“What will you do, Cvareh, after you make it to the Alchemists’ Guild and deliver what it is you’ve carried so far, so diligently?” Arianna stared him down, pinning his toes to the floor with the weight of her interrogation. In her mind, she drew honesty from him like moisture from a cool stone on a hot day.
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “I may return to Nova to help my sister. She’s lied for me, I believe, making up some story about where I am to prevent my arrest.”
“What do you call the King’s Riders then?”
“Think of them more as assassins than knights while they’re here.” He shrugged. “I’m not supposed to be on Loom, so they’re not technically hunting me. Being here is all one big gray area.”
She snickered. “I’m not sure if you intended that as a pun, but it was rather funny.”
Her joke was so foreign from her usual seriousness that Cvareh had to stare and process it for a long moment before he realized it had been sincere. Arianna had found humor in what he said. Not only had she not immediately assumed the worst possible implication for his words, but she had foundhumorin them. It was a far cry from the woman who’d held blades against his tongue, threatening to cut it out if he bothered her.
“I hadn’t.” He laughed lightly. “But it is amusing in hindsight.”
“You seem close with your sister,” Arianna mused after a long moment. “I’m not surprised you have a whisper link with her.”
He almost asked her how she knew about the link. But for someone who never seemed to miss a thing, it was simple to see how Arianna had arrived at the conclusion. He’d mentioned Petra fondly before, and he’d told Ari he had magic in his ears. She’d seen him reporting in.
“It would make sense that you would want to go back to her,” Ari whispered so faintly that he almost thought the wind was playing tricks on him. But his hearing was too good for that. He knew exactly what she’d said, and the quickening of his heartbeat knew it too.
“I could stay.” They were the only words he could say that would offer a brief respite from the pressure that had been building in his chest.
“What?” She straightened, her arms sliding off the railing. One hand rested on it as Arianna turned to face him.
The look she gave him almost made the feeling worse. Did she realize how her eyes pleaded? Was she aware of the softness in the slope of her shoulders, or the way her hand had crept closer to his on the railing? Cvareh instinctively responded in kind, his body language unfurling to meet hers, to face her chest to chest as they had so many times.
“For a little, I’m sure I could stay, or I could leave and come back quickly.” His words were making no sense. His mind was making no sense. Nothing about them had ever made any sense and yet…he thrived off her. Her blood, the way she pushed those around her, her sharp mind and sharper blades.
“Why would you do that?” Fear penetrated her stare. She was nervous of his answer, which made it all the clearer that she was becoming aware of what was happening—what had been happening—at the same time he was.
This woman had become something more to him. He didn’t know what quite yet. But he wanted to find out.
“Because I have work I can do with the rebels at the Alchemists’ Guild. I can help them,” he lied, mostly. Her lips pressed into a small frown; she knew it, too. Before she could press him on it, however, he changed the direction of the wind that blew between them. “What will you do after you have your boon? What do you even want your boon to be?”
Arianna fought a war against his words. She struggled to such a degree that the pain from the battle made it onto her face. Why did she fight so hard to keep him out?
“All my life, well, almost… I wanted the Dragon King dead,” Arianna breathed. “But I know your boon won’t be strong enough for that. I know asking for that would solve nothing. Overthrowing one tyrant only makes room for another. So, if I am selfish, I would ask for something simple: the death of a Dragon.”
“Who?”
She shook her head.
“Why, then?” He didn’t want to let go of the connection they had found between them. Not when he was finally seeing the true colors of the gray woman who had enchanted him.
“Because the Dragon betrayed us all. He was responsible for the death of the last rebellion. The deaths of my teacher, my friends, and the woman I loved.”
The woman she loved. He knew Fenthri didn’t share the Dragons’ concept of family. He knew they had structured breeding before the Dragon King took over and reorganized their guilds and society. He knew that, despite the fact they could not reproduce and therefore the union could bear no true meaning, the Fenthri would couple with the same sex if it suited them to do so.
He knew that. But now it stood before him and he suddenly had to pass an opinion on it. And the only emotion he found was disappointment. Heartbreaking disappointment.
He scolded himself internally. Even if she had been the slightest bit sweet on him, what did he think could come of any type of relationship with a Fenthri—a Chimera? There was almost no point in exploring it.
“I have told you of my heart.” Arianna leaned against the railing, folding her arms over her chest as if to guard the remaining details she hadn’t shared. “Tell me of yours. What makes you so convicted to reach the Alchemists?”
Cvareh sighed softly, other matters still clouding his mind. It wouldn’t hurt to share the schematics with her. She might know what it was, but that could only prove his sincerity for her cause at this point.
Unfastening the folio on his hip, Cvareh pulled back the top flap and selected one of the smaller pieces of schematic. He didn’t know what it detailed, some inner working likely. He passed it over to her and she stilled instantly, taking it.
“They’re schematics for the Philosopher’s Box. With this—”
