Elias brushed his hand over her back. “Do you think he’ll go back on his word about you keeping the artifacts? You’ve never gotten something like this.”
She shook her head. “Ovir is a horrible man, but he’ll honor that promise. That won’t stop him from holding it over my head, though. I’m sure he’ll come up with something as punishment.”
“We can—“
“No,” Brela said quickly, cutting Farrah off. She knew exactly what the woman was going to offer. “It was my mistake, not yours. I’m not taking anything from the half for the kids, and I’m not taking anything from you guys. The dagger means more to me than my share.” Elias opened his mouth but Brela shot him a look as she stood and gathered their bowls. “I fought a shadow wolf for the Scholar’s dagger. I would rather be Ovir’s slave for the rest of my life than give up this blade.”
They didn’t press any further because they knew how much those words hurt. That’s what she was to Ovir—a chained weapon to be used for whatever he wanted, because he had learned too much from his father. He understood that the minute she left Valisea, she ceased to exist as Brela the adopted Veil Worshipper. She was just a shell with shadow magic that shouldn’t exist, empty enough to be filled with their lies, and malleable enough to shape into their blade.
The secrets Ovir kept about her identity meant he didn’t have to ask twice about anything. She owed his father for her survival; for everything she had become. Now she owed Ovir those debts. She wasn’t close to repaying them, but she had been closer. Close enough to taste those little glimmers of freedom on the other side; the freedoms that she experienced living with Elias and Farrah.
Those freedoms were now about as dull as the last glowing embers in the fireplace. But it didn’t matter anymore. Not when she had her father’s dagger; the last shred of an adopted family that had protected her since they found her alone and crying at the edge of the Veil wall. A child with a shard burned into her skin and a bleeding gash in her skull from a hellthorn-laced hilt, courtesy of the dead soldier lying next to her.
And she’d defend that dagger against anything, even a pack of celvusa or an army from Anfroy. Her father would have fought to his last breath, and so would she.
But she had also only won the favor of that celvusa by using a power she didn’t understand. She didn’t have an education nor a mentor to teach her shadow-kind magic—the temple had long been destroyed by the time she was born—and even if there had still been shadow-kind around Valisea while she was growing up, they weren’t stupid enough to reveal themselves.
All she knew about the magic that the shard had given her was through vague feelings and overheard conversations about theevilthings it could do. She recalled enough of the hand and finger movements that she had seen in her time in Valisea, when some of the Worshippers were forced to use their already limited supply of shadow-infused stones to keep themselves safe. That’s how she learned the simple illusion tricks to hide her appearance, but everything else was a guess.
If she wanted to protect this dagger—because if word got out that she had stolen it, armies would be breathing down her neck—she might need to use more than just her non-magic skills. The books on magic had been lost long ago, stolen by Anfroy and probably locked away or burned, but there had to be one floating around. The Prince of Severina was rumored to be interested in the more…boringartifacts, according to what she had overheard Gerrart say one evening when she was spying on him. To a soldier like him, that meant anything that wasn’t sharp, covered in blood, or worthy of a warrior.
Fool. Brela couldn’t wait to kill him.
“Bre, you coming to bed?” Elias’s voice pulled her away from her thoughts and the last embers of the fire. He stood behind Farrah with his chin resting on the top of her head, his arms wrapped around her chest. Farrah looked about ready to fall asleep standing up but still gripped his forearms, running her fingers in patterns.
“Yeah,” Brela replied, pulling herself off the couch.
She followed them up the ladder to their loft, still clinging to Night Carver. She bit back a laugh as Farrah very gracefully face-planted into the large mattress, smack in the middle and on top of the cluster of blankets they had left from last night. The mattress was probably the most expensive thing they owned, and they had saved up for something large enough to hold the three of them. It was the only bit of luxury they allowed themselves.
Elias kicked his boots off, slid onto the far side, and pulled Farrah into his body, tracing his fingers over her arm as she sighed and softened into him. Brela sat at her edge and placed the Scholar’s dagger on the table with her other knives.
They’d slept in this arrangement even back when they only had bedrolls pushed together. Brela was the fastest, so she was by the ladder with a perfect view of the small cottage they called their home. Elias slept like a rock but was the earliest riser of them, so he was on the far side, able to slip out without disturbing anyone. Farrah still woke up from nightmares most nights, and after years of telling her to stop apologizing for it, she finally accepted their help and allowed herself to be protected from both sides of the bed.
It also helped that Elias was massive and could easily hold both Farrah and Brela with his arms. He shifted his light grazing over to Brela as she nuzzled closer to an already snoring Farrah.
“I’m proud of you, Bre,” he whispered. “I know tonight was hard.”
She sighed. “I’ll make him pay. Even if I have to beg Ovir to let me kill him, I’ll make him suffer.”
“You know he won’t let you any time soon,” Elias replied. “Gerrart is too important, and it would draw too much attention. You’d have the Rooke Guard out in hordes, not that you couldn’t take them.”
Brela just huffed in response.
“Still,” Elias said, his arm sinking against her, “at least you can rest easy knowing Gerrart won’t be able to sleep for the rest of his life thanks to the state of his office.” He let out a soft laugh from his nose, his voice fading. “A gods-damned celvusa.”
A gods-damned celvusa, indeed.
5
A Dangerous Man
Silver spun between Brela’s left fingers as she walked around the kitchen, cleaning every nook of their home as she practiced with her sharpened blade.
As if there was anything to clean. Brela could almost hear when a speck of dust landed somewhere in the cottage. She had to do a bit more work in the washroom, seeing as her bloodied bandages and the herbs had been left out when they went to bed, but this had always been her process while waiting for Ovir to show up.
Elias and Farrah had already left for the morning food market, when the meat was best since it didn’t sit out in the heat all day. Farrah would spend most of the day cooking while Elias tired the children out for their naps. Sometimes he would help Brela in the markets during the afternoon, but since they had just restocked the medicines and herbs at the orphanage, he’d probably find other jobs around the village to pass the time until dinner.
With the Earth Festival happening in Rooke, there would be more people traveling through Averlyn this week. More people meant more opportunities to scam travelers into spending their money. Brela had collected a crate of magic-blessed items—stones that Farrah and Elias had infused with their power—some herbs, and the remaining finola poison ingredients that could fetch a good price with her persuasiveness. No one would be able to tell the herbs were really just the garnishes she didn’t like to eat, stolen from Farrah’s spice drawer and packaged into pretty containers meant to swoon the idiots into her trap.
