“I’ll look into it,” Quint said. He glanced at his pocket watch. “But you’ve got a meeting soon.”
Toran eyed the time as well. Less than half an hour until he had to meet Nes in the Ditch.
Quint swung his legs over the bench and stood. “I’ll let you know what I find.”
Toran gave his friend a short wave as he left. The rest of the tables cleared as the lunch hour ended. And once again, Toran was alone with his stew. He pushed the bowl away. He’d lost his appetite.
His eyes found Loriana’s journal. Every time he looked at the cover, all he could hear was the King telling him her ship had gone down in a storm, telling him the love of his life was dead. Quint had said he needed to read it. He pressed a hand to the top of the leather but still didn’t open it.
“You know, words don’t bite.”
Toran jumped. He whipped around to find Nes atop the barracks fence, one leg idly swinging back and forth. The other she’d pulled to her chest, her chin propped on her kneecap. She looked like she’d gotten comfortable.
“How did you get up there?”
She raised a brow at him, a light wind ruffling some loose strands of her hair. It was tied back today, in a gently sloping plait that hugged one side of her neck. Loriana’s hair had been one color—a black darker than the space behind his eyelids—and so short Toran doubted she could have gathered it in her hands, let alone braid it as Nes had hers. But Nes’s braid looked…nice.
He grabbed Loriana’s journal off the table and tucked it inside his jacket.
“I have my ways,” she said lightly.
Toran ran a hand down his face. “Look, you can’t be in here. The barracks are reserved for guards only.”
She shrugged. “I’m not inside the barracks.”
“That’s not the point. What are you doing here? We were supposed to meet in the Ditch.”
She stared at him, the corners of her blue eyes scrunching. “You were having me watched,” she said. “I figured I’d return the favor. Your friend is cute, by the way. Very chiseled.”
Toran grunted to cover the pang of disappointment in his chest. “Quint won’t be interested in you. And I don’t know what you’re talking about. Quint had errands to run in the Ditch.”
Nes’s lips stretched into an unamused smile. “We both proved ourselves clever and capable in the Walled Prison. Let’s not start pretending otherwise now.”
“Fine.” He stood from the table and nodded to the flask at her hip. “I assume you restocked?”
“You could say that.”
“Great,” he said, though he felt anything but.
The idea of magic, even diluted, made him anxious. He’d grown upgoing to monastery services where the Brotherhood preached about how the Witch stole her magic from the Goddess, Nephele—how it was their duty as Nephele’s followers to set that stolen magic free. And while the magic scraped off trees was not stolen from the Goddess, using it was still a sin, not to mention illegal. Magic was good only when used by the Goddess, she the only one capable of taming it. By allowing Nes to consume magic, he was essentially condoning criminality, and worse, he was letting her taint her soul with its evil. But she was his best shot at finding the Witch and finding her quickly.
“Then let’s get this over with.”
Nes raised a hand to her forehead. “Yes, sir, Captain, sir.”
He clenched his jaw. Failure and loss rolled like an ocean wave through his tense muscles.
Both hands braced on the top of the fence, Nes hopped down. Her feet barely touched grass before he tugged her out of sight around the other side of a storage shed. “You can’t be in here.”
Nes rolled her eyes so hard he half hoped her head would roll with them. “You said that already.”
“And yet you aren’t listening.”
“I listened,” she said. “I just didn’t obey. I’m not a bloodhound, so don’t treat me like one. Try to leash me”—she showed him her teeth—“and you’ll find, unlike that book you’re so afraid of, I do bite.”
He couldn’t tell if she was serious. “Not a dog,” he said but felt himself crack a bit as the words left his lips. “Noted.”
She narrowed her eyes. From the pocket of her cuffed pants, she pulled Loriana’s ring. She held it up between them like a bargaining chip.
