“Ruin’s breath, that was entirely mad. Yet, I’ve never felt more hopeful about the state of the country,” Anek had murmured dazedly afterward. “Still don’t see the appeal, but he’s devoted to you.”
The worries that had plagued her at the chapel dissipated like spun sugar. She suppressed a giddy laugh, then stilled at the dark figure standing at the top of the hill. Her pulse quickened.
Robed in his customary black with a baldric running crosswise over his shoulders, Kadra’s profile was unmistakable. A god of the night surveying his prey. Breath left her, replaced by what the wind carried of him—oranges, parchment, smoked wine, and something crisp, uniquely him, that set her aflame. What a strange thing to yearn for someone when he was steps away. To want to dangle her feet over the edge of the abyss and ask for it to swallow her.
The moons lovingly lit him when he turned. “Sarai.”
Gods, his voice was so beautiful. She’d missed feeling it clamp around her heart. “I can never take you by surprise.”
The cruel slash of his mouth curved in a smile that always made her heart stutter. He held out a palm, and the world quieted, coalesced into a single, powerful truth when she took it.Home.
Tipping her chin, he searched her eyes, warmth heating his gaze. “I wouldn’t say that. You threw yourself to the wolves at the Hearing.”
Longing thudded through her limbs as she wove her fingers with his. “I couldn’t feed them anyone else.”
A low sigh brushed her cheek. “I didn’t realize it until you began.”
“Look at that, I’ve surprised the mighty Kadra.” She squeezed his hand. “You did too.”
“I try not to be entirely predictable.” He slipped a hand around the back of her neck, a thumb making a hungry foray across her cheek. All at once, she was wordless. Lightning-struck, and so hyperaware that she could feel every whorl on his fingers.
“Thank you for last night.” The words felt wholly inadequate. “This’ll change so much! Though I fear for your coffers.”
“I’m wealthy,” he said with wry amusement. “But, my Sarai, for the sake of my much-weakened sanity, warn me the next time you plan on eviscerating a religious institution?”
“You and Cassandane have been holding the country together by your teeth.”I felt like a burden. “I couldn’t impose.”
“You’re never an imposition.” She flushed when he brought her wrist to his mouth to press a kiss over her veins. A rare public display of affection from a man who was extremely circumspect about whom he allowed to see him without his mask of cool formality.
“Understood?”
“Yes.” She smiled, knowing he saw the same weariness in her that she did in him. But rest would have to come later. She tilted her head toward the horreum. “I met with Guildmaster Ioratius weeks earlier, and he swore up and down that this year’s yield of grain was abysmal. How did you find this?”
“Gaius did.” Kadra followed her gaze. “It’s a trap.”
“What?”
“Nothing has stirred beyond that fence in the last half hour.” He contemplated the unmanned wooden gates into the horreum. “Our arrival was anticipated.”
“I knew it was too much to hope that we caught them off-guard,” she sighed. “By the Saints and Wretched, all this grain piled here while the north begs—” She paused at the grim set of Kadra’s features.
The callused hand curled around hers thrummed with tension, the divot in his brow deepening the longer he examined the compound. Apprehension bubbled in her chest when his eyes altered, an unearthly cold brewing within.There’s that look again. As though he had penetrated deep into corners that she couldn’t see and found something almost… frightening.
“Kadra?” she whispered, and he blinked—as close to a jolt as one would ever get from him—turning to her with unflinching intensity. She wet her lips. “What is it?”
He shook his head with a faint smile, another avoidance of the same question. “Be careful, yes?”
“Always.” Pulling out the pin in her armilla, she pricked her thumb and pressed the blood intobeshazto tear a few ligaments in the event of battle.
He strode down the hill to the wooden gates and raised a hand. She waited for lighting to collapse the wood to ash as he usually did during their bouts of vigilantism. But his hand dropped. The same eerie expression tightened his face before he brought both palms to the gates and pushed.
They swung open.
Her breath fogged out in a rush.Something’s wrong.Trap or otherwise, the Guild would never leave the place unlocked. Catching Kadra’s gaze, she tilted her head left. He nodded and veered right.
One step, another. Nothing stirred within the dark arches of the horreum’s three entrances. The quiet that draped the grounds didn’t belong to winter, devoid of its windy whistles and creaky boughs. Only a half-dead brazier sputtered at their invasion.
Where is everyone?The hairs on the back of her neck rose to full mast when no Guildspeople ran out, weapons aloft.
