Nyssa’s eyes closed at the feeling of the sun beaming on her figure through the slats, as brief as it was. She craved the sunlight and the healing of her body that she knew it would give her. She craved it as she craved oxygen. The beat of its warmth on her flesh, the energy felt in her muscles as water riding over her bones… She could feel her lips quivering as she was shoved too quickly past the first glare of it that she’d felt in over a week.
Her broken lungs depleted in her chest. But she pushed the pain away as they rounded the last corner, and the audience she would be entertaining that day entered her blurry vision.
The smell of roasted chicken in the air, wafting with the stench of pig manure outside and the salt of the beach waves. The noise of men slopping at their food, the saliva, and gnashing of teeth as they chomped on the bones or swished their broth was cringe-worthy and demeaning to her ears.
Yet despite the grotesqueness of it, her stomach rumbled in yearning for any nutrients.
The Porter’s hand tightened around her arm as they reached the table the Noble and his wife sat. The wife glared at her over her fork.
As her stomach grumbled again, she saw the Noble's mouth quirk out the corner of her eye, and he offered her a chicken leg as though offering a dog a bone.
Nyssa jerked her head high in response, making sure he remembered she would not be tempted. A low chuckle emitted from him, and the sound of it made her fist clench. Nyssa didn’t speak, but she felt the saliva in her mouth as she craved the food, and she swallowed the spit, pretending perhaps it was soup.
She missed the taste of the honey bread she and Dorian had once attempted to make together as children.
Her body caved at the warm memory. She could see his lopsided grin as they threw flour at each other, his chasing her through the halls of the castle with the stuff—Willow shouting at them for being childish, Aydra laughing and then joining in on their fun. Dorian had accidentally thrown the white power at Lex’s face that day, and she’d chased him all the way up to the tower dungeons before picking him up over her shoulder and hauling his eleven-year-old self back to the kitchens.
The tear streaked down Nyssa’s cheek, nostrils exhausting as she pushed the distant memory to the back of her mind. Magnice seemed like a dream. As though she’d been suffering in the nightmare of the last few weeks her entire life, and her true home had only been a fantasy of the spy she was currently consumed by.
She wondered how Dorian was doing in Dahrkenhill and how Lex was holding up at the Umber… whether she’d left and gone back to the Venari kingdom to help Balandria or if she’d stayed to help Nadir.
What was left of Nyssa’s heart broke at that moment, and she had to press her toes together and lock her knees to keep herself upright.
“What of the trades today?” the Noble asked one of the men who had just arrived.
The man gave a short nod and then opened his mouth to speak. Nyssa’s mind blanked as she allowed her eyes to wander out the door, trying desperately to squint and see any shimmer of life other than those of Man. She could only see people herding chickens into a corral and a few women passing by with baskets.
“—A trader of the local Haerland tribe,” she heard the man say. “He says he has furs and fruits from their forest.”
Her ears perked at the conversation.
Nadir.
A lump leaped into her throat at the fantasy. Her chest began to heave, suddenly anxious with flashes of what could happen if Nadir did grace the estate. Her mind spun. She didn’t think Nadir would be crazy enough to come trade with them himself. Not the actual Commander of the Honest army. Perhaps he’d simply sent one of his men to exchange or try and get information about their settlement.
The Noble gave the man a nod. “Bring him in.”
The man disappeared through the door. She heard a shout, a familiar coy of words, an annoying twinge in the returning yell. She thought her chest would burst at any moment at the anticipation of whether it was him, and her feet shifted, sweaty hands suddenly clenching and unclenching around the fabric of her dress.
The moment the sun hit the caramel brown and sun-bleached curls and dreads, tied up in a high bun, and he straightened under the flap of the door— she had to remind herself to stay steady and not fall apart at the sight of him.
Nadir Storn stood in the doorway.
Her breaths edged. She tried to conceal it, but she wasn’t sure she knew how. She didn’t want him to see her like that— beaten, broken, and deteriorating. She was terrified of the reaction on his face she knew he would hardly be able to conceal.
But he looked up, a stern expression on his features as his gaze traveled over the people in the room. And when he found her, she watched as the anger slipped, and his chest visibly caved in on itself.
A tear cascaded down her cheek. She shook her head as much as she could without drawing attention to herself in the hopes he would understand her pleas for him not to identify her.
The color drained from his cheeks. His brows knitted together, and for a moment, he looked like he would move, but she pleaded with her body for him not to: head tilting, eyes furrowed, lips gritted firmly together. She tried to hold in her deteriorating core, and keep it from bursting to the surface and revealing everything.
Nyssa nearly stepped forward but thought better of it. Nadir’s hand tightened around itself, the vein in his arm puckered. She could see the strain in his neck, the taut of his jaw, and she knew it was taking every muscle in his body to keep him from pulling his sword and wiping the whole of the room with blood.
The Noble spoke, but Nyssa didn’t hear what was said. Nadir’s eyes only flickered away from her own when the man asked him a question. The voices were echoes.
All she saw was him.
A ringing stretched through her eardrums. She looked down, seeing her nail beds turning black. Her hands she shoved behind her back, and she closed her eyes, willing her breath to calm.
