“I wish you had been a better one.”
“You spoke with him?” A subtle demand lurked beneath Aiden’s question, tearing down the feeble wall that had separated us the last two days.
Anger sparked in my blood. Ruru had told me he wasn’t supposed to free me. He’d disobeyed Aiden because he felt he owed me his life.
I lifted my gaze to glare at Aiden. “Yes.”
Something flashed across his bronze face. Regret or disappointment, I couldn’t tell which.
“Why wouldn’t you have spoken with Ruru?” Maz asked. “Weren’t you with him while he bombed the Old Quarter?”
All the air seemed to leave the room.
Aiden didn’t break staring at me. And I couldn’t look away from him. It was as if our eyes couldn’t let go, now that they’d found each other again.
The last gaze Mother saw before she died.
Hot, bitter grief swelled in my throat.
His jaw clenched.
But then Maz’s other sisters and a few Dag men burst through the door, talking loudly.
Aiden spun away to check a bone-rattler’s bandages. I tried to escape, but Maz kept a firm grip on my hand.
“Not so fast, lovely. I want you to meet Davka and Sigrid.”
Sweat beaded down my spine. Gods damn it, this was the last place in the world I wanted to be.
Davka and Sigrid approached, both taller than Yarina but with the same long, golden hair, half woven into braids. They wore leather vests and sturdy pants tucked into dirty boots.
Sigrid wore a gray woolen jacket embroidered with crimson thread and an eyepatch studded with glossy metal. Davka left her muscular arms bare, probably because of the shiny ointment covering the burn marks on her skin.
Both of them had broad swords and axes strapped to their hips and backs. And both of them regarded me with more suspicion than Yarina had.
Sigrid sat next to Yarina while Davka leaned against the wall behind them.
“This is my lovely Kiera,” Maz announced, waving our joined hands. “She’s the one I was telling you about. The knife-thrower.”
Davka and Yarina leaned forward with interest, but Sigrid remained still.
“Did you really hustle a cattle herder from Winspere?” Yarina demanded, an eager smile growing on her lips. “And hit the target’s center without looking?”
I tried to smile back, but my heart was pounding so loud I could barely hear her. “Yes. I... I’ve always enjoyed throwing knives best.”
Yarina’s eyes darted around my body, and she frowned. “Where are they now?”
Shattered on the royal bedchamber floor by Renwell’s sunstone sword. Probably swept away with my father’s blood.
Sigrid’s remaining eye narrowed at me. “Maz said you were a palace guard before he pulled you out of that gods-damned Den with Aiden. Perhaps you can tell us how our Rellmiran enemies knew we were coming that night.”
My blood ran cold.
I felt more than saw Aiden pivot in our direction as the room went dead silent.
“Fucking Four, Sigrid,” Maz huffed. “How would she know?”
But the fierceness in Sigrid’s one-eyed gaze didn’t flicker. Gods, what had she been like with two eyes?
