Elysia nodded rapidly, bouncing on her toes. “I think Aidan’s rubbing off on me.”
Jessa’s eyebrows drew together in question, and Elysia pulledout of her grasp. “He worries. About everything. All the time. He’s anxious,” she clarified.
“Right, well, cut it out because you need to nail this.”
She closed her eyes, slowing her breaths until the ragged expansion and deflation of her lungs consumed her nerves. “Focusing.”
Jessa’s voice reverberated weirdly in the empty building. “She summons them. You find out where the talisman is and nab it before you’re dead. Easy.”
Elysia’s gaze darted away from Jessa just as a banging on the door echoed loudly. Jessa grabbed her shoulder again.
“Thatisthe plan, right?” Menace graveled her voice, and somehow it soothed Elysia to hear it.
She smiled sweetly, wishing her sister were there. “Definitely the plan.”
Jessa dropped her arm and cursed, but Elysia was already flinging open the heavy door of the Reyez warehouse. The whole crew filed past her looking grim as she gripped the metal door tight enough that her knuckles turned white. It appeared she wasn’t the only one who was a barrel of raging nerves.
“Everybody ready?” She stuck her hands into her pockets to hide how they shook. Even if this did work, there was a strong chance she wouldn’t be walking out of here, but they didn’t know that, and she couldn’t let them. She fisted her hands, forcing the shaking to stop.
Topp stood tall above the others, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he cleared his throat. “Can I talk to you?”
Lucy and Jessa grumbled at his interruption, clearly wanting to just get on with it. They were on a tight schedule.
He held his hands up placatingly. “Just take a minute. I swear.”
Elysia nodded, following him outside the warehouse to where it sleeted steadily. Spring in Bellia was a sloppy, dangerous time where rain froze into wet sleet that iced over all the roads at nightbefore melting into dirty gunk. It was disgusting. Hunching into herself, she squinted up at him.
“What is it?”
Topp rubbed the back of his neck, his face creasing. “I can’t help.”
Sleet smacked her in the face as her mouth slid open, her honest surprise plummeting like familiar betrayal through her chest. Voice dangerously low, she strung him up with her gaze. “We are two minutes away from trapping the godsdamnfates, the most ancient of beings, and you want to cut outnow?”
Sleet flattened his hair, making odd pieces stick out as he ran his fingers through it. He sighed tiredly. “Lys, you don’t need me.”
She stopped, shock coursing through her. “You don’t know that. My magic isn’t battle ready yet. I’ve been trying, but I’m just not there.” She was rambling, unsettled by this last-minute change in the plan, with old feelings of Topp letting her down surging and dictating her response.
He looked at her with icy flecks dripping off his nose, his green eyes dimmer than usual and begging her to see reason. “You have a woman in there who could blow up this entire building.”
“But she sucks at limiting it to people!” Elysia exploded back, her barely restrained anxiety now rampaging. It was one thing for her to die, but she needed to know everyone else would make it out, and he was threatening that.
She walked a fine line, drawing the fates here to retrieve the talisman without tipping them off about any of her other plans. She’d come up with idea after idea, making Aidan run the odds. She’d taken stupid, concrete action in a hundred different directions all to ensure the threads never solidified into what she truly hoped to do. Even Aidan didn’t know her exact plan. It was the single idea shehadn’trun the odds on. And nowTopp fucking Blatzthought he was going to ruin it all?
His hand covered his mouth for a moment, then gestured to her belt. “Oren has a lead on killing demigods that isn’t the scissors. I need to follow it.”
She stared down at the wet, rocky ground, only now realizing he was dressed in heavy boots and had an overstuffed rucksack on his back with a canteen hanging off it. “Are you taking Rollie too?”
Guilt shone out of his eyes.
Ire stirred in the bottom of her stomach as her brain put it all together. “You can’t have Lucy. Not today. She’s the only one who can group travel.”
He tilted his head in acknowledgment and adjusted the strap of his rucksack. “We’ve got it covered.”
With a hand on her dagger, she spat out the question she knew would put their friendship in the grave. “Fuck Oren’s lead. You’re helping her, aren’t you?”
Topp looked uneasy, his mouth fumbling for an answer he didn’t have. Because he wasn’t supposed to know about the scissors. No one knew about the scissors strapped to her belt except her and the woman who had stolen them.
Venom dripped from her voice as she pressed her dagger to his stomach much like she had his father only so many months before. “You’re lucky I don’t gut you right here, Blatz.”
