“No.”
“Cillian, I—”
“Nope.”
She huffed in frustration.“I just think that—”
“Oh, I know what you think and I don’t want to hear it.I’m asking you to trust me.No more recriminations.No more talk of you going back or sacrificing yourself.”
Tears pricked her eyes unexpectedly and she felt duly chastised.Cillian so rarely ever said anything cross to her.He always talked like she’d hung the moon and could do no wrong.He wasn’t angry, continuing on to tell her that all the hunters were duly melted and her barrier seemed to be holding, as there was no sign of additional pursuit.He’d been firm with her, always a surprise from her sweet and nurturing librarian.He even seemed to be ignoring her moment of upset, though she felt sure he’d noticed, as he noticed everything about her.
“But the carriage is a wreck,” he finished.“I don’t think there’s even any hope of repair or going forward on skids.”
“No snow to sled on,” she agreed.“I guess it’s really spring everywhere now.”
“Even Convocation Center,” he said with a nod.“Which is a long walk.”
“Is that where you think we should go?”she asked, taken aback.She actually had no idea how long it would take to walk there, but she did have a pretty good idea that she couldn’t do it.Didn’t people train for that kind of long journey by foot?
Cillian cast her a slanted smile, a bit rueful, and a scant laugh.“I don’t think either of us is up to the kind of walk required, even if it does sound like something appropriate for an epic quest.
“I don’t feel very epic right now.”She scrubbed her spattered hands against each other, succeeding only in smearing the goo around further.She swallowed back a gag.
“Me neither.There is a natural hot spring about a two-hour walk from here.We could go to that and at least get cleaned up.”
“How do you know that?”Alise searched her memory.She was sureshedidn’t know that.
“On the ride here,” he explained, fishing out a cloth from his bags and tearing it in half, handing one piece to her, using the other to wipe his hands.“I studied the geography of the area.”
“Of course you did,” she commented drily, feeling a little better for having at least her palms and fingers less sullied.And with his librarian magic, he’d have remembered exactly the location and how to get there.“I’m guessing there’s not an actual road to it?”
“More of a goat trail,” he confirmed, cleaning the moonsilver weapon.In truth, it didn’t look like a knife, much too slim for that.“All the more reason not to fret about the carriage.It wouldn’t get us there.Let’s sort through and pick out what we need and can easily carry, then we’ll cache the rest.From the hot springs, we can walk the backcountry to a town, find an inn there to rest up, then purchase a new carriage.”
Her tired mind couldn’t quite follow all of that.How did one cache things?Purchase a carriage with what?But Cillian sounded so confident that she nodded dully, staring at the silver blade.
“Where did you get that knife?”she asked, the most she could muster thoughtwise at the moment.
“This?”He held it up, lips quirked in amusement.“House Phel, of course.But it’s not a knife.It’s a letter opener.I thought it would be useful, you know, for cracking wax seals on missives and so forth.Gabriel invited me to pick from the moonsilver weapons he and Jadren had been cataloguing, and this was pretty, so…” He shrugged, carefully setting it to the side.“Came in handy.”
Alise could just imagine the looks on Gabriel and Jadren’s faces when, having offered Cillian his choice of hunter-melting, moonsilver weapons, he selected a letter opener.
“It’s an antique,” Cillian continued with enthusiasm.“Dating back to pre-fall days.Jadren was pretty confident—and I believe was going to research—that Phel had originally held a grandparented trademark for enchanted artifacts made via moon magic.Which would at least put to bed one of the supposed ‘crimes’ committed by House Phel.Though El-Adrel would’ve been the ones to pursue reparations for the alleged infringement and that won’t happen now.”
Her head spun.She’d been low on magic before, but this felt worse than that.Maybe also crashing from the fear and worry of the prolonged escape and battles.“So, we’re leaving the carriage here?”
“Yes, we could limp it off to the side, but it won’t hurt to block the road for a while.”
“I should release the air elemental,” she said, hearing the hollowness of her own voice.“It would be inhumane to leave it tethered to this abandoned wreck.”
“Do you have the energy for that?”he asked, searching her face.“You look very pale.”
“You’re always saying how pale I look,” she replied with irritation, but she had little gumption behind it.“Maybe I’m just pale, period, you know?”
He regarded her patiently.“Alise.”
“I’m tired, okay?A nice bracing walk in the open air will do me a world of good.”
“Let me give you some of my magic.”
