My eyes met Sean’s, steady and forest-green. Home. “I’ve had plenty.”
“I ordered everything off the menu for him,” Lyr said.
Sean smiled, his eyes crinkling. “Good girl.” He opened his pouch, and pulled out several gold coins and laid them on our table. “That should more than cover it.”
“Oh we can—” Lyr started.
But Sean held up his hand. “I got it. And then some, so hopefully they take the money and shut up. Let’s go. I have a room nearby.”
He pulled up his hood, and led us up to the counter where half a dozen soturi stood watching us. They wore Bamarian armor, but I knew their faces, recognizing them at once, their names slowly coming back to me. They were Glemarian, and each one of them had accompanied me on many of the akadim hunts I’d been sent on when I first arrived and had to earn my keep. In those first few months, when I was Lyr’s bodyguard, and apprentice, I was also an akadim hunter on the weekends. The majority of those trips I’d been sent on had been with other Glemarians.
I’d speculated at the time that it was more to do with our experiences hunting the beasts. After all, until Garrett—lured by Aemon—had gone to Bamaria, there hadn’t been any akadim attacks in the South. Not for years.
At least, I felt sure that that was the reasoning Lyr’s father, Harren, had used when selecting us. But after a while,the missions—particularly when Imperator Kormac—Emperor Avery now—became involved, felt like they had more to do with putting us in danger. Us. And not his men.
I nodded, meeting their gazes. But they frowned as I approached, a quizzical look in their eyes.
They didn’t know. Like Sean, they probably believed me dead. I knew from Auriel’s memories that I’d—he’d—spent time with Sean in Bamaria. Filling him in on my fate. Sitting with him after he was lashed by Turion Kevel for hiding him and Lyr, and sitting with him as he grieved for me. Unable to comfort him. Unable to explain that he was sitting with a part of me.
My chest panged.
I took a deep breath as I stepped outside, my hand locking with Lyr’s.
Sean emerged from the pub a minute later, and joined us.
Out in the open, Lyr’s shoulders tensed, her aura flaring with a kind of fiery alertness that was mirrored in her eyes. Scanning the small town. Looking for soturi, for signs of being watched.
And for signs of the akadim that seemed to have vanished overnight.
My stomach turned. Where the fuck had they gone? We’d have to find them, and deal with them soon enough. But I was eager to get off the waterway and main road. I wanted to be in private, and I wanted to be with Sean. In the distance, I could hear boots marching. Only about two sets. Despite our very active presence here—there hadn’t been much in the way of soturi. We were too far west, and I assumed that Kormac’s view of the border was similar to my father’s view of the Allurian Pass.
Besides, we’d done everything Morgana had asked to avoid earning any unwanted attention.
We’d hunted in the west. Hunted humans only.
I had a flash of one laying before me, ripping into her flesh, sucking her blood, and then her soul—turning her.
I closed my eyes, my feet felt like lead.
Almost as if sensing something was wrong, Lyr squeezed my hand, and stepped closer to me.
“We’re staying down the road,” Lyr told Sean, “at the inn at the end—just under the mountain.”
Sean frowned. “Follow me to mine. It’s a friend’s home. We managed to use it as a base. It’s more private there. Safer.”
“Okay,” Lyr said, her free hand rubbing my back.
I felt her walk forward, my arm lifting, our hands still connected, but my feet weren’t moving.
“Rhyan?” she looked back, her hazel eyes filled with concern.
“I—” I could taste the blood in my mouth. I thought the food this morning would undo it. Remove the memory. The taste, the sensation. I didn’t crave it. It disgusted me. But I remembered the taste, and the way I’d desired it. It was all still there in my mind. Fresh and visceral.
“Rhyan, what’s wrong?” Lyr asked, her voice low.
My chest tightened. I could still feel the way my jaw moved, lapping up the blood, the way my tongue had brushed against the girl’s neck. The way I’d done the same thing to Lyr.
“I can’t—I—” The words wouldn’t come. My mouth moved, the words wanted to be said, but my brain and mouth weren’t connecting. I couldn’t, couldn’t ...
