Page 16 of Of Sword & Silver

I glance over my shoulder at her, but she’s not paying me much attention, stacking logs expertly. “I presumed.”

“I knew you could hear me.” A quick smile illuminates her face, gone just as fast. “Kyrie Ilinus, sworn to the goddess, well, you know her name. I was a foundling.”

A foundling. I stretch one sheet of canvas out across the ground, then pull the other waxed sheet over the stakes.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I finally tell her. I am, too. Sola’s disciples are known for… creating foundlings. Killing their parents, ensuring the best and brightest and most likely to serve the goddess will fall into their care, calling it destiny.

A truly evil practice, and therefore perfectly in Sola’s wheelhouse.

I want to ask how old she was when her caretakers murdered her parents, but I don’t.

It doesn’t matter.

“This is the part where you tell me your name, with your own free will.” Her voice is lilting. Cajoling.

I grunt, ignoring the invitation. There’s no need to get to know her better. In fact, it will only make it harder for both of us in the end.

Better to keep as much of a distance as possible.

The tent stands complete in front of me, and my irritation increases. Keeping my distance from her is going to be a physical impossibility.

Is it part of her plan? To keep me off balance? My frown deepens, and I force myself to test the stability of the structure despite my misgivings.

Snow drifts down steadily from cracks in the fir trees, beginning to blanket the world in white and otherworldly quiet. My feet are numb from the cold, and sleeping anywhere but by her side in the tent is out of the question. I am used to cold, used to discomfort, thanks to my time in Cottleside, but I am not enough of a fool to think I should test my own fortitude by sleeping outside.

“Should be ready soon,” Kyrie announces, wiping her hands on her pants. “Killed the hare myself this morning, and I’ve been saving the carrots and potatoes.”

I glance in the fire and am slightly surprised to find a soup pot nestled in the flames.

“Now that the carrots are safe…” she trails off, then closes one eye, staring into the thicket of fat-trunked trees. “Here, Mushroom, here, Mushroom,” she calls out, her voice a perfect soprano.

I roll my eyes and sit next to the fire, warming my feet. The woman must be half out of her mind. No matter how strong her silver tongue abilities are, no disciple of Sola can sing a mushroom into a stew pot.

If she is out of her wits, it’s going to make my work much easier. So will hating her.

I content myself with that thought as I rub my tingling feet, pain from cold and heat shooting up through me.

I need clothes, I need to clean myself, and I need food to regain my strength so I will be able to enact my own plan where Kyrie is concerned. Discomfort makes me shift, but it’s not from the pain in my freezing feet.

It’s from the knowledge of what part she will play in the little theater of the gods she’s stumbled into with her… death curse.

I will do as I always have, though—what I must.

Something large crashes through the underbrush, and I’m standing again a half-second later, ready to fight.

“There’s my Mushroom,” Kyrie says in a sing-song voice, and I blink in disbelief.

A grey-brown horse… no, not a horse, a mule, emerges from the underbrush, shaking snow from its hide. Long ears twitch towards me, its brown liquid gaze trusting and sweet.

“Mushroom,” I repeat, realization dawning. She was calling the mule. “Why would you let prey roam these woods alone?”

“I couldn’t exactly leave him in the city. I was rescuing a death knight, remember?” She gestures above her head. “About this tall, unfriendly, his handsomeness wasted on his shitty personality?” She beams at me. “Maybe you know him?”

I don’t give her the satisfaction of reacting to her remark.

She called me handsome.

The ground seems colder beneath me as I sit back down, trying to shake off the unexpected compliment couched in insults. A true compliment, no matter how backhanded, from the goddess of liars’ chosen.

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