“Sylvie?” Larus gestures for me to approach him. “Are you hurt?”
I lower my sword, grateful for this distraction. The poor woman doesn’t even move. I walk to Larus and lift my head, revealing what I imagine to be a nasty little cut, judging by its persistent sting.
“You’ll need an elixir for that,” he says.
“She surrendered, Larus,” I say, gesturing to the woman. If I can get him on my side, maybe I can save her. “She said they were paid to attack someone. Maybe not us. She said it wasn’t the right carriage.”
He turns to Adria. “Probably one of Ronan’s men that paid her.”
“Agreed,” says Adria.
The woman has sunk to the ground. She’s crying softly. Defeated. She’s helping my argument by looking so helpless.
“Larus, we can’t just kill her after she surrendered. It isn’t honorable.”
This is the right thing to say, and I know it. Larus is nothing if not a man of honor, and though I doubt he’d show her the same mercy if we were at war, he knows that we aren’t at war. Not yet.He wipes the sweat from his brow, looking between Adria and me. “Fine. Let her go. She’s clearly no threat to us. Let Vahlo decide if she deserves to live.”
“Thank you,” I say to him, ignoring Adria’s scowl.
The woman, who has surely been listening to our every word, doesn’t move.
“Go,” I say to her, helping her up. She takes a few cautious steps away, looking over her shoulder as if she’s worried we intend to shoot her in the back. Even Adria wouldn’t do something that dishonorable.
I don’t think she would, at least.
Then, with one last grateful look in my direction, the woman flees out into the wastes, vanishing behind the sand-covered rocks that must have concealed them when the attack began.
“Earth-born,” says Larus once she’s gone, glancing at the damage to the road. He spits at the ground. “Dull and dirty blades, all of them. Shameful with an earth-born among them.” Many of the earth-born have a command of metal in addition to the rocks and dirt, but perhaps this one didn’t. Though magic is divided into schools, and though those schools are largely determined by your personality when your magic settles near adulthood, there’s a great deal of variation in specific abilities. Larus is earth-born himself, and he has an affinity for steel: crafting it, honing it, wielding it. “What did I tell you about keeping your blade sharp?”
“I know, I know. Blades sharp, wits sharper,” I say.
“Although I can’t say I’m truly upset. If they’d kept their blades sharper, you might not be here.”
I swallow and look down. Larus, to his credit, doesn’t push any further. He’ll save the lecture for when we’re alone.
By the time the other carriages arrive and we get underway again, it’s nearly nightfall. For once, I’m grateful to be shadow-born as I watch the landscape shift from desert sands to thefertile river valley through the carriage window, something no one else can see in the dark.
They’ve all seen it before, anyway, though not since the war. No one from House Verran has returned to the capital since Adria’s surrender except Typhon, the king’s emissary who has reported our every breath to the Grand Vizier since the war ended. And I’ve never been. It wouldn’t have been safe for me to go, even before the war. I was the future of House Verran. The backup plan, in case the others failed.
I guess some things never change.
When we arrive in Fenval, we’ve missed the ferry we’d planned to take down the River Mara, forcing us to stay a night at an inn. It’s a rough place, far from the wealth and opulence of Faros. I doubt they’ve hosted one of the Great Houses in quite some time, maybe ever. But the host is gracious, the beer is strong, and I’m grateful for a night in a real bed after three days on the road.
It's late when we arrive, but it doesn’t stop Adria from going hard at the bar. It’s difficult to say whether she’s more likely to find someone to fuck or to fight tonight. Knowing the fire-born, it’ll probably be both. Either way, I don’t want to be around for it, so I find a quiet spot in the shadows where I can see but not be seen.
Larus finds me there anyway. He knows me too well for me to hide from him.
I sigh as he takes the seat across from me.
“Sylvie,” he says, his voice low. “What happened out there?”
Chapter Three
Neither Adria nor Larus saw what happened with the man who held the knife to my throat. It would be easy enough to lie to Larus, to tell him I’d stabbed the man on purpose and that I was going to finish the job before Adria arrived.
It would be better for me if I did lie to him. My power as a shadow-born is fueled by secrets and lies. The more I deceive others, the darker my shadows become. It doesn’t matter much under ordinary circumstances, but in a fight against the fire-born or the light-born, light-born like God-King Ronan, it could be the difference between life and death.
There are shadow-born who go through the world lying to everyone they meet. But my mother wasn’t like that. She kept her secrets, but she knew who to trust.
