Page 23 of A Sweet Destruction

Chapter 7

Ford

“No, I am not in a bad mood,” I barked, my tone betraying any sort of credibility I had.

Soren’s eyebrow lifted an inch higher, so much so I was debating mentioning that it was in danger of disappearing into his hairline, but then he’d probably take a swing at me and then he’d really see me in a bad mood.

“I didn’t sleep well,” I muttered in acquiescence, needing to give him something to go on or else I was going to be subject to questions I didn’t want to answer.

"Yeah, I’m sure you didn’t,” Soren shot back, and my fist curled in preparation to snap it across his shit eating grin.

I hadn’t lied. I hadn’t slept a wink.

The entire ride back from the barn, Esme had spoken to me in sterile sentences, cleanly detailing the slip of fabric she’d found, the figures she saw disappearing into the night, and every other microscopic observation that she’d gleaned in the span of two minutes.

She’d spent several minutes slowly walking me through how what she’d seen pointed to the conclusion that the Prince had been there. That she didn’t want to betray Roger, but that he clearly had a closer relationship with Elijah or the Prince than he’d disclosed.

All things I’d surmised when she’d told me what she’d seen, and only strengthened by the trust I had in her.

Trust, I thought with a chuckle of disbelief. I would never lose my trust in her wit and her skills, but my trust in her emotional state was shattered.

It was why I’d doubted that she simply just had that much to share with me over the course of our ride back to the camp, and instead was tempted to believe that she’d been rambling to avoid any further conversation with me.

The camp was quiet when we got back, it being the dead of night and all, and we didn’t want to draw attention for sneaking out, so we’d cleaned up Sky and Shadow then made our way back to our tent in utter silence.

Silence used to be something I’d say we were good at, comfortable enough with each other that we didn’t feel the need to speak if we didn’t have something to say.

Comfortable was nowhere near an apt descriptor for our dynamic. Not anymore. Maybe not ever.

Esme barely took two seconds to drop her stuff back into the tent before she was running off to the creek to cool off.

I didn’t know whether it was everything that had transpired or how much was left unsaid, but while I watched her walk away, there had been a solid tug in my midsection that almost sent me stumbling after her.

When she came back, her cheeks flushed pink from the cold water, I swapped with her, suddenly craving a dip in the frigid river.

She was asleep, or at least appeared to be, by the time I got back, and I’d spent the rest of the night wide awake, listening to her breathing, and wondering where I’d fucked up.

There were several moments over the course of the night where I genuinely thought I was about to be sick. My system was breaking down along with my worldview, threatening to crumble while I readjusted to everything I’d learned over the past twelve hours.

“Well, I didn’t get any sleep either,” Soren said, bringing me back into focus. I’d forgotten he was standing there.

I groaned loudly, knowing what he was alluding to. “Please don’t. I’ve already heard enough. You two aren’t as subtle as you think.”

Soren barked a thoroughly pleased laugh, and an ugly part of me flinched in a jealous reaction over the strength of his relationship with Bellamy. “That was not what I was referring to, though accurate. I’ll withhold details so I don’t offend your sensitive ears.”

I almost smiled, almost. I was too deep in my bad mood to actually find humor in his words.

“I was referring to the fact that this war might be taking a very, very different turn,” Soren finished.

I grumbled out a sound of assent. At the beginning of this war, things were much more violent. A large part of that violence was Vir’s fault, part of an incredibly misguided attempt at dick-swinging in the form of offensive maneuvers out into the surrounding towns.

It had been a disaster, in no large part to the fact that harming innocents torpedoed morale and wasted resources. Our overlords back on Vir still pushed that tactic every so often, but unluckily for them, there was enough resistance from the Muli-bound soldiers that we’d scaled back to a more defensive position starting a couple years after I’d enlisted.

The war itself had grown cold, turning us more into guards of the Bridge than soldiers. Fine by me.

Every time someone tried to get testy, lives were lost. Though protecting innocents (and that depended on who the people in power deemed innocent) was an easy thing garner support for.

I wasn’t bloodthirsty, craving revenge. For those who preyed on others, who thrived off violence—fate would come for them eventually. Even then, I had a short list of people I’d like to direct fate right at, hopefully in the form of a knife to the chest.