Ereon walks behind me, wrapping his arms around me and moving my hand to the center.
“What you’re holding is the shaft. I want you to swing it around while keeping your hand there. Switch hands, change hands. Anything that feels natural. You need to get a feel for it before we do anything else.”
I follow his instructions a few times until my arms are tired. I stop and let my arms drop. “This is ... harder than it appeared to be.”
He takes the staff from me before he backs up. He rolls the weapon effortlessly in his hands, switching hands and twisting the staff behind his back. Before he kneels down, sweeping the sand that looks like a wave as it sprays in the opposite direction. He’s fluid in his motions, going from one motion to the next in beautiful transitions. I’m amazed he never even hits the curved blades at his back. He slams the staff back into the ground and turns his gaze back to me.
“Trying to impress me?” I ask.
“I might be. Did it work?” He gathers our things. “I learned some things here in Shaston, but most of what I learned was from Anara. I was going to ask her to come tonight, but she ... has been very busy. Anara learned to wield this particular weapon when she was a child.”
I look to camp; Anara is standing beside Thylas. Both of them are looking in my direction, but it’s the way her hand gracefullydances with the flickering flame beside her that captivates me. When she moves her hand to the right, the flame mimics her motion. She notices me staring and closes her hand in a fist, the flame returns to a natural flicker.
twenty-six
Thylas
“She fucking hates me,” I tell Anara as we watch Ereon show Carnaxa the basics of staff wielding.
“She doesn’t hate you ... I don’t think. Honestly, I don’t know her well enough to say one way or another. You’ve barely given her any time to process what has happened since she woke,” Anara snaps back. It’s not hate in her voice, but something that reminds me of Siphonie. A tone of authorityand confidence.
“He hasn’t given her any space.” I jerk my head towards Ereon. He is now the one with the staff, going through a training routine as her eyes take him in from head to toe.
“Ereon had little choice — especially given theNle Shom.” She stops watching Ereon and Naxa train as she turns away and places her hand on my chest. “Come on. Join me while I eat. I’m tired of watching you sulk and I’m tired of eating alone.”
I shouldn’t care for Anara, but in the past few moons, she’s grown on me. We’ve bonded over watching the ones we love be with someone else.
As I follow behind her, her dark brown dress flows down her body. I noticed she stopped wearing her scarf around her hair — as she should — the first night we left the palace. When I asked why she would risk the wrath of the soldiers if they wanted to complain, she simply claimed, “There is nothing they can do to me that hasn’t already been done. And they know Ereon would kill them.”
Anara never said what happened before we left, but I catch the look in his eyes when she’s not looking. It’s the same one I have for Carnaxa. Something between Anara and Ereon isn’t the same anymore.
That should make me happy, but it hurts worse. Knowing that before he could have accepted me in Naxa’s life, and now if he gave up Anara — he’ll want me to back off too.
Anara still wears the shackles around her wrists, even though we’ve left Shaston borders. The King gave her more chain length between them so now she can move more freely, but the shackles are there, regardless. While he didn’t give a direct audience to eitherEreon or I before we left, he did let some of my soldiers come on this journey.
We walk to a small campfire burning near my tent, and I reach my hands out to warm my palms.
A lot of the time spent with Anara has been like this, us, simply coexisting together. She pours soup out of a ladle from the pot suspended over the fire. She brings a bowl to me and pushes it towards my chest.
“Eat. You’re already getting thinner than you were when you arrived.” She turns her back, grabbing another bowl.
“You worried about my health?” I sit down on a log, letting my legs stretch out in front of me.
“Someone should be. You’ll need your strength for what’s ahead. We all will.” Anara holds her food in one hand and lifts the hem of her skirt as she walks to sit beside me. She gathers her chains and twists them until they lay in her lap, before she brings the bowl to her lips and starts sipping the steaming stew.
“Do you want me to see if I can try to get those off?” I nod at her shackles.
“You can’t. Not even worth trying. I’ve gotten used to them, anyway. They’ll be gone, eventually.”
I set the bowl down beside me. “Why do you always talk like that?”
“Like what?” She takes another sip of the soup she holds.
“I don’t know … like you know everything that’s happening? I’ve watched you. When we speak of the deluc, the madness, Carnaxa falling asleep — all of it. You never show a hint of surprise.”
She takes another sip and licks her lip. “I’m from a small village. We learned to speak differently than you, to think differently than you.”
“So they taught you how to hide surprise when Ashonera is literally going to shit?”
