Chapter 5: The Carriage Confines
The Blackwood Chase wasn’t a road. It was a grudging suggestion of a path, swallowed by snarled roots and overhanging branches that clawed at the carriage like bony fingers. Midnight had come and gone, leaving a cold so dense it felt solid in the lungs. Inside the carriage, the world was reduced to sound and shudder.
Every stone, every frozen rut, traveled up through the wheels and into Nadia’s spine. She braced herself against the worn leather seat, her teeth clenched to stop them from chattering. The single candle, guttering in its brass holder, threw monstrous, leaping shadows across Finn’s face. He sat opposite, a still statue in the chaos, one hand braced against the window frame, his gaze fixed on the nothingness outside.
They hadn’t spoken since he’d handed her into this rolling prison.
The messenger boy, whose name was evidently not important enough to share, rode ahead on a fresh horse. They could hear the steady clop of his mount, a sound that seemed to say hurry, hurry, hurry. It was the drumbeat to their forced march.
Nadia’s thin layers were a joke. The cold seeped through the cloak, through the gowns, and settled deep in her marrow. A full-body tremble had begun, a fine, constant vibration she could no longer suppress.
Finn’s eyes slid from the window to her. He’d seen it.
“There’s a blanket under your seat,” he said, his voice low and roughened by the cold. “Wool. It smells of horse. It’s warm.”
She hesitated, then bent, groping in the dark space beneath her. Her fingers closed around coarse, thick fabric. She dragged it out. It did smell of horse, and of old hay, and of damp earth. It was also gloriously, heavily warm. She wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling it tight. The shaking lessened to a sporadic shudder.
“Thank you,” she mouthed.
He gave a short nod and went back to watching the night.
Another mile. Another lifetime of jolting. The carriage dipped suddenly, the left front wheel finding a hole hidden by mulch and shadow. The lurch was violent. Nadia was thrown sideways, the blanket falling from one shoulder. Her head snapped toward the window, her body sliding across the slick leather.
An arm shot out across the space between them. His hand closed around her forearm, just above the wrist. His grip was firm, solid as an oak branch, arresting her momentum before her skull could meet the wall.
The carriage righted itself with a groan. The world steadied.
But his hand remained.
She could feel the calluses through her sleeve. The sheer, contained strength of him, holding her not with aggression, but with simple, undeniable stability. Her skin burned where he touched. It was the most contact she’d had with another person in years that wasn’t a shove, hit, kick, or a punitive grip.
She didn’t pull away. He didn’t let go.
Her eyes lifted to his. In the shuddering candlelight, his face was all planes and shadows, the scar a dark river down its side. His expression was unreadable, but his gaze held hers. It wasn’t the flat, weary look from the tavern. It was searching, assessing. He was waiting for her to flinch, to recoil from the Wolf’s touch.
Nadia made a decision. She stopped holding her breath. She let her arm relax, just a fraction, within his grasp. Not a pull, but a cease-fire.
He felt it. Something in his own posture altered, a subtle release of a tension she hadn’t even fully registered. His thumb shifted, the barest movement against the inside of her wrist. It wasn’t a caress. It was an acknowledgment. A point of contact in the dark.
Outside, the messenger boy called back, his voice thin and worried. “All secure, Your Grace?”
“Drive on,” Finn said, his voice still low, but it didn’t leave the cabin. It stayed with her.
Slowly, he loosened his grip. His fingers slid away, leaving a patch of cool air where his hand had been. She righted herself, pulling the blanket back up. The silence returned, but its texture had changed. It was no longer just empty. It was full of the echo of that grip, the memory of his palm against her sleeve.
“We’ll stop in an hour,” he said, looking back out the window. “To rest the horses. There’s a charcoal-burner’s clearing. It’ll be sheltered.”
She nodded, though he wasn’t looking.
He continued, almost speaking to the glass. “My aunt. The Empress. She keeps songbirds. In cages of gilded wire. She calls them her ‘pretty sighs.’” He paused. “She likes to tap the bars to make them sing when she wants. When she doesn’t, she covers them with a black cloth.”
He fell silent again. The warning was clearer than any direct instruction. You are entering the aviary.
Nadia tucked her hands under the blanket, into the warmth. Her right hand curled, her fingers gently circling the spot on her left forearm. The phantom pressure remained.
“I don’t sing,” she whispered.
The words were so faint they were almost eaten by the rumble of the wheels. But he heard them. His head turned slowly back toward her. In the dim light, she saw not surprise, but a faint, grim approval.
“Good,” he said.
The carriage rolled on, deeper into the swallowing dark of the Chase. The cold was still there. The dread of the Spire was still there, a cold stone in her gut. But beside her knee, across the small space, was the man who had stopped her from crashing. Who had told her to use her viper’s glare. Who had shared a secret about birds.
It wasn’t trust. Not yet. It was something smaller, and perhaps more fragile: a mutual, silent recognition that the other was not what they had been portrayed to be. That in this shared, rattling prison, they might, for now, be the only two people who weren’t lying.
An hour later, when the carriage shuddered to a halt in a small, pungent clearing scattered with the mounds of old charcoal kilns, Finn climbed out first. He turned and offered his hand to help her down.
This time, she took it.
The ground was treacherously soft, a carpet of pine needles and old ash that swallowed her boots. His hand was warm and sure, bearing her weight until she found her balance on the uneven earth. He released her the moment she was steady, his attention already sweeping the tree line.
The clearing was a bowl of deeper darkness. The conical mounds of the old kilns rose like burial barrows, silhouetted against a sky pricked with sharp, cold stars. The air held the ghost of a thousand fires—acrid, smoky, a tang of burnt wood that clung to the back of the throat. It was dead quiet.
“We’ll rest the team for twenty minutes,” Finn said, his breath a pale cloud. He strode toward the nervous horses, already loosening harness buckles with efficient, practiced hands.
The messenger boy, Lyle, practically tumbled from his saddle. He stamped his feet, blowing on his reddened fingers. “Your Grace, if I may, the schedule—”
“—requires live horses,” Finn finished, not looking up from checking a hoof. “They’re lathered. They breathe, or they break. Twenty minutes.”
Lyle deflated, his shoulders slumping. He glanced at Nadia, huddled in her blanket by a mossy stump, then quickly looked away as if she were a strange, unspeakable artifact.
Finn produced a water skin from the carriage and walked over. He offered it to her first. His knuckles were scraped, the skin cracked from cold and old labor. She took it, the leather cold. The water inside was liquid ice, shocking her teeth.
“Thank you,” she whispered, the sound frayed.
He just nodded, taking the skin back for a long pull himself. He didn’t return to the horses. Instead, he leaned a shoulder against a towering pine near her stump, his gaze distant. The weariness on him was a physical thing, a burden in the slope of his shoulders.
“My father,” he said, abruptly. The words weren’t for Lyle, who was fussing with his saddle. They were for the clearing, or for her. “The Archduke. He’ll be at court. He enjoys… clarity.”
Nadia watched his profile. He wasn’t giving her courtier advice now. This was different.
“He’ll ask you a direct question. Probably about Ashford’s timber yields, or the loyalty of the southern barons. Something you cannot possibly know.” Finn finally looked at her. “If you stay silent, he’ll call you simple. If you guess, he’ll dissect the lie. There is no right answer.”
He pushed off the tree, crouching to poke at the ground with a twig. “So, you look at me. You let a bit of fear show—real fear, that’s easy. Then you look back at him. And you say, ‘My Lord Archduke, my duty now is to learn the priorities of my husband’s house. I would not presume to speak for my father’s.’” He broke the twig in half. “It’s deflection. It’s polite. It passes the trap back to me, where he wants it anyway.”
It was a lesson in survival, granular and precise. He was giving her a tool.
“Why?” The word left her before she could stop it, a bare, frayed thread of sound. Her hand flew to her mouth to cover it like she’d done something wrong.
He understood. Why are you helping me?
Finn studied the broken twig. “The cage they’ll put you in,” he said, his voice low and rough. “It’s attached to mine. I find I have no appetite for listening to another creature beat itself against the bars.” He stood, dusting his hands. “Twenty minutes is almost up.”
Lyle hurried to re-mount. As Finn turned to the carriage, Nadia stood, letting the blanket fall. The cold attacked instantly, but her mind was clearer. She folded the rough wool and placed it on the carriage seat.
Before she could step back, a sound fractured the quiet. Not from the road ahead, but from the dense blackness of the woods to their left. A snap. Then another. Too heavy for a deer. Too deliberate for the wind.
Finn was beside her in one fluid motion, his body a silent wall between her and the trees. He hadn’t drawn his sword. His hand just rested on the hilt. His head was tilted, listening. No more sounds came.
Lyle’s horse shied, rolling its eyes. “Wolves?” the boy breathed, his voice trembling.
“No,” Finn said. His expression had closed, gone hard and sharp as the winter stars. “Wolves are quieter.”
He didn’t explain. He just watched that wall of darkness for five more heartbeats. The silence now felt watchful, a held breath.
“Get in,” he said to Nadia, his voice leaving no room for anything else. His eyes never left the trees.
She climbed into the carriage. He didn’t offer his hand this time. He was wholly focused on the perimeter, a soldier again, every line of him taut. He swung up onto the driver’s plate himself, taking the reins from the confused postilion.
“Lyle,” Finn commanded, his voice cutting through the cold. “You ride behind the carriage now. Directly behind. You see anything moving in those trees, you call out. You don’t investigate. You shout.”
The boy paled but nodded, maneuvering his horse to the rear.
Finn snapped the reins. The carriage lurched forward, faster now, the wheels skidding on the soft earth before catching. They plunged back onto the narrow track, the forest a tight fist around them.
Inside, Nadia clutched the edge of the seat. She stared out at the passing blackness, imagining shapes in every thicket. The warmth from the blanket was gone. The fragile understanding from the road felt distant, smothered by this new, unnamed threat.
He was driving them hard. The carriage bounced viciously, rocking on its axles. She could see the back of his head, the tense set of his shoulders above the box. He was pushing the horses, and himself, past the point of rest.
Whoever was in those woods—if anyone had been there at all—they weren’t following the Emperor’s schedule. They were following them. And Finn knew it.
The Grinning Hare, the quiet meal, the shared look in the rattling dark—it all felt like a dream someone had violently shaken them from. The reality was this: the Chase, the cold, and something that moved through the trees without making a sound.