Page 138 of Secrets of Graves and Gold

She draws her knife. “You’re not?—”

Her mouth opens to gulp the air and holler a warning back to the camp. I snatch at one of the knives at my hips?—

And Rheave is there first, leaping from the underbrush with his hands outstretched.

He tackles her, power bursting from his hands. The lightning bolt of energy sears through the woman’s body with a soft sizzle, so quickly that she’s disintegrating into cinders before her body can thump against the ground.

Her charred remains patter across the forest floor. All that’s left is a sickening smell like burnt meat that washes away with the next gust of breeze.

Rheave stares down at the scattered chunks of ash and blackened bone. He looks a bit queasy himself.

As I hurry to join him, he lifts his head to meet my eyes.

“I didn’t like doing it,” he says quietly. “But either she died, or she’d have called the rest of them to kill you and me and our friends too.”

I know that twisted feeling, sure that you did the right thing but wishing you hadn’t needed to. Like when I had to stab Esmae before she could do the same to me.

The daimon-man didn’t save me only from the attackers the scout would have called our way but also from having one more heap of guilt on my conscience, if I’d been the one to kill her.

I grasp his hand. “There wasn’t really any choice. She’d already made hers. But I know it’s an awful feeling anyway. Here, I’d better spread around the ashes so it’s less obvious what happened.”

Grimacing, I shove at the ashen remains with my boots, mixing them with leaves and dirt. Rheave follows suit until the spot where the woman fell could just be a darker streak of soil amid the rest.

As we hustle away from both her and the camp, the daimon-man smiles. “You tricked her at first. You got her to tell you things.”

The joy of that small victory returns. I find myself smiling back at my new lover.

“I did. Without using a single scrap of magic. Now we’d better get back to the others so we can figure out how to stop their new plan once and for all.”

Thirty-Eight

Casimir

Ivy lets out a little hiss and raises her hand from the stick she’s holding. A drop of blood wells up on the tip of one finger. “I scratched myself.”

Rheave leans over from where he’s sitting next to her, his eyes widening with concern. “Are you all right?”

“It’s just a tiny prick. But these are fiddly.”

“Stavros said it might be easier if we slide the bits of fletching only part way down until they’re all in, and then push them the rest of the way.”

Ivy studies the arrow she’s been making under Rheave’s guidance after Stavros instructed him last night. The daimon lost all his previous projectiles in yesterday’s chaotic assault on the march.

“I could see that helping,” she says. “I’ll try it with the next one.”

As she tugs the last piece of the leaves they’re using for fletching into place and sets the new arrow on the small pile they’ve been building, Rheave tips his head to brush his lips against her hair.

I’ve seen our newest companion show physical affection to Ivy in the past. There’s nothing about the gesture that’s inherently more intimate than before.

But the ardent gleam in his eyes when he eases away and the hint of a blush that colors Ivy’s cheeks tell me something more passed between them during their foray this morning. They shift their bodies next to each other with a newfound sense of coordination I’ve normally only seen between lovers.

Good. She needed something ecstatic amid all the anguish she’s been dealing with.

I haven’t been sure how to offer that kind of release myself, not in a way she’ll accept.

For now, I walk across the messy floor of the abandoned outpost and sit at her other side. “Show me, so I can pitch in too? I don’t think we can have too many arrows if we’re going to be on the front lines of tomorrow’s battle.”

A small shiver passes through Ivy’s slim frame, but she smiles at me and hands over one of the sticks she and Rheave have carved into a straight rod from a small branch. “We’ve already put the notches in them. You just need to fit in the fletching and one of these pieces for the head.”

---