She took a knife and slit its throat anyway.
***
The hair on Will’s neck rose as he followed Dauphine down the silent streets of the soldiers’ quarter. They stuck to the shadows, creeping beneath windowsills and around the corners, their footsteps quiet on the dirt path.
That uneasiness did not leave him as they left the empty thoroughfares and plunged into the crowded heart of the city. The market was as packed as ever, the merchants and peddlers taking full advantage of the inebriated state of many of those wandering through the stalls. Dauphine kept a quick pace, and Will followed in step behind her, one hand settled on the pommel of the blade at his hip.
There was a nip in the air, and even without it, he doubted their cloaks would have been out of place. Plenty of revelers were shielding their faces. Will knew they were likely dealing in contraband, and the thought made his muscles tense.
“Surely the market is a draw for the guards,” he uttered, his head ducked near Dauphine’s, both so that he might not be overheard and so that she might hearhimover the shouts of the market-goers.
“No streets in Colmur are completely safe from watchful eyes,” Dauphine reasoned. “We have a better chance blending into the crowd than we would sticking to the perimeter. Less patrol there, but fewer bodies behind which to hide.”
Will sidestepped one of those bodies now, the drunken woman cackling as she held a goblet over her head. The energy of the market was charged with a thick air of debauchery, and even with the chaos of it, Will couldn’t help but feel like someone was watching him. His gaze darted from building to building, checking rooflines and windows. It came up empty every time.
“I love the night,” Aya had confessed to him once after a training session in the abandoned paddock in Rinnia. She’dbeen perched on the rail of the wood enclosure, her shoulder bumping his as she’d handed him the waterskin. “Everything’s quieter then. Less…overwhelming.”
That may be so in the cliffs of Rinnia and the mountains of Dunmeaden, but here in the center of Colmur, bedlam reigned. It reminded him of the Rouline on the nights leading up to the Dawning—noisy and crowded andfree.
Will had never felt more trapped.
“Galda used to say the night had eyes,” Aya had confessed. They’d stayed in the paddock late, watching the stars descend over the cliffs. He’d finally worked up the courage to sit beside her, and miraculously, she hadn’t shoved him straight off the rail for daring to get close.
“What does that mean?” he’d asked.
She’d tipped her head back, her braid slipping over her shoulder as she’d taken in the sky. “That feeling like someone is watching you at night; it’s the night itself.”
“How do you know the difference between the night gazing down on you and someone actually watching you?”
She’d smiled at him, and he’d had to curl his hands around the railing to keep from reaching out for her.
“One feels like a friend.”
He tried to see if he could feel that difference now, if the gaze upon him felt like friend or foe. But he couldn’t tell, not with the bodies pressing in on him and the noise tugging at his frayed nerves.
Perhaps it wasn’t a gaze at all. Perhaps it was Desperation tightening its hands around his neck. He was so close—soclose.
Once he had the team, they could begin their trek south.
Hold on.The words rang out in his mind, a steady beat in time with his heart.
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
He hoped somehow, Aya could hear him.
They finally made it through the market, and before Willknew it, they were on the western edge of the city. Dauphine prowled ahead, her head swiveling as they darted through the streets. After the racket of the market, the quiet almost felt suffocating.
It’s the wanting that hurts the most, Aidon had said to him in Milsaio. He was right. Will was learning Aidon had a frustrating knack for being so.
Will’s desperation was rising the closer they drew to the meeting point, and the hope of it was strangling him.
He was so close. Soclose.
Dauphine veered left, her hand perched on the handle of her dagger. Her fingers had found it as soon as they’d entered the market, and they hadn’t left it since.
They followed her down another street, and then another, and then, Dauphine was motioning ahead to a door inlaid with the wall. Liam fell to Will’s side, Aidon to the other, and Will did not need his affinity to feel the tension radiating off of them.
He caught Dauphine’s wrist as she raised her hand to knock.
