Elara bent over the map, spread over the table. The herb patch… The berry bushes… The maples on the north side…
A presence tugged on her. She raised her head. Hugh stood in the doorway.
Alive. Uninjured.
She let out a mental breath and straightened. “You’re back.”
“I am.” His voice held no bravado. He sounded, not subdued exactly, but quietly resigned. She braced herself.
“Casualties?” she asked.
“None on our side. Something smells amazing.”
“I made chicken for dinner.”
He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Is it for me?”
“Yes. You did come back safely.”
“Can it wait?” he asked. “I need your help.”
“Of course.” What was going on with him?
He invited her out with a sweep of his hand. She left the room, and they went down the hallway side by side. The Keep was quiet. Soft afternoon light spilled through the windows, drawing long rectangles on the hallway floor.
“What happened in Aberdine?” she asked.
“Falcon blocked our approach. We had some words and then Bale decorated the road with Falcon’s brains. The rest of the mercs cleared off.”
He still sounded off.
“Is this going to come back to bite us?” she asked.
“Possibly. The second half of the company is enroute to Aberdine. The woman who is leading it could prove difficult. It depends on whether she decides to make an issue out of Falcon’s death or if she assumes command and takes what’s left of them somewhere else. If I were her, I’d count my blessings, but some people lack common sense.”
They reached the staircase and started down the steps.
“And if she decides to attack?”
“I’ll crush her.”
There was no force in his voice. He said it so matter of fact, as if he were talking about taking out the trash.
“Hugh?”
“Yes?”
“What’s wrong?”
He looked straight ahead.
“About ten years ago we came across a corpse town in the Laurentian Uplands in Ontario. Men, women, kids, all dead, rotting in the street.”
His tone was flat and weary.
“We found one survivor. A skinny kid about fifteen or so. Someone nailed him to a tree.”
Nailed?
“He should’ve died but he was too stubborn to let go. We took him with us.”
“What happened to town?”
“He never told us. He barely talked. Once we fed him enough for his legs to support his weight, I asked him what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to get stronger.”
Hugh sighed. “Some people are born swordsmen. It’s not something you can teach or train. The kid picked up the sword, and he was gone. He’d wake up in the morning and train until he passed out in the evening with a sword in his bed. Bale’s berserkers had adopted him. They all used to watch out for him, because he forgot to eat. He wasn’t the strongest or the most skilled, but he was fast, and he had the killer instinct. When he faced an opponent, the world disappeared. Nothing else existed.”
He fell silent.
“Was he as good as you?” she prompted.
“Almost. With magic down, he’d be a problem for me. Possibly even for Daniels.”
He brought up Kate. That usually meant he’d gone into a dark place. Roland’s biological daughter was the reason for his exile. They had a long and tangled history, none of it good. Hugh had done horrible things while under Roland’s control and they plagued his soul festering there until they ruptured into open sores. Kate was a wound that never healed.
“How long was he with you?” she asked.
“Eight years,” Hugh said. “We had a winter base near Wichita Falls in north Texas. Pretty country down there. Mild winter, lakes, rivers. We’d come back to it year after year when not on mission. One day he came to me and said he wanted out. He met a girl and decided he was done being a Dog.”
“But he loved being a swordsman?”
Hugh shook his head. “It wasn’t love. More like compulsion. It consumed him, and when he was with her, he could put it away. She freed him of it.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? I let him go. It was his second chance at life. He could be whatever he wanted to be. Everyone was happy for him.”
A cold unease washed over her. “Did you find him in Aberdine?”
“I did. I found him in that shithole of a camp. With people who didn’t deserve him and treated him like an attack dog. Those assholes couldn’t even be bothered with basic shit like guards and patrols. Elara, we just rode right in there. It was dirty and disorganized, a fucking disgrace. And those shitheads thought they could hold a town for ransom, and we would just let them.”
He was disgusted by all of it. The mercenaries had no idea how lucky they were. He could have just wiped them all out, and his face told her he had considered it. They probably deserved it.
“How the fuck did he end up there?” Hugh stopped. “He left with enough money to last him for five years. It should have been enough to take her anywhere and do whatever they wanted. Should I have kept him?”
“He wasn’t yours to keep,” she said gently. “You saved him, you trained him, and then you let him go. The rest was up to him.”
He gave her a dark look. “And he fucked it up.”
On the scales of Hugh’s life, with so much guilt and darkness piled up on one side, this young swordsman must have been a counterweight. Someone Hugh saved. Proof that he wasn’t irredeemable, that the Iron Dogs stood for more than slaughter and destruction. Even while under Roland’s influence, with his life going up in flames, Hugh had let him go. He was a remarkable asset, but his future happiness mattered, and Hugh released him.
Now that happiness lay in ruins. Seeing that broke something in Hugh. She could feel him retreating deeper inside himself, in the place where Hugh faded, and Roland’s warlord took the front line. The memory of a burning maelstrom with fangs she once saw in his soul scalded her. She had to keep him with her, anchored in here and now no matter what it took.
“If you’d kept him against his will, he could have died,” she told him. “You said yourself that Roland wrecked everything you built. As good as he was, he would be near the top of the execution list. At least he’s alive.”
“There’s that.”
“What happened to the girl?”
“I’ll show you.”
They’d reached the third floor. A trace of magic tugged on her. It came from the left, from the direction of the guest suite where they put potentially troublesome visitors. It felt sharp, almost spiky, like a cocklebur bristling with hooked needles. It pulsed in a subdued rhythm, active but muted.
She sped up. They marched down the hallway to the door. Hugh knocked and pushed the door open, not bothering to wait for an invitation.
A young woman with long dark hair lay on the bed. The burr of magic wrapped around her, fused with her body, strangled her vitality, growing from it like a parasite. Her eyes were shut, her skin was pallid, and patches of fuzzy dark growth, rippling with black, red, and purple, marked her exposed arms and neck. It looked like someone had scooped a toxic bacterial colony from some giant petri dish, smeared it all over her, and it took root.
A man in his mid-twenties sat in the chair by bed. He looked up at their approach and his eyes were full of grief.
The magic burr pulsed with power.
“A curse.” The word fell from Elara’s lips. She had never seen one like that.
“Can it be undone?” Hugh asked her.
“I don’t know. But we will try.”
First!
Certified, although it was very close 🥇
Love it! First?
Split second difference 🥈
You guys, I can’t wait for the book. much love xxx
oooh!!! thanks so much for Hugh Day!
+1! 🤗
Yeah, Whoop whoop, Happy Friday!
Been waiting all day long. Hard week in here.
Oooh, how intriguing!
soo good!
Third?
Uhh! Shoulda played first, read second… But I couldn’t be p…. just had to gobble it up. My delicioussss….
yay
yah! Just checked on the off chance there will be something to end this long week on… thank you !
Oooooo – a backstory, a damsel in distress, and self doubt.
Thanks – I didn’t think we’d get Hughday this week with everything else going on.
Yay!
the question would be, who cursed her.
full of intrigue…
Thanks for this episode HA & mod R
WOW! 🤯
So many questions, now I feel like the kid in the Princess Bride movie thats being read to by his grandfather. 🤣 “…fencing, fighting, revenge, giants,…true love..”
Yes!
wow all the refreshing on off chance it would be HughDay paid off. thanks!!!
And from one cliff to the next cliff. That’s what I like. Love it!
Yay! Hugh day! Ooo…. I’m loving this…. I wasn’t expecting a snippet, but it was a wonderful surprise! Happy pie day, who needs dessert when we have snippets!
Thank you so much!
I’m very intrigued to see where thingx go with this young couple …
i love hugh day. thank you!
❤️. Thank you!
I’m just posting as this is the first time I’ve seen the blog in 13min of publication so I figured I must be able to get into the top 50!!
or at least the first 13min of the insta post 🤣 of top read the goodness now
Thank you! this is going to be a great story!
Thank you!
I have been wanting to say about IM 2 and the concerns about it being ‘edgey’; don’t listen to those people.
The world isn’t always a fun or even nice place and there’s something reassuring even affirming about confronting darkness and moving on. I don’t even think anything I’ve read really is edgey. It’s been obvious from the start that Elara’s origin wasn’t going to be nice or fun. I personally think that needs to be honored and it helps show that people can change, that people are not the sum of their parts.
Edginess isn’t telling a story how it is, edginess is having a character either do something out of character to ‘make the story more interesting’ or contriving something for the same.
You both have been some of my most favorite authors for the last 17 years precisely becuase of your story telling. It’s not edgey but it doesn’t shy away from reality either. The overall arc of KD is amazing and it’s one of my most frequent recommendations and one of my first.
You hit the nail dead-centre on the head with this post!
What he said, Ilona and Gordon…
Thank you! An awesome Friday gift!
Friday!! Fun day!!!Hugh day!!
Thank you!!
Like the petri dish image of what the curse must look like….
Love it. Love Hugh-day. Love, love, love The IM premise- second chances and redemption. We all need more of that. Thank you so much!
Yes! Hugh needs to see/feel his redemption. I feel like the last book changed the minds of Baile, but not himself. I am so excited to see where this goes.
More, more, I want more. Close eyes and chants patience, patience patience.
How could I forget it was Frughday? (I’m making that a thing.)
Thanks for the post!
All I can say is Wow! And thank you!
Thank you!! Hugh and π/pie day!! I win!! 🥧🗡️📚
I love hughday ❤️
Thank You! I love Hughdays.
And thank You for the jelly photo at the beginning of the post. So helpful with picturizing the curse victim.
No more jellys for me anytime soon.. 😉
I think that’s agar, not jelly – it looks like a stack of Petri dishes.
Hugh #2 is going to be wonderful. Thank you for the Friday snippets even though I know the time and energy to do so is hard to come by. Hugs from Canada.
Awesome as usual!
Yippee
Sooooo, so good.
Thank you both
I’m loving the chapters and will adore the book when it’s finished.
Have a fabulous weekend all xx
Oh! A cliff hanger! Its so good and I want to know what happens! I’ve been so good at being patient at waiting for the next installment. All gone now. My patience turned to tissue paper and this scene has ripped it to shreds! How can I wait till next week? Cruel Ilona. Cruel!
Thank you for the snippet. I wonder if the curse on the young woman is the same as what is killing off the plants?🤔🧐
The plot thickens.
Thank you….
lol Third!! never been this high on the board. Love the scene!!
Omg!!! I really didn’t expect this and it’s just so delicious. HA is simply too good to us. Thank you for an amazing start to the weekend!
So much wonderfulness from HA and Mod R this week! Thank you!
I love Hugh day. Thanks so much.
Thank you, and Happy Hugh Day! I hope Elara can undo the curse quickly.
I love it when there’s a post two days in a row, because it means that when I go to the site to check the one that I got the e mail about, the second one that won’t get an e mail until tomorrow is there also. I’m just not good at remembering that Friday is Hugh day. But when there’s a post on Thursday, and one on Friday, it takes care of that pesky memory problem. I know that there is probably a reason that posts and emails don’t happen on the same day, I just have to do better to develop the habit of checking the site for new posts everyday.
… cry thangs…cry … i have Problems Whit my zunge und schlucken , kann nicht Mal schlafen… danke
Thank you for Hugh Day!
And also thank you for Elara’s Chicken en Cocotte recipe! My family definitely enjoyed it and I should have used the full 5lbs of potatoes because that got scarfed down so quickly.
Love it! Thank you, thank you!
I needed a boost today.
Thanks for having a Hughday today. I wasn’t sure there would be one this week.
Have a grand weekend Ilona, Gordon, and ModR!
Thank you. Today has been terrible. I had forgotten about HughDay and that cheered me up so much. thank you for sharing this with us. you deserve alllll the pretty soft yarn ever.
I have been trying to cook all day for a W.I (Womens Institute in the UK) competition tomorrow and somehow, although I have been cooking for myself, my family and others for ever, today I couldn’t cook. My quiche has a soggy bottom, I have thrown away two batches of fudge (and given up on it), my oatcakes are heavy and for some mad reason I decided to make a loaf I’ve never made before to enter. I’ve spent a small fortune on ingredients and have missed the evenings outing to whist club!! My little VE cake looks good though….
I will only win a prize if everyone else’s entries end up on the floor …
Hugh has cheered me up!
Ohhh geez…. I’m going out of my mind!!! I cannot wait from week to week. Sooo good!!! It is wonderful
Thank you so much.☺️☺️
That segment is a 10 on the Wow scale.
Agreed!!
What a lift after a crushing week. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
HUGHDAY!!!! I especially love it when you share more of his backstory, thank you for kicking the weekend off 🤗
Thank you
I love Hugh and Elara. looking forward to next installment
This book is just more and more amazing!
Thank you, House Andrews!
Thank you!!!
And the plot thickens…. Thank you
Horrible place to have to stop!
Thank you for the part!
Thank God it’s Hugh Day!!!
Oh wow never expected to see my town mentioned in these stories lol
Thank you. This was a wonderful addition to my day.
This is a wonderful story. I loved this chapter. Thank you for sharing it.
Thank you!!!!
You AL are good!
Making me like Hugh more and more every word I read.
You are experts in Redemption.
Ohhh the part about looking like some has scooped the contents of a Petri dish and smeared it onto someone gave me quite the visual. Thanks for the Hugh day post. It makes the week so much easier to deal with.
Huzzah for another intriguing Hughday gift from House Andrews! The writing allows me the opportunity for ‘a movie (snippet) in my mind’.
Thank you!
Peace and safety to all!
Yay for Hughday!
Blight in the beginning, curses in the end, I wonder if they are related?
Hugh days are like one piece of chocolate from a decadent box of chocolates…. rationed out oh so slowly. It’s for our own good but if I had my way, I would devour the whole box. And then have to wait again. 😆🤦🏼♀️
You! Are! Amazing! Thank you for Hughday!
Hugh Day is the best day of the week!
Wonderful!!
Thank you!!
thank you! OMG! excited to see what happens next. hope she can remove the curse and Hugh can heal her
Happy Friday!!
Such a good one! Thank you!
Adding my thanks! I am always excited for Hughday
I can decide if I’m more excited about Hugh or Maggie! So many good things!
Hugh day makes me so happy!
Soooo gooood! Thank you!
How did those A**holes keep the curse from eating her? Augghh! Can’t wait… must know.
The pacing is so impressive here – from last week’s comic moments to this week’s overall serious tone. I love that Hugh is starting to let his guard down with Elara, just a bit, without noticing he’s doing it. And she’s there for him, without making a big deal of it. Team Baile’s formation continues, and they are formidable.
I’m so excited for this book. They could give us the whole thing every Friday to release and I’d still read it two time in two days when it launched. I’m so excited, I’m hoping sales dictate a third (don’t want to cause undo stress but Hugh and Elara are fascinating to me because of their broke-ness. I love Kate and her fam but this has always felt closer to home.
I really needed this! Thank you!
In my mind, runs in gives both a hug, steals the chapter and runs away, returns gaves another huge hug and a thanks I love it and want more, oh well. thank you thank you
thank you so much.
what a lovely surprise. I wasn’t expecting it with all the work on Maggie going on recently.
there are so many awesome details and plot lines with this story that it’s deliciously hard to read in installments. but less hard than waiting for the whole book!
i have a completely unrelated question.
i was re reading KD4 this week, Magic Bleeds, and I’m certain there have been some minor changes, some maybe offensive terms or expressions updated, for example.
I’m curious about this process. when did this happen and is it at the behest of the publishers or authors? is it based on complaints or is someone hired to re read the books for possible updates?
i can’t remember what I wore yesterday or my kids birthdays but somehow noticed several changes which goes to show how many times I’ve read it.
IA books are the few that really stand up to multiple re reads. the worlds and characters are so great.
hope you have a restful and rejuvenating weekend.