While I’m sure Cal would hold great appreciation for the assassin’s dramatics, they only serve to irritate me further. “I never showed you my scar. How do you know who I am?”
Avedis’ expression sobers, his lighthearted gaze replaced by a glinting intensity. “I have ways that are whispered on the wind,” he tells me, and I wonder if I could manage to subdue him without waking everyone in the house.
Subdue, maybe. Speak the truth…that would be invariably louder. If he’s trained even half as well as I am, it will take days, if not weeks, to break him and I don’t have that kind of time.
“I know because I know. There is nothing you could have done to keep me from the knowledge. That’s all I can give you.”
It isn’t an answer, but his eyes keep me from pressing him further. Something blows behind them, wild and untethered and I feel an unmistakable spark of recognition. It steals my breath and leaves me staring at him, wondering what in godsnames just happened.
“And what are you going to do with this knowledge?” My daggers lay heavy against my chest as the threat in my voice is unveiled. Mirren’s mercy not-withstanding, the assassin should know the lengths I’m willing to go to protect what’s mine.
Avedis eyes me gravely, the charming smile entirely gone from his face. “Nothing,” he says simply, leveling his stare. “I like my life far too much to be the one to tell your father you live. The Praeceptor is not a forgiving man. Even of the messenger.”
His gaze travels to the window, to the sparkling city and sprawling mountains outside of it. My father’s name draws all the warmth from the room, and I suddenly find myself without words.
“Things begin to stir in the Darkness, things not seen in a millennia. It is no coincidence that your father makes to steal power while the Chancellor has been cut off from his. And it is no coincidence that you and the lady have been brought together. Things are written in the night breezes; things I have no wish to be a part of. I will take my leave before sunrise, and if fate is kind to us all, you will never see me again.”
ChapterThirty-Three
Mirren
I curse Aggie under my breath for the thousandth time this morning. Her crinkled face is serene as she admonishes me from where she is perched on the front porch of her cabin, “you must workwiththe magic, not against it.”
Whatever that means. Sweat beads on my forehead as I try to concentrate, reaching into myself forsomething.Anything, really. But as I grasp around, I come up just as empty as I have the past forty times. The well water in the can remains stubbornly stationary.
Aggie has spouted off unhelpful nonsense all morning, only moving from the porch once to whack me with her walking stick after I cursed the magic in frustration. She said the power was permanently a part of me, but maybe she was mistaken. Maybe it realized it was foolish to choose a Similian girl who’s only real power lies in remaining invisible and abandoned me during the night.
My gaze wanders to Anrai, who leans up against the porch post with his arms crossed, an unreadable look on his face.
My magic wouldn’t be the only thing to abandon me in the middle of the night.
I fell asleep curled into him, his arms around me, listening to the soothing tenor of his voice as he read from his favorite novel. Theotherinside me sighed in contentment as we were lost inside the story, its soft waves lapping warmly in my chest as Shaw ran his fingers through my hair.
When I woke, he was gone.
He hadn’t bothered returning to his room before breakfast. Max and I were mostly done eating by the time he appeared at the dining table looking distinctly worse for wear and moody as hell. His eyes were rimmed red, and his hair stuck up in the back. He wore the same clothes as the day before, though they now appeared as though he’d rolled through a thorn thicket. He dropped into the seat across from me in silence, glaring at his plate of eggs as if they’d personally wronged him.
Uncertain what happened to the gentle man of the night before, I tentatively asked him if he was still planning on accompanying me to Aggie’s. His response was a clipped nod and an indistinguishable grunt. My cheeks heated, embarrassed and inexplicably angry, and neither of us has said a word to the other since.
My anger still simmers in my stomach as I finally cry out in frustration. “It’s not working, Aggie,” I exclaim, throwing up my hands. Maybe Anrai and my power both realized that I am useless and naïve. Perhaps they went in search of someone more worldly. More well matched.
Aggie appears unruffled by my outburst. She nods slowly, her white eyes twinkling in the morning sun.
“Maybe someone needs to be attacking you for it to work?” Max offers helpfully. Last night’s wine had Calloway declaring this morning that getting out of bed felt akin to getting slammed with a sledgehammer, so Max accompanied us in his stead. I found myself grateful for her presence, because if it weren’t for her dry commentary, Anrai and I would have ridden here in complete silence.
“Her life wasn’t threatened when she healed me in the cave,” Anrai supplies lazily. It’s clear he speaks to the audience at large, not to me, and I have the urge to hit him.
“Butyourswas,” Max replies with a pithy glare. “Maybe it’s a life-or-death thing?”
“Or maybe, it’s something none of us understand and we shouldn’t be relying on it. Maybe we should be leaving her here,” Anrai shoots back, his eyes full of fire as they land on Max.
“It was your idea that she help in the first place,” Max retorts, uncoiling her lithe body and standing up straight. Today, her tattoos are covered by a white, linen dress and her hair hangs in thick ropes over her shoulder.
“It was misguided.”
My cheeks flush and the anger in my stomach climbs into my throat like flesh eating acid. Howdarehe act as if I’m helpless? He didn’t think I was so helpless when I saved him from Shivhai or when I saved myself from Avedis.I’mthe one who got the information to bargain for my father with and now he suggests I am no more than a liability? I open my mouth, to yell or cry, I have no idea, when Aggie’s sing song voice crackles at my shoulder.
I practically leap out of my skin at her sudden appearance behind me, not having noticed she moved from the porch step at all, but she shushes me with a touch of her rough hand on my shoulder. “Use it, little bird.”
