“Remember that one time Ry was supposed to be keeping watch, outside of that gaming house in Southwell?” I chuckled. “And he fell asleep? Blew the entire job, nearly got us all busted. None of us got paid.”
“I remember that night. It was raining. You had on a blue tunic that matched your eyes, with your hair stuffed beneath your favorite hat.” Ryland’s deep voice softened, and one of my heartbeats snagged on that small change before speeding back up.
“It was raining.” Once more, the words slipped out before I could stop myself. “But then, after the clouds cleared…gods, the sunset that night was glorious.”
We’d watched from the roof of a tenement house even shittier than this one.
The tenement house I’d been born in, and probably would have died in, had Ariel and I not been recruited by Ryland to join his band of petty thieves. Had my sister not been betrayed, had I not sold my soul to the Oracle. It was funny how you could remap your entire life, pinpoint where everything went wrong.
And just like that, the air in the tiny room soured, right along with the memory of the most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen.
“Well, I guess that’s goodnight then,” Varian finally mumbled into the silence.
I couldn’t getcomfortable because Ryland-the-fucking-know-it-all was right.
I wasn’t used to slumming it anymore. I only trained two hours a day. I hadn’t walked ten miles in…years. I’d grown fond of my velvet couch and my soft feather bed and fluffy pillows that actually were in the palace, not that I’d admit that to him.
I might sling steel all day for the queen, but I enjoyed my creature comforts too.
And I should have done something about lightening my pack earlier, before I got these deep cuts in my shoulders, but now it was too late. The wounds were healing, but far too slowly.
Must be because there was little to no magic here.
I sensed its absence in my bones, in the way I felt weaker, my eyesight dimmer.
The Shadowlands weren’t a complete desert. There were sparse forests, brown grass, one scrawny, skittish fox. But I’d noticed the difference the second we’d stepped through. This realm was practically barren, like it had been sucked dry.
So who—or what—was powering that enormous black wall?
And where were these enemies? We’d hiked for hours and come across no one except that fox and some equally emaciated squirrels. I rolled onto my side and tucked my cloak tighter around me.
I closed my eyes.I can do this. I can forget about how badlymy body aches. Forget that Ryland Storme is sleeping a few inches away, his face sparkling with sand. That Varian is on my other side, close enough to touch.
That it had been a long, long time since I’d felt anything this intense, even hate.
And the feelings these two stirred up…were dangerous. The kind of emotions that would make me sloppy, the kind of desire that I’d held in my hands, then never found again. The kind of obsession that could—and would—break me, if I gave into these ridiculous fantasies.
I’d acted like a fool tonight, reminiscing about the past.
Opening the floodgates had done something to my insides, and now I was trying to stuff all these feeling back down into the dark where they belonged.
I was here to kill a prince.
Find the Triune.
Go home.
I vowed to do better tomorrow, both at guarding my suddenly loose tongue and hardening my heart against these fucking feelings that seemed to hit me at the most inopportune moments. I couldn’t let myself remember how good things had been between me and Ryland.
Couldn’t consider the possibility that Varian…wasn’t the villain I’d painted him to be.
Because getting attached to either of these two males…was a mistake.
They were nothing but a means to an end. That’s what I told myself. And then, right about the time I started to slip away, Ryland began to snore.
“Godsdamn it. Now we’ll never get any sleep.” Varian groaned and even in the dark, even though I hadn’t seen him for a hundred years, I could picture the precise expression of aggravated disgust on his face.
12
