Chapter 19: Maverick

Somewhere in the Belleming Wood, Deep within the Delosian Forests

It had taken Neva exactly one mile to realize that they were heading in the direction of Karil and to question their guide, once again, about where she was taking them. Calliope had promised it would be safe a thousand times and she didn't look Karilish. But Maverick couldn't ignore the fact that they were heading closer and closer to enemy territory on the promise of a total stranger with every step. Nor could he ignore the glinting dagger on Calliope's belt that swung with every step she took. When he had pointed it out to Neva, his protector had slowly begun to unsheath her own blade but Maverick had ordered her to put it away, to trust this strange girl until she gave them a reason not to. Besides, Maverick could think of far worse places to hide from his assassins than in some far away home of a pretty girl.

As night began to fall, they busied themselves with making camp. Calliope started a fire, a task which she claimed to have a vast amount of experience with. Neva gathered firewood, refusing to allow Maverick to venture off too far into the dark on his own. Maverick fetched water from a nearby stream, picking a few berries from a bush he noticed on his way back.

As they all settled in around the fire, Maverick peered off in the direction from which they'd come, stunned at how far they'd already managed to travel in a day. He stretched out his muscles as he sat beside Neva on a fallen log near the fire, kicking out his long legs and leaning back so that his hood fell back to reveal his face. He didn't make any move to fix it. He wasn't concerned about running into any court aristocrats out here in the woods and he highly doubted the strange girl he had never met before would recognize him by his face alone. Still, Neva frowned at his newfound comfort.

"Are you going to tell us where you're taking us?" Neva growled after a moment, turning her glare onto their guide who was currently poking the fire with a long stick to keep up the flames. Most people shrunk away from Neva's glare. She had a way of being very intimidating when she wanted to. But Calliope just smiled, keeping her eyes on the fire.

"If I did, you wouldn't believe me," she said.

"Try me," Neva replied, though it came across as more of a threat than a method of conversation.

"Have you heard of the Ysuelt?"

"The monster hunters?" Maverick asked, sitting forward with interest. Calliope looked up at him then and smiled. He couldn't help the way the corners of his lips quirked up in response.

"I'm one of them."

Maverick's lips parted in surprise. Neva's brows furrowed as she shook her head in disbelief.

"That's not possible," Neva said. "They're an ancient order. Only men are ever admitted. Orphans and boys cast aside with strong genetics they can groom to hunt their monsters."

"And me," Calliope replied with a shrug. She acted as though Neva's description of the Ysuelt didn't bother her but Maverick could tell it did. He was no stranger to the feeling of notbelonging.

"Wow," Neva breathed, actually stunned for the first time in her life.

"So why were you in the capital?" Maverick asked then. "No monsters ever venture within miles of the city and I'm not aware of any reports–"

Neva's gaze snapped to him, warning him to shut his mouth. A common peasant wouldn't have been given reports on monsters or on anything else for that matter.

"No monsters," Calliope answered. If she had noticed his slip up, she made no indication. "I was looking for something."

"Did you find it?"

"To be determined."

Maverick smiled. Calliope shrugged. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of berries. He began to toss one into his mouth but Calliope jumped across the fire and slapped them away.

"Those are blightberries!" she screamed. "What do you think you're doing?"

Maverick gaped at her. Neva glared at him. Calliope looked between them and then her shoulders relaxed.

"Who are you?" she asked then. "Really."

Maverick frowned.

"I don't know what you–"

"Every peasant I've encountered from here to the Karilish border knows the sight of a blightberry. The cloak that you've kept suspiciously high ever since we left the city is finely made. Your companion here has incredible leatherette armor the likes of which I've only seen on the Ysuelt or highly ranked soldiers. And that secret passageway out of the city you just happened to know about–"

"Fine," Maverick said then. Neva cast him a warning glance but he held up a hand to wave her off. "You're right. I'm no peasant."

Calliope crossed her arms and smiled victoriously, waiting for him to explain himself.

"I'm the fourth son of a local country lord. I may have been a tad too... flirtatious with the Princess Seraphina. Apparently, Idorian spirituality does not extend to expressions of the physical form," Maverick lied beautifully. Still, he watched Calliope for any indication that she wasn't buying his story. For a moment, he thought he was caught. But then her lips spread into an amused grin and she chuckled, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

"I should have guessed it was something like that," she replied. "I should have guessed the moment I saw your face."

"Why?" Maverick asked with a smirk. "Because of my stunning good looks?"

She snorted.

"Something like that," she muttered before kicking dirt into the fire and laying down with her cloak.

The next morning, they rose early and set off, pausing along the way so that Neva and Calliope could hunt for their breakfast. Feeling relatively useless while they were gone, Maverick busied himself with the collection of berries that looked like they might not kill them all. But when Calliope and Neva returned, he was once again humbled as Calliope took one look at his stash and dumped half of them on the ground before ordering him to wash his hands clean in the river to remove any remaining toxins.

Neva joined him, trying not to laugh beside him as she rinsed her own hands and the berries that had been deemed safe for consumption.

"The girl can hunt," Neva said in a low voice as they knelt by the river. "I'll give her that."

Maverick glanced over his shoulder to where Calliope sat, the frayed edges of her cloak stained red with blood.

"And skin a rabbit, apparently," he muttered.

"Three rabbits."

Maverick raised a brow. Neva shrugged.

"I lived a life before you, you know," she told him.

"Someday, I want to hear all about it," he replied and found that he meant it. "For now, at least we know why she keeps taking us closer to Karil. The Ysuelt dwelling is just on the border."

Neva nodded.

"King Jareth will have sent scouts out by now. My father as well. If we could find a group of them, infiltrate them if they aren't Delosi, gain some useful intelligence. I'm still not convinced that this alliance will hold and if my country is in danger–"

"You are in danger, Mav," Neva whispered with an irritated sigh, sitting back on her haunches as she turned to look at him. "What about that are you not comprehending?"

"Neva," Maverick replied, his voice gone soft. "This is my country."

She frowned but gave him a nod of understanding. He placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled.

"If you two are finished," Calliope called out, "we should get going. We're burning daylight as it is."

Neva and Maverick nodded, standing and wiping their hands on their trousers as Calliope approached, three dead and skinned rabbits slung over her shoulder. She knelt down to the river long enough to wash the blood from her hands and take a sip. Then she stood back up, red-tinged river water running down her chin.

"We'll have the rabbits for dinner," she told him. "Berries for breakfast but you'll eat on the road. Let's go."

Without waiting for an answer, Calliope pushed past them and led the way through the trees. Maverick watched her go with a smile before Neva elbowed him hard in the ribs and sauntered away. He snorted and followed.

They walked all day and never saw so much as a sign of anyone else journeying through the forest. That wasn't all that surprising. When war started, trade stopped. The merchants who had always been the most frequent travellers of the forest would have refrained from doing so right after the battle, uncertain of the times ahead and not wanting to get shot with a stray arrow after one side mistook them for a soldier from the other. So the main road would have been deserted enough. But Calliope wasn't taking them on the main road. In fact, she seemed to be avoiding it at every cost.

She seemed to know these woods better than Maverick could even say he knew the palace, the place he grew up in, the place he lived his entire life. When one path washed out, she took another. When one plain was flooded, they went around it. When a tree fell in her way, she either climbed over it or changed directions, promising this other way was shorter anyway. It leant a bit more credibility to her Ysuelt claim. Even if Neva still refused to believe she had been telling them the truth about her place in the ancient order.

It was on the fifth day, when they had finally left the forest and were walking up a slow, grassy incline that seemed it would never end, when Maverick had had enough of Neva's whispered doubts about Calliope's story and decided to challenge them himself.

"So you expect me to believe that you hunt terrifying, fierce monsters with that little dagger of yours?" Maverick asked as they walked. Calliope grinned and glanced his way.

"Typically, I have a sword as well," she replied. "But it's not as good for travel. A fair deal more conspicuous, no?"

"Swords, you say."

Then Maverick ran off so suddenly that both Calliope and Neva called after him in their confusion. He found a few long sticks at the bottom of a nearby oak tree that would do nicely and jogged back to where the girls stood, waiting. He tossed one stick in the air and caught it where a sword's handle would be. The other, he offered to Calliope with a grin.

"Show me what you've got," he challenged, raising a brow. "Monster hunter."

Calliope smiled, considering it once before reaching out and taking the makeshift sword.

"Quinn," Neva warned.

"Relax, Neva," Maverick replied. "You're far too cautious."

Neva frowned, crossing her arms and jutting out her hip the way she did when she was annoyed. Maverick ignored her, raising his brow higher in challenge and waiting for Calliope to strike.

When she finally did, it was with a precision that he hadn't seen coming. If he had been a split second later, he would not have been able to block the sudden blow to his ribs. Eyes widening a fraction, he looked back up to see that Calliope was grinning like a madwoman. How intriguing.

He shuffled back. She lunged, he parried. He brought his stick over his head in an arc but it was met by hers, thrust upward to meet him. She danced to the side and slashed out. He spun away just inches from the blow which had actually caught his cloak and ripped a small but noticeable hole in it.

"This is foolish," Neva huffed, throwing her hands in the air and storming away.

But Maverick paid her no mind, too focused, instead, on this pretend sword fight he was locked in with the strange monster hunting girl. She was good, he had to admit, very good. So good that he was just starting to wonder if he might actually lose when she struck too close and lost her balance, falling forward. Her stick clattered to the ground as she threw her hands out to stop her fall. Maverick reached out to catch her and they both went tumbling into the dirt.

They laid there for a moment, Calliope fully on top of him, their eyes locked together, chests rising and falling against one another. She blinked. His lips parted and her gaze slid to them. He leaned forward.

"Guys!" someone cried and they snapped out of it.

Calliope scrambled off of him, dusting herself off and turning away so that he wouldn't notice her blush. Maverick helped himself up after that, almost deliriously happy at what had nearly happened.

"Sorry," Calliope muttered. "I didn't mean–"

"Over here, guys, come on," Neva was still shouting.

Calliope cleared her throat, tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and marched over to Neva. Maverick, still smiling, adjusted his cloak before joining them.

He had half a mind to scold Neva for her interruption but, when he crested the hill and joined them at the top, all thoughts of irritation fled his mind at once. They were standing on top of a mountain, not a hill. Somehow, Calliope had been leading them steadily upwards all this time. And below them sat a valley, carved from jagged rock. On the other side of this expansive valley was a stronghold so beautiful and well-hidden that Maverick had to check twice to ensure it was really there. But it was. Carved right into the side of the mountain itself, set the Ysuelt dwelling of legends.

They were here.