She shrugged and sat across from him. “I want it to be a fair fight when I kick your ass for what you did to Brela. But she doesn’t want you dead, so until she gives that order, you’re going to remainnotdead.”
Cason huffed an amused laugh. Two women who weren’t afraid to take on dangerous magic. He’d almost forgotten how Farrah had looked at his storm ink that day in Averlyn, though she’d probably be more enamored with Serill’s healing marks since she possessed the same magic.
He took a bite of food, eyes still watching Brela in the distance.
“She’ll come back to us,” Farrah whispered, poking the fire. She didn’t bother hiding the doubt in her tone. “Elias is working on it, but it takes time.”
“What happened?”
“She’s never donethatbefore,” she replied, blue eyes drifting over her shoulder to her friends. “It might have something to do with the dagger.” She sighed before resting her gaze back on Cason, running a hand over her face. Her words were pained. “Brela was forced to lock away some parts of who she was in Valisea after she escaped, but she remembers everything about that darkness. I think that dagger… I think it cracked a piece of that fortress. It took until now for that darkness to grab hold.”
Cason frowned, poking around the meat in his stew. He needed the energy, but how could he stomach something after hearing that? Brela was part of a world he didn’t understand, surviving by any means necessary, and pieces of him wanted it to remain a mystery. To cling to that anger he should have for a people that murdered his mother.
But a larger part burned for answers, not with destructive fire, but with warmth and kindness for Brela. He wanted to help in the way she had helped him.
He also wanted to hate the feelings churning inside his chest, but he couldn’t find that disgust he’d felt before. Not when he saw Brela.
Not the Night Terror. Not the Veil Worshipper.Brela.
“What does Elias do?” Cason asked.
“He’s there to pull her out of the darkness that spilled out of the crack. He nudges her away from it, back into the light of this world; into herself.”
“And you don’t do that?”
She gave him a sad smile. “Not in the way Elias can. It’s not my turn to help, yet.” There was an unspoken depth in her words; of a bond that had been forged over similar hurt. Cason felt the weight of Farrah’s pain, too, especially as the dark-haired woman wrung her hands together. “She’s done the same for us, too many times to count. I’ve been with her for seven years. Elias for five.”
Cason swallowed. “When did she tell you? About the shard in her chest?”
She smirked. “Still trying to figure out why she saved you, I see.”
He just grumbled and gripped the knife in his hand. Was it really so clear to everyone but him as to why she’d picked him to talk to at the auction? Why she’d chosen to save him?
“I don’t know why she did it either, in case that’s what you’re grumbling about. But she thought it through, though. I can guarantee that.” Farrah pulled at the end of her braid. “She told me two weeks after we met, though I think she would have told me that night if we had met under different circumstances. She told Elias the next day. We handled it much better than you did.” Farrah gestured to the prison wagon. “What does the King want with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ll protect her after everything you’ve learned?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Farrah didn’t study him to see if he was telling the truth, as if she could read it easily on his face. “Good. And what will you tell the soldiers when they wake up?”
“That the Wraturo were responsible for the poison. The soldiers knew you were tracking us to try to rescue Brela, but I’ll tell them the truth about your help. And that you’re willingly coming with us to Aelstow.”
“Where she goes, we go.” Farrah stood, almost like she could sense that Elias and Brela had stood in the distance behind her. “You look like all four hells beat you into oblivion. Get some sleep and one of us will take watch. Brela will eventually come to collect that knife, so if you’re as fond of it as you seem to be, I’d make sure you’re rested enough to face that fire.”
Cason nodded and watched her join Elias and Brela twenty paces away. Brela sank into the middle bedroll without question, still clutching the Veil Scholar’s dagger to her chest. After Farrah and Elias spoke—quietly enough where Cason couldn’t hear—the man nodded and curled next to Brela, pulling her into his arms. Farrah sat down and took the first watch, one hand holding Elias’s while the other stroked Brela’s hair.
Despite the chance that they’d sneak off in the middle of the night, Cason leaned back onto his own bedroll and closed his eyes. He even slept peacefully, hand still clutched around Brela’s throwing knife when the sun finally woke him the next morning.
* * *
The soldiers didn’t complainabout the new arrangement with their Veil Worshipper prisoner, or the additional bodies that walked on either side of her. Brela assumed it was because the prince had ordered them to behave while she had slept in such blissful, painless dark. Then she saw the captain and the glorious, fire-fueled glare he gave anyone who looked her direction. There were still dark rings around his eyes, but his energy had returned. Elias had said that Valkip had slept all four hours until the sun rose, barked his orders, and threatened to let Brela loose on the soldiers if they so much as breathed toward the woman who had saved their asses while they slept.
Brela made a mental note to offer her thanks to the captain by not antagonizing the men like she had the day before.
Still, she was intrigued by the chance to break a few bones, especially after Serill shot her a look that said Valkip was the type to hold true to his threats. She didn’t doubt it for one second—not with the way he stood today in the sunlight. Like a gods-damned dragon ready to unleash four hells on them all if they stepped out of line.
