She remained still until he was close enough to crack her over the head with it—not that he would, it was only the quickest, nonlethal reaction if she did strike. But she only turned her palms upward to receive the jar.
Celeste’s eyes weren’t grey, Reeve realized in the closeness and darkness of the tiny room, they were silver. He had never seen silver eyes before, nothing that shined like that outside of magic itself. He peered into them as if he could glean something more, but all he saw was starlight glittering back.
Their fingers grazed one another as the jar traded hands. Noxscura and luxerna so close to the surface in each set of fingertips, there was a spark. Holding perfectly still, the two stared at one another, but neither attacked.
And then she laughed, a single, solitary bubble of a noise that she just as quickly pulled back as she hugged the jar to her chest. “That was an accident,” she said, grinning nervously as if it had all been her fault.
“It didn’t, uh…it didn’t hurt,” he replied, knowing it was as much his doing as hers.
Her lips twitched. “You’re really not going to attack me?”
“Of course not. I vowed I would not.”
“Yeah, well, those were just words. Most people would attack anyway.”
Reeve knitted his brow. “I am a holy knight,” he said simply.
“Exactly.” She swayed slightly in thought, looking him over.
Reeve felt a little too big then, too seen under her eyes. “If you thought I would attack you regardless, then why would you remove the barrier at all?”
“Well, I hoped,” she said, tipping her head. “And I really do need your help.”
Need. He liked the way she said that word. Perhaps too much.
“Then by Dawn’s Light, you shall have it.”
CHAPTER 9
FORGING BONDS
Reeve did not like lying. Walter the Weathered of the Seven Fables had lied once,just once, and his entire arm had been lobbed off because of that lie. It hadn’t been his sword arm, thank Valcord, but having both rather helped with balance.
Reeve rubbed at his shoulder as he strode behind the witch. She had finally freed him yet had him newly bound to an oath, and he was newly trapped in a way that required him to follow along with her plan—her dastardly, reprehensible, unscrupulous plan—tolie.
He stewed over the untruth she had told to a stranger in the village’s center. It was only a little one, she’d insisted, but the Obsidian Widow Maker needed no whetstone, it remained arcanely sharp all on its own, so she shouldn’t have said otherwise no matter how small she thought that lie was.
“Yes, I understand that your sword is enchanted, you have told mesixtimes now, but no one else knows that, provided you can keep it to yourself,” the witch had said to him when he’d disagreed with her dishonest scheming. “I’m just going to tell some stranger that you need a whetstone so we can find out where the old blacksmith’s shop is without revealing the real reason.”
“Why must we be secretive at all?”
She had gnawed on her lip and scrunched up her nose. “They just shouldn’t know, okay? The fewer people involved, the easier this will be, and the quicker we’ll be done with it.” Her words had sounded very final.
“You’re eager for our deal to be through and our battle to resume?”
The woman had given him a long look then, one of the frustrated ones he would often catch from his brothers-in-arms when they tried to convince him to take part in some morally ambiguous task. But she did not follow the look by rolling her eyes or insisting he was being unreasonable, she simply requested he trust her.
Trusther?
Why on this plane and all the others she thought he would trust her was beyond his understanding, but then quite a few things were, and before he could puzzle out an argument, she’d gotten the information they needed by, indeed, being untrustworthy.
At least Earlylyte had been well cared for. They took a quick detour to the Dew Drop Inn to find his coat was brushed, his mane braided, and someone had even given him a bucket of fruit alongside the standard oats. The horse was safely left in the stables with assurance they would only be parted for a little longer, and Reeve followed the woman through the circle center of Briarwyke and down West Road.
She could request his trust, demand it even, but she would not have it. He trailed a few feet behind, keeping watch of her back. It was only coincidental that he may have preferred the position. He was relieved to not be under her eye, but he also appreciated the opportunity to watch the last lights of the day play over the dark strands of her hair and the tautness of her calves as she took harried steps.
She gave the lightless lampposts along the road a wide berth, shards of glass littering the ground. Well, she hadn’t lied about the lamps bursting, he supposed, but she could have been misleading him about the cause. Reeve peered into the darkened windows of the shops, many abandoned, on either side of the walkway. Farther along was a crossroad, and beyond that, the buildings spread out, the path narrower as it grew more secluded.
A tingling ran up the back of Reeve’s head, one he had felt before when entering a questionable tavern or a reportedly abandoned mine, and his hand went to his hilt. If she were leading him into a trap, she could have done better than allowing him to keep his weapon. But then, perhaps she wanted him to believe he was safe with the Obsidian Widow Maker at his side, leaving him falsely secure and thus more susceptible to whatever snare lay ahead, be it bewitched bandits under her thrall or goblin minions lurking in the trees. If she thought he wasn’t thinking simply because he had his weapon, then she was sorely mistaken—Reeve’s overwrought mind was prepared for all manner of treachery, and its ability to think was unchanged by the presence of a sword.
