(Landy POV)
I would rather fight ten men with my bare hands than have one more "conversation" with Ross.
The boy was a demon. A small, wiry, endlessly inventive demon who had dedicated himself to my personal torment disguised as education. First, it was standing like a fool. Then, it was saying words that felt like gravel in my mouth. Now, this. This was the worst.
“You don’t just wait for your turn to talk,” Ross was saying, pacing in front of me like a miniature general. We were in a relatively clear spot near the water’s edge, the morning sun dappling through the cypress canopy. “You actually listen. Find a thread in what she’s saying and pull it. Show genuine interest.”
“Genuine interest,” I repeated, the words flat. My idea of a conversation was a grunt of acknowledgement or a swift, direct question. You see that snake? Where’s the fresh water? How’s your mother? This… this was a different kind of battle, one with rules I couldn’t grasp.
“Right. So, I’m going to be a boring Duke at a ball. A very, very boring Duke. Your job is to listen and ask a follow-up question. Ready?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He puffed out his chest, put on a haughty, nasal voice, and began. “I say, the roads from Mobile are simply dreadful this time of year. Absolutely dreadful.”
He looked at me expectantly.
I stared back. What in God’s name was I supposed to say to that? Good? I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been on a road without chains.
Ross sighed, the sound full of profound disappointment. “No. Wrong. You don’t just agree. You find the thread. The roads. So you ask: ‘What was the worst part of the journey?’ or ‘Do you find the carriages in Louisiana to be less robust than those in Mobile?’ Something. Anything.”
This was more exhausting than a death match. In the pit, you read a man’s body, the shift of his weight, the flicker in his eyes. Here, I was supposed to read meaningless words about roads.
“Let’s try again,” Ross said, his patience clearly a thin veneer. “The roads from Mobile are simply dreadful this time of year.”
I took a deep, steadying breath, imagining I was disarming a man instead of discussing travel. “What… what made them so dreadful?” I ground out.
Ross’s face lit up. It was a strange sight. For a moment, he didn’t look like a grubby swamp urchin; he looked… sharp. Brilliant. “Yes! Good! See? Now I’m forced to elaborate, and you seem engaged!” He dropped the Duke voice. “It’s about creating a connection, Landy. It makes a person feel… heard.”
Heard. The word struck a chord deep within me, a place I kept locked away. It was what I had never been. It was what I had always tried to make Rose feel. I’d listen to her talk about her books, the flowers in the garden, her secret fears, and I’d hang on every word, not because the topics fascinated me, but because the sound of her voice, the light in her eyes when she felt heard, was everything.
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But I couldn’t summon that for a fictional Duke. The only person I wanted to have a conversation with was ash and memory.
“Let’s just do the fighting part,” I muttered, feeling a familiar gloom settle over me. “I’m better at that.”
“Life isn’t all fighting,” Ross said, his voice softer now. “Sometimes, the most dangerous battles are fought with words in a crowded room. Now, again. The roads from Mobile…”
He was cut off by a sound that was becoming disgustingly familiar: the whistle of an arrow.
This one wasn’t a warning shot. It slammed into the cypress tree where Ross’s head had been a second before, the arrowhead burying itself deep in the wood with a vicious thunk.
Instinct took over. I lunged, tackling Ross to the ground as a second arrow whipped through the space he’d just occupied. We scrambled behind a massive, moss-covered log that had fallen generations ago, our refuge of rotting wood.
Thud. Thud.
Two more arrows hammered into the other side of the log in rapid succession.This wasn’t a blundering bounty hunter. This was a marksman. Patient. Precise. He had us pinned.
I peered over the top, just for a second. A flicker of movement in a tall water oak about fifty yards away. Another arrow zipped past my ear, close enough to feel the wind of its passage.
“Skilled,” I grunted, ducking back down. “One man. In a tree. We’re fish in a barrel.”
Ross was breathing hard, his eyes wide, but not with blind panic. They were darting, calculating. He looked at me, and to my utter horror, I saw a gleam of opportunity in them.
“Okay,” he hissed, his voice tight but firm. “Conversation practice! Now!”
I stared at him. “Have you lost your mind? There’s a man trying to put an arrow through our lungs!”
“And we’re pinned! So we might as well be productive!” he shot back, as if this was the most logical thing in the world. “I’m the boring Duke. Go!”
Another arrow thudded into the log, spraying us with splinters. My heart was a war drum in my chest. This was insanity. But Ross’s methods, however mad, had worked before. Against my every instinct, I listened.
I took a ragged breath. “SO…” I yelled, my voice booming over the swamp, “THE WEATHER HAS BEEN… UNPREDICTABLE, HASN’T IT?”
The arrow fire stopped. I could almost feel the archer’s confusion emanating from the oak tree. Ross, crouched beside me, peeked over the log for a split second.
“Good!” he whisper-shouted, a wild grin on his face. “Follow-up question!”
What followed-up the weather? My mind, trained for combat, was a complete blank. The only thing I could think of was the relentless, suffocating damp of this hellish swamp.
“DO YOU…” I bellowed, feeling like the world’s most ridiculous fool, “PREFER THE RAIN OR THE SUN?!”
Silence. The birds had stopped singing. The only sound was the thrum of insects and the echo of my own idiotic question hanging in the air.
And in that silence, I heard it. A low, incredulous chuckle from the water oak. A moment of pure, human bafflement.
It was the distraction we needed.
As the archer was momentarily disarmed by the sheer absurdity of being asked about his meteorological preferences in the middle of an assassination attempt, I popped up from behind the log. Not a frantic, panicked movement, but the smooth, uncoiling rise of the Chevalier.
I didn’t have a gun. But I had a skinning knife.
I saw him then,a lean man in a grey tunic, half-hidden in the branches, his bow half-lowered. Our eyes met. His widened in surprise.
My arm snapped forward. The knife flew from my hand, a spinning sliver of steel. It wasn’t a killing throw; it was a message. The blade buried itself in the tree trunk mere inches from his head, the hilt vibrating with a menacing hum.
He flinched back, lost his footing, and with a cry of shock, tumbled from the branch. There was a crash of foliage and a heavy, satisfying thump as he hit the ground. He didn’t get up.
The swamp was silent again.
I slowly sank back behind the log, my heart still pounding, but now with a different kind of adrenaline. Triumph. And sheer, unadulterated disbelief.
Ross peered over the log, surveyed the scene, then looked back at me. He brushed a piece of moss from his shoulder, his expression one of pure, academic satisfaction.
“See?” he said, as if it was the most obvious conclusion in the world. “Conversation saves lives.”
I just looked at him, this scrawny, brilliant, utterly mad boy who used words as both shield and sword. He’d taken a moment of certain death and turned it into another lesson. He was remaking me, not just into a man who could woo a lady, but into a man who could think his way through anything.
A laugh burst out of me, rough and unexpected. It felt good. “You,” I said, shaking my head in wonder. “You are something else, Ross.”
He smiled, a quick, bright thing that, for a heartbeat, made him look unsettlingly familiar. “I know,” he said. “Now, let’s go see if our chatty friend has any other opinions to share. I’m particularly curious about his views on… interior decorating.”
As we rose to approach the downed archer, a strange thought settled in my mind. In the middle of all this madness and death, with this strange boy as my guide, I was, for the first time since the fire, starting to feel alive.