The owner had the nerve to look sheepish. ‘It’s usually best we don’t.’
Tova snorted, muttering something about honor as Aya considered the man. She hadn’t touched her affinity. She didn’t need to. Her training taught her how to read people, and the man wasn’t lying.
Which means we’ve gotten nowhere.
She could bring him in for further questioning, she supposed. Tova could take it from here. At the very least, she’d see if there was anything Aya had missed in her time staking out the bar.
She doubted it.
‘She has some questions for you,’ Aya said, her chin jerking toward her friend. ‘Should you decide not to cooperate, Her Majesty’s Enforcer will handle the rest of the discussion.’
The man’s throat bobbed.
‘When you’re done here, send for a few Incends,’ Aya continued to Tova. ‘We’ll want someone here round the clock.’ She cut her gaze to the owner. ‘If we sense one ounce of your allegiance has swayed, they’ll burn this hovel to the ground. If you refuse to answer her questions, she’ll do the honors now.’
Tova smirked at the man as fire sparked at her fingertips.
Aya resisted the urge to roll her shoulders, to shake off thetension that had her muscles pulled taut as she walked toward the door. She was halfway there when the man found his voice. ‘You’ll scare away the customers! No one will come if they know the Dyminara is here.’
As if they didn’t know how to remain unseen.
Aya glanced over her shoulder, her gaze sweeping across the debris littering the room. Tova watched, mischief dancing in her hazel eyes. Aya’s lips pulled into a small smirk as she met the man’s gaze again. ‘Pity about the mess.’
She waited until realization dawned on his wrinkled face, indignation setting his cheeks a scathing red, before she turned on her heel and left.
6
Too full. Her mind was too full.
Which is how Aya found herself racing through the towering redwoods and evergreens of the Malas, the soft silence of winter muffling the sound of leaves crunching beneath her boots. Snow flurries whirled in the air, her breath searing in her lungs as she kept a grueling pace.
A twig snapped, pulling her attention to her left. She caught a flash of gray through the trees and put on a burst of speed, her thighs screaming as she ran further up the trail.
She threw herself around a moss-covered boulder, her feet sliding on the rocks at its base as she scrambled to avoid the predator.
Aya hit the ground hard, her arm searing in pain as it took the brunt of her fall.
The wolf was on her in an instant. His powerful paws framed her face as he bore down on her, his breath hot on her cheek.
He’d herded her like a sheep straight toward unstable ground.
‘Cheater,’ Aya panted through jagged breath.
Tyr’s brown eyes narrowed, and he knocked her jaw with his snout for good measure before letting her up. She let out a hiss as pain lanced through her shoulder, her arm hanging awkwardly at her side.
Dislocated.
Aya gritted her teeth as she stared up at the patches of pale gray sky peeking through the thick of the tree branches.She’d intended to train longer. Her body still hummed with anxious energy, her mind still reeling.
She’d tapped her sources down at the docks. Her best spies would convene with Tova once she was done at the Squal. If the supplier was someone from Tala, she’d need to tread carefully – which meant sending others into town, in case the supplier knew to be on the lookout for Aya.
But she couldn’t shake the fury that had etched itself into her very bones.
Her queen had counted on her to finish the mission last night, and Aya had failed.
There’d been only one other assignment in which Aya had made such a misstep. It was early in her role, when she’d been discovered by a source and nearly killed.
Her knife had found his skull first, before she could get the information she needed.
