Chapter 8

Kosha was released around noon that day. He had skipped breakfast entirely to prepare the medicine, and now his empty stomach protested with a long, mournful growl.

The heavy chapel door swung open, and Gosrick strode into the room. “What’s so funny? Why are you grinning like that?”

Some trace of Kosha’s earlier smile must have remained on his face, because the knight tossed a small black sack at him with an impatient scowl. Kosha fumbled with the coarse fabric before managing to catch it, only then realizing that it was barely large enough to fit over a man’s head.

“Put it on. I’m taking you home.”

“Right now?” Kosha hesitated as his thoughts began to race. Already? Just like that?

“Then, um… what about His Highness?”

Gosrick fixed him with a flat, unyielding stare. “What about him?”

“Is he all right?”

The knight’s brow furrowed into a deep scowl. Unable to make sense of the hostility in his expression, Kosha nervously worried at a hangnail until Gosrick finally broke the tense silence.

“Yeah. You cured him, didn’t you?”

“Oh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You didn’t half-ass it, did you?”

“No, of course not!”

Intimidated by the sudden severity in Gosrick’s voice, Kosha shook his head vehemently and raised both hands in frantic denial. At the same time, relief swept through him so powerfully that his knees nearly weakened.

Thank goodness. He’s all right.

The warmth of that relief soon soured into bitter disappointment.

If they were sending him away, he would probably never see Lucien again. Foolish as the hope might have been, Kosha had wanted permission to visit his patient one last time. A strange hollowness settled deep in his chest as he lingered there, but Gosrick swiftly shattered his quiet reflection.

“Stop dawdling. I’m a busy man, and His Highness is busier still.” Gosrick stepped closer, looming over him with open disdain. “You should be grateful I’m sending you home with your head still attached.”

Put in such stark terms, Kosha could hardly argue. He swallowed his lingering disappointment with a generous dose of survival instinct.

“Are you going to move or not?”

Kosha flinched at the sudden bark and hurriedly pulled the black sack over his head.

In many respects, the blind journey home proved far more grueling than his initial abduction. Losing consciousness on the way there had apparently been a hidden mercy. Gosrick shoved him onto the saddle and spurred the massive horse onward, treating Kosha less like a human being than a troublesome sack of grain.

After a brutal, unrelenting gallop during which Gosrick showed not the slightest concern for his passenger, Kosha finally tumbled from the saddle. He staggered blindly toward a nearby tree, clung to its rough trunk, and retched violently until the muscles in his stomach cramped.

“A grown man getting sick from a little horseback ride…” Gosrick muttered from his high perch, watching the pathetic display with undisguised contempt.

Kosha peeled the sack from his head and discovered that they had stopped on the outskirts of a secluded village. Few travelers used the overgrown footpath anymore, not since the construction of the new main road. The decrepit wooden sign bearing the name Osterbeek had been left to the elements, weathered into a miserable and pitiful ruin.

As Kosha wiped his mouth and struggled to steady his ragged breathing, a heavy leather purse landed at his feet with a dull thud.

“Here.” Gosrick gestured toward it. “Take it and go home quietly.”

The knight’s voice was clipped and utterly final. Kosha hesitated, his bewildered gaze shifting between the bulging coin purse and the man who had thrown it, but Gosrick dismissed him with an impatient flick of his wrist.

“Don’t bother arguing. Consider it hush money.”

Ah.

The realization struck Kosha all at once. He had been terrified, unable to understand why such dangerous men would give gold to someone who ought to consider himself fortunate merely to breathe free air again. Hush money, however, made perfect sense.

He had never intended to babble about the incident anyway, and he was certainly in no position to refuse a bribe from a royal knight. Bending into a deep, awkward bow, Kosha scooped up the purse.

“Thank you. I won’t say anything. I swear I won’t tell a single soul.”

“See that you don’t.”

Gosrick’s piercing gaze swept over the healer from head to toe, delivering a silent warning far more eloquent than any spoken threat. He jerked sharply on the reins, wheeled his horse around, and barked, “Hyah!”

At the command and the sharp kick to its flanks, the beast surged forward. It thundered along the dirt path, carrying Gosrick away until both knight and horse vanished as abruptly as they had first appeared.

Left entirely alone in the sudden, ringing silence, Kosha stared down the empty road.

The entire harrowing ordeal felt less like waking reality than the lingering fragments of some bizarre, feverish dream.

***