance away from.

A man, crumpled in a heap, but conscious. Clutching his ribs as though they pained him. A man with golden hair and blue eyes, wearing an emblem of one of the southern houses, staring in terror.

I cast my eyes about, looking for the nearest weapon.

Hector had a hammer in his hands.

That connected the moment in my mind. The man wasn't staring at the lot of us in fear. Only Hector.

I reached down to take the hammer in his hands, and the look of fear transferred to me. As well it fucking should. I took a step toward him, ready to take out all my simmering anger on the bastard who had dared come into my smithy. Threatened my fucking Hector.

I'd smash his skull open all over the smithy floor.

I froze when Hector's arms came around me. "Don't."

I turned, incredulous, to look at him. " Don't? Did he not come here to kill you?"

"Maybe," Hector admitted. "But . . . I want . . . He's alive. I want to talk to him."

Ah. That was an impulse I knew all too fucking well. Carlyle.

But I wasn't my mother, and I had no doubt Hector wouldn't spill our secrets to the enemy. If he needed this to satisfy some sad curiosity, then he would have it. I flipped the hammer in my hand and held it back out to Hector, then turned to look at the bastard southerner. "Someone go get the guards. I'd have him secured, so he can't do any further damage, with however the fuck he got in here."

Another of the smithy workers rushed off, and Abram murmured something to a third about a healer. I squinted at him, and he shrugged at me. "Hector's broken a fair few of his ribs with his hammer swing. Boy has a hell of an arm. Don't want the southlander to die before your consort has his answers, do you?"

Once more, the whole room seemed to freeze.

My consort.

And yet.

I pursed my lips at Abram and sighed. "Fine. A healer."