Glancing around, I found an alcove displaying a statue of Callesis playing his lute and dragged Aethra behind it. Shefollowed my lead, crouching behind the stone. Whisper slunk under our feet, hackles raised.
The ebony Hades Knights marched down the street, their pace agonizingly slow.
Aethra shrank against my chest, rubbing her neck and breathing in quick gasps.
She’d always been calm when we faced danger. Always knew what to say, what to do. To hear her panicking, now . . .
Gods. What had that man done to her? The possibilities terrified me.
Taking her hand, I tried to reassure her with my presence. Aethra’s breathing slowed, and she pressed a hand to her mouth.
The Hades Knights stalked by. I listened to their footsteps raptly until I could hear them no more.
Relaxing, my focus shifted to the woman pressed against me and her warm breath on my throat.
We were supposed to be over with,done. Doomed to die soon, anyway.
Yet here I was, falling deeper in love with her.
“I think they’re gone,” she whispered.
Taking her shoulders, I pushed her back against the opposite wall. “I swear to the gods, Aethra, I’m going tostrangleyou. Why are you out here?”
Guilt flashed across her face, and she looked down. “Okay, I know it seems stupid, but listen, I . . .” She chewed on her lip. “I saw Ainwir.”
My eye twitched, trying to understand what she was saying. “I thought Ainwir was dead.”
“I did, too.”
“Then you must have been mistaken.”
“I wasn’t,” Aethra insisted. “It was him.”
“Where is he, then?”
“I . . .” She ran a hand through her curls. “I don’t know. Maybe I was just hallucinating.”
“You probably were. Have you slept in the past few days?”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
My first instinct was to pick her up and carry her back to the inn, but my shoulder burned in protest. I hated feelinghelpless—helpless to protect, to fight.
Aethra moved to push me back, pressing a hand to my bare chest. She noticed she touched skin and furrowed her brow. “Where’s your shirt?”
“You cut it in half.”
“Well, you can’t go out like that; everyone will stare. And we,” she said, pushing me gently, “need to be invisible.”
My eyes fell to her tattered skirt—she’d ripped off several sections to tend Eleos’ and my wounds. “You look, uh . . .”
“Oh gods,” she murmured. “I need a bath.” Rubbing her eyes, she breathed deeply. “We need to leave before those knights see us. We can rob a shop. Have one in mind?”
Recalling one I saw the other day, I nodded in agreement. “This way.” Whistling, I ordered Whisper to run ahead in case the Hades Knights remained nearby.
Aethra followed quietly behind me, never more than a step away. We passed a square decorated with a gaudy statue of my father in all his arrogant glory. The impressive craftsmanship displayed the array of tattoos painted across his bare chest. A jackal crown rose from his brow, ebony black like his magnificent mantle.
Glancing down at myself, I felt a wave of nausea.
