The northland was quiet and cold, but it was nice to be away from the city and from the sins he had committed there. His breath smoked in the chilly morning, and the mare’s puffs of air rose up to join them as her hooves fell on the winding mountain path. She was relatively placid now that they had reached Halcyon, her grumbling kept to a minimum and her physical fighting nonexistent, but Levent knew that she knew the wet leaves lining the treacherous rocky path could send her falling if she unbalanced. He didn’t like that he had to control the mare through placing her in circumstances where disobedience resulted in harsh consequences, but his usual tactics of kindness didn’t work here.
Kindness rarely worked for him anymore; it’d been bled out of him. The closest he could come to peace right now was the morning punctuated by hoof-rhythms and dawn-twitters of birds that’d yet to leave in preparation for the coming months.
Fur shifted against fur, and Levent glanced down at the bulge under his shirt where the white tomcat was curled in a ball, snug and warm. This wasn’t even the worst of the weather to come, he knew, only a taste of winter like the ones they’d weathered upon first coming to North America, but he could afford the cat a little more luxury. Wilson was the last thing he felt he could love anymore; it was already clear that he’d failed to love anything else right. For Wilson, he’d killed—and done worse things, in the span of a few frantic minutes.
So the odd trio traveled, winding up through the mountains to a destination that Levent was only half sure of, leaving behind the song of the south and the scars of the city.
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