11
Toran
There was a good chance Nes would run.
Toran hoped she wouldn’t. For Nephele’s sake, he’d given her Loriana’s ring. But he knew he wasn’t enough of a reason to keep her in the city. He could only hope her father was.
The yard surrounding the barracks was far from empty in the late morning. Rows of picnic tables lined the barracks fence. Eyes followed him like wolves on a hunt as he chose an empty table far from any others and sat with his bowl of stew. The last time he’d taken a meal in the barracks, he’d passed out hungover in his cereal bowl and woken up behind the outhouse.
He pressed his spoon against the bottom of his bowl and tried not to think about the empty space against his sternum. Loriana’s journal sat unopened on the table. He hadn’t had the courage to read it since that night in the Guard’s Pub, and he wasn’t about to read it now with all the glares directed his way. He huddled down closer to his stew.
Toran was used to being on the outskirts. He was the Crown. Most guards weren’t comfortable around him. Which left him with Kohen, Quint, and eventually, Loriana for company. But now Loriana was gone, and lately the Prince had taken to locking himself in either the monastery library or his own bedchambers. It was just as well—Toran knew he hadn’t been good company as of late, and he and Kohen had always tolerated more than sought out one another.
Once, as payback for Kohen rubbing the insides of Toran’s uniforms with poison oak, he’d filled Kohen’s bathtub with vanishing eels—slippery things so translucent they often appeared invisible inwater, until they sank their teeth into skin and turned blood red. The sight and sound of a young, and very nude, Kohen running from his room squawking about monsters in his tub was forever etched in Toran’s mind.
He smiled at the memory around a mouthful of stew.
“Is the stew good?”
He nearly choked on the glob in his mouth. He hadn’t noticed Fell slide onto the bench across from him. With a grimace, he managed to swallow. “It’s all right.”
Fell nodded. And waited. As if Toran has been the one to interrupt his meal.
“Was there something you needed?”
“Needed? No.” Fell rubbed at the graying hairs on his chin. “But there is something you owe me.”
“What’s that?”
“An apology,” Fell said, his lip curling. “I don’t appreciate being undermined.”
“You were out of line,” Toran said. “You had no reason to arrest that girl.”
“You’re wrong. That girl is trouble.”
“Trouble does not make her the Witch.”
Fell leaned closer, his bony elbows digging into the wood of the table. “Have you forgotten who I am?”
Toran hadn’t forgotten. Fell was the Witchkiller. Eighteen years ago, he’d hunted down the previous Witch and drowned her before the Aeosch scouts could get there.
“I know better than anyone,” Fell sneered. “And you’d be wise to accept my help.”
Fell was right. Toran would be a fool not to accept the help of the only living Witchkiller. But he’d done far more foolish things over the past year. Besides, the King didn’t want Fell involved.
“No,” Toran said, lowering his voice, “I haven’t forgotten. Howcould I forget the man who beat me to a pulp because he was angry a seventeen-year-old was promoted to captain and broke his record?”
Fell’s lip curled further. “I was teaching you a lesson that day.”
“What lesson? How to take a hit? Because I learned that from you at a much earlier age.”
Fell acted like he hadn’t spoken. “Pride makes you sloppy, arrogant. And that will get you killed. Your enemies won’t hesitate to attack while you’re raising a toast or digging into a feast or fucking some pretty noble in the gardens.”
“I think you mistake me for the Prince.”
“A promotion does not make you better,” Fell continued. “Only hard work and vigilance will. That is the lesson I was trying to teach you.”
Toran glanced between Fell and his half-full bowl of unsatisfactory stew. Anger tightened his stomach. When he spoke, his voice was hard. “In case you’ve forgotten, Captain Fell, I am no longer your responsibility. I haven’t been. Not for a long time.”
