I’ll lie to my sister if she asks me about it. But I won’t lie to Larus.
“I’d forgotten how good the beer is here,” he says as he takes a deep gulp from a clay mug. “I never got a taste for Nithyrian wine.”
I can’t help but snort at that. “Really?” I had seen Larus at the bottom of a bottle more than once.
“There’s a difference between drinking something and liking it.”
“I suppose,” I say, though I don’t really know what he means.
There’s a long pause while Larus drinks his beer. He’s waiting for me to say something, but I just stare at him in silence, thinking of the fight.
He took out three of the bandits while Adria dealt with their fire-born. They’d gone over the entire thing in painstaking detail on our way to the inn, with Adria constantly trying to bring up my ridiculous act of mercy and Larus stopping her short every time she tried. I appreciated that. Though he loved all of the Verran children, we all knew Larus had a soft spot for me.
I wish I had remembered any of the things he taught me when it mattered.
“I choked,” I admit when Larus sets down his empty glass. “I got lucky. He ran into my sword.” He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. “I know what you’re going to say.”
He looks around the bar. Adria is chatting with a redheaded man somewhat amiably; she doesn’t seem to be in any trouble, although that could change at any moment. He must decide that she can handle herself in any case because he stands and gestures for me to follow him.
“Let’s take a walk.”
I follow Larus through a back door onto a deck overlooking the river. It’s a dark night with only a crescent moon to help him see, so I take the lead and guide us down the steps and along a path on the riverbank.
The river is wide and slow, its banks shrouded in reeds and rushes that reach my waist. This thin strip of land is the lifeblood of Selara. It’s surrounded on both sides by hundreds of miles of desert, much of it as treacherous as the desert we crossed to reach Fenval. The land we’re walking on now will flood just after the harvest in a couple of months. When the waters recede inthe new year, they’ll leave behind everything the plants need to grow. This is how Selara survives.
And it’s how Nithyria survives too now. Almost all of our arable land was destroyed in the war, leaving us nearly completely reliant on Selara for food. They’re only too happy to feed us in exchange for the most precious resource in the world: the ash of the phoenix cypress, a tree that only grows one place in the world.
The forests of Nithyria.
“Tell me what you thought I would say,” says Larus finally as we pass into a copse of low-growing palms.
“I don’t know. Something about how I should have fallen back on my training like you’ve told me a thousand times. That I got stuck in my head again, and that I can’t count on every person I fight to kill themselves for me. That it was a good thing Adria was there to save me. But you’d also say that you know I don’t really need saving, not if I’m at my best, and you know I won’t let you down again.”
“How diplomatic of me,” says Larus. His face is solemn, but there’s a hint of a smile in his voice. “Did the version of me in your head offer any sort of comfort?”
“A pat on the shoulder,” I say.
“Like this?”
I laugh as Larus awkwardly pats my right shoulder three times in quick succession.
“And did it work? Do you feel comforted but also gently reminded of your duty?”
"I do,” I say, but the words don’t feel quite right. “I—”
The face of the dead man on the road flashes into my mind.Marcus.He had been one of our men once. One of the people we’re trying to save.
There would be no saving him. He died there today.
I swallow a sob. “I know I’m just the backup plan, but how in the fuck am I supposed to…?”
I stop short of saying it. We can’t discuss our plans to kill Ronan now that we’ve left Nithyria, but I know Larus gets my meaning.
My desire for vengeance runs bone deep, but after today, I’m worried if it’s enough. What will happen if I choke when it really matters?
Larus hesitates a moment, stroking his beard and looking around. Then he sighs. “I told her just to tell you. But you know how she is.”
That gets my attention. Thereismore to this than they’d told me. “Told Adria to tell me what?”
