I give Cordea a curt nod and make to move out of the tent. Before I’m completely outside, I lean my head back in. “Make sure the worker named Palacia is treated right, Cordea. Please.”
“I have no idea who that is.”
I flash her a quick grin, knowing it enrages her. “You knew Ethera’s exact circumstance, blood illness,andher lover Zefyra’s whereabouts and situation. You can feign indifference to the world with your faultless beauty and rigid expectations, taskmistress, but no need to pretend with me. I know you care more than you let on.”
I leave her seething, hearing a curse as I quickly duck out of the tent before she can respond. It makes my smile widen as I head east toward a rocky hillside sloping away from the mines.
When I approach, familiar grunts echo from a large body, making my heart slam against my ribs. The sounds of the camp drown away behind me as I round a face of piled rocks and find the man I’m looking for.
Vallan works a shovel like it’s a thin fishing rod, slamming it into the hard dirt and tossing piles. He’s in a three-foot hole, broad back to me when I stop walking. My boots crunch on the gravel. He doesn’t stop his torrid digging. Beside him, two bodies wrapped in white cloth are unrecognizable in their mummified state.
Probably for the best, if their deaths came from an explosion.
I clear my throat. Vallan continues digging.
Annoyingly, he keeps his back to me, bending over to toss another pile of dirt over his shoulder. “Don’t you have better places to be than this gleaming cesspool, silverblood?”
Sounds like we’re back to square one. My rescue was last evening and he’s already sounding like the Vallan of old—the one who acts perturbed by my presence.
I take a step forward, grinning. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be. Where else can I watch you dig holes for dead people, muscles flexing and sweating all for me, you big brute?”
He grunts. “It’s not for you. It’s for my workers. Damned fools.” He stands straight, cracking his neck from side to side. “This is what happens when I neglect my duties due to distraction.”
I’ll show you distraction, you hulking bastard.
My thumb moves. The sword on my right hip rasps a few inches out of its sheath. Vallan freezes, hearing the noise. He slowly turns to regard me—
And I’m already charging at him.
If it was shock and surprise I hoped to see on his handsome mug, I’m sorely disappointed. He keeps his expression flat and uninterested, eyebrows hardly rising as I run at him with a wicked smile on my face and my swords flashing out of their scabbards.
At least I get a small twitch from his long dark beard, hinting a smile behind it.
I swing at his face with my right arm. He holds his shovel two-handed, crossways. My blade bites a deep notch into the haft as he pushes with force.
I slide back and riposte, lunging with both legs. The clang of metal rings out. The wide tip of the shovel smacks awaymy shortsword and he brings it round to parry my longer steel inches from his shoulder.
For once, with him standing in a three-foot hole, I’m actuallytallerthan the huge barbarian. He hasn’t moved out of the hole because I haven’t let him, and it’s nice to have the high ground against him for once.
The vampire’s giant war-axe sits diagonally across his back, the double-headed blade shimmering in the moonlight above us. Piled rocks and hills surround us, leaving us alone in this far-off expanse from the main camp, this burial ground.
I know he’s itching to swing the axe out and make it an extension of his massive frame. I give him no opportunity, swinging wildly to make him parry my strikes.
The entire time, a devious smile splits my face.
“Why are you doing this?” he grunts with another parry.
Clang—
His shovel swings wide and connects with my longsword, nearly spinning me around.
“I’m angry,” I say in a cheery note.
Charging and trying to kill him didn’t surprise the vampire soldier, but now his brows rise. With darkening eyes, his beard twitches with a much more obvious smirk. “You’re more than angry, silverblood. I can smell it.”
Snarling, I redouble my efforts, my blades blurring, calling up my training from the Firehold.
Vallan is a stone wall. I’m sweating in the night chill and he’s hardly moved from—
