“Ouch.” Cason tipped the decanter back, swallowing as much as he could before his lungs gasped for air.
Brela snorted. “They also said I deserved something good for once. That only a dragon of your strength and intelligence was worthy of… well, this.” She unashamedly gestured to herself, mostly her body, but she gave a pointed tap to her temple before looking back at her papers to continue writing. “You’re going to be drunk before me if you don’t eat something.”
Cason sighed and took the dinner plate, weaving around her papers to sit on the couch in front of her. “What wouldyousay about us, then?”
She only shrugged, head flipping between her writing and the book. “I meant every word of what I said today. And last night. In fact, I think everything I’ve said to you since the markets in Averlyn has been the truth.”
His stomach twisted before he had taken his first bite.
She flipped a few pages in the tome—the shadow magic book, he realized—and started scribbling again. “Don’t act so surprised.”
How did she do that without looking?
“Shouldn’t I be surprised?” he managed to say.
“You flip between being annoyed and beingutterly intoxicatedby me more often than I curse. Shouldn’t I be allowed to feel the same?”
Cason hesitated at the words thrown back at him—hiswords. “How?” he asked. His voice was barely a rasp. “After everything that you’ve seen in this world, how can you trustanyone? How can you trust me?”
Her eyes shot up, an incredulous look on her face. “It is precisely because of those things I’ve seen that I can trust you. I have seen evil in the world, and you are the farthest thing from it. You are not my enemy.”
His fists clenched. “Severina ignored Valisea. We left them to die and suffer. We leftyouto suffer. You should hate…” Cason swallowed, fighting the tremble in his voice. “You should hateme.”
Brela straightened her back and set the pen down slowly. “You counted my breaths, Cason.” He started at how soft her voice had become, or maybe at the vulnerability of her words, but she didn’t flinch. “You counted my breaths even though you knew what I was. You could have dragged me from the forest by my hair, but instead you carried me. You could have burned me, captured my friends, and thrown me to the Wraturo to buy yourself time to escape, but you accepted our help and fought. Even after everything you said and did, no part of me can really hate you, just like no part of you can figure out how to hate me for what I’ve done.”
Of course, she knew she was right about all of it, which is probably why she shrugged and said, “Stop listening to those ridiculous, guilty thoughts you’ve been stewing in all day. I feel no different about you than I did this morning. And unless your feelings have changed—“
“They haven’t.”
Brela’s eyes only flickered slightly, as if she knew that answer as well. “Good. Then eat. And give me back my wine.”
Cason grinned and passed her the decanter as she took several swigs and went back to her writing, setting her finished page on the third pile and grabbing another blank paper to continue.
As he ate, he studied the papers and book she was so focused on. She’d created four neat piles, but only the shadow god Ryia could understand whatever organization pattern Brela was making. The symbols she’d written were still in the ancient language.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not taking the book with us. Too valuable. So I’m copying the magics that might somehow be related to the wall. Well, the ones I don’t know, at least.”
He nearly choked on his next bite. “You know shadow magic?”
It was Brela’s turn to choke on her drink, eyes wide in surprise. He sensed her heartbeat picking up as she fumbled for words.
She stared at the almost empty decanter of wine as if it had committed a crime before scooting over and setting it on the end table. Far out of her reach from where she was writing.
Cheeks burning a fierce red, she finally rasped. “There were still a few shadow-blessed objects around when I was in Valisea. We used them for protection when we couldn’t hide fast enough. I… I knew one shadow-blessed. He…”
It was an effort to shove down his disgust about the shadow-cursed tricksters still existing long after they were thought to be extinct. But he recognized the pain in Brela’s voice, so similar to how she had described those twenty women in Calcheth. He saw the darkness that crossed her features.
Maybe it was ignorance, or maybe it was to save her the weight of reliving another memory of Valisea, but Cason changed the subject as he toed the paper on top of the third pile.
“Did you trace this from the book?”
Besides the ancient letters that he couldn’t understand, there were three separate pictures she had sketched. Not quite symbols, but they looked like the markings that would be inked on someone magic-blessed. Actually, they looked a lot like the symbols on his chest, except where his tattoo resembled fire, these looked like… liquid smoke. Somehow smoother and longer than the tendrils of flame he possessed.
Brela snapped out of her distraction, smacking his boot and reorganizing the paper that he had shifted. “No, I didn’t trace it.”
Cason’s smile turned into a gape. “You… Wait, youdrewthat?”
