Page 27 of Of Sword & Silver

The sands of time are slipping faster and faster now.

Kyrie reaches up, and the cat’s eyes close as she strokes her fingers through its fur.

I grit my teeth, an uncomfortable feeling prickling through me.

A rumbling begins, and Kyrie glances over at me with a wide-eyed expression of wonder.

“It’s purring.”

“We don’t have time for this,” I growl, and the rumbling breaks off as the cat stares me down, its long striped tail lashing back and forth in irritation. “Dyrda knows it as well as I do, direcat.”

The beast blinks slowly, then stands, stalking towards me.

And nearly knocks me onto my ass when it rubs its huge head against me, marking me, too.

I roll my eyes at the impudence. “I am not yours, nor Dyrda’s, cat.”

It chuffs, watching me with insolent intelligence I recognize all too well.

“We’ll need more than the three of us in the end, I fear,” I tell it quietly, then turn, continuing towards the cave entrance I remember from years and years ago.

Kyrie and the animals follow, and I try to block out the way she speaks to them both in the same soothing, sing-song tone.

She could talk them into their own deaths if she wished. That is the power of the silver tongue, that is the power of Sola and chaos. I need to keep that fact at the forefront of my thoughts.

The memory of those the last silver tongue murdered in just such a way has never receded, and it won’t now. I know all too well what Kyrie is capable of.

The snow recedes the closer we get to the cave, turning to slick ice across the rock and gravel terrain. The cat keeps pace with Kyrie, and though she seems oddly at ease with the monstrous feline, I am anything but.

The gods are watching.

Dyrda has sent aid. My lip curls as I glance back at the too-thin direcat. Aid, such as it is, that we will accept. My smile dies as quickly as it started.

The turmoil between the gods is coming to a head.

Heska’s fate is at hand.

“What’s in there?” Kyrie calls out. The pack mule eyes the direcat warily. “Don’t eat Mushroom, big kitty. He’s poisonous. He will definitely make you sick.”

The cat chuffs again, then plops to the ground, licking one massive paw.

“The direcat won’t bother him,” I tell her.

She lifts her gaze from the direcat and meets mine.

A bolt of recognition goes through me, striking me to the core.

I shift my weight, uneasy with the weight of what must be done, with the knowledge of what destiny has in store for us.

So much responsibility, so much heartache.

She will regret the chalice, she will regret her oath to me, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

For her, either way, the outcome is inevitable.

“I didn’t know you cared,” she finally says. Her fingers dance along the dagger belt slung around her hips, like she’s daring me to start a fight.

The uncanny sensation that she’s read my thoughts fills me until I realize she means about her clearly beloved mule.

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