“I better not.” She slipped into the woods, leaving the four of us to trail after her. I grinned. No matter what she wanted me to think of her, I knew the truth: she wasn’t nearly as bad as she pretended to be.
* * *
We spent the rest of the day in camp. I showed Mac how to make sure a cooked rabbit stayed juicy; Perry and Sprout tidied up in between wrestling matches; and Tuck examined our bounty, though her hand was never far from that pendant.
It was nice—almost domestic, something I’d never had before. The council rarely spent time together in groups of more than two or three, and the way the boys laughed and played—it really was a family. Tuck was more an older sister than a mother, but they all deferred to her regardless, and while Perry occasionally called for her to join them, she stubbornly remained sitting.
There was something different about the way she held herself, too. A secretive smile danced across her lips, and she was more relaxed, more confident, not as nervous as she’d been before. Almost as if she’d conquered the unconquerable. I slid closer to her.
“You look happy,” I said, and her smile vanished. “So how do you know that earl?”
“What’s it to you?” she said.
I shrugged. “Just curious. You don’t seem to like him much.”
“Not many people do.”
“So what’s your reason?”
She sighed. “You’re obnoxious, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told. You still haven’t answered my question.”
She tugged on her braid, staring into the fire. It was twilight now, and if I’d wanted to, I could’ve gone back to Olympus. But as far as I was concerned, I was staying right here for the foreseeable future.
“He killed my mother,” she finally said. “And he’s the reason their fathers are dead.” She nodded to the boys, who either were ignoring us or couldn’t hear her soft voice over their own laughter. “That’s why we all banded together.”
“How did he do all that?” I said, and she gave me an odd look.
“The war? Weren’t the men of your village recruited? Weren’t you?”
I frowned. “Why do you assume I lived in a village?”
“Well, you weren’t raised by wolves, were you?”
In a manner of speaking. “So this man—this earl, he sent all of your fathers off to war?”
“And killed my mother,” she added. “That’s important.”
“So what does the pendant have to do with it?”
She stared down at the necklace, brushing her thumb almost wistfully against the blue jewel. “I already told you. It’s—”
“Worth more than I could possibly imagine,” I finished. “I still don’t believe you.”
“Too bad.” She glanced into the purple sky. The stars were just beginning to appear. “Can you keep an eye on the boys? I have somewhere I need to be.”
“Yeah? Where’s that?”
“I know a guy who will buy the loot we can’t use.”
“Like your pendant?”
Her fingers tightened around it. No way was she letting that go anytime soon. “Yeah, like the pendant.”
“Let me come with you. You shouldn’t go on your own.”
Her eyes flashed. “Why? Because I’m a girl, and I need your protection?”
I snorted. “The day you need my protection is the day the sun rises in the west. I’m good with trade, that’s all. I could make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.”
She mumbled a curse under her breath. “If I let you come, will you stop asking stupid questions?”
“Only if you promise to be honest with me from here on out.”
“When have I not been honest with you?” she said. I nodded to the pendant.
“Right there.”
Tuck stood. “I’ll think about it. Are you coming or what?”
Leaping effortlessly to my feet, I gave her a grin. “You won’t regret this.”
“I already do. Mac, you’re in charge,” she called, trudging into the woods. I gave the three boys a wink and followed.
For most of the journey, silence hung between us. Tuck looked about as willing to talk as Hades did most of the time, and I tried to come up with a way to ease her into it. There was a reason I’d wound up here with her, and if she wasn’t willing to talk to me, then I might as well accept the imminent death of my entire family.
Right. Not gonna happen.
I cleared my throat as we worked our way over a fallen tree. “It’s great of you to take care of the boys like you do.”
She shrugged. “We take care of each other.”
“What’s your plan?” I said. “I mean, are you going to be robbing the wealthy when you’re eighty?”
Tuck let out a hoarse, almost violent laugh. “Please. At this rate I’ll be lucky to see twenty. In three years,” she added before I could ask.
“How long have you been out here on your own?” I said.
“Six months. We make do.”
Six months—so the spring and summer. Persephone’s seasons. “What about the cold months?”
She slipped in the narrow space between two trees and said nothing. I walked around them to rejoin her.
“Have you thought that far ahead yet?”
“I’ve let you join us, haven’t I?” she snapped. “How do you survive the winter?”