Page 85 of A Dawn of Gods & Fury

“And you’re saying you would be different?” His focus drifts downward over the deep V of my dress, before climbing back up to my lips. “That, if my blood weren’t laced with poison, you wouldn’t be spewing all sorts of sweet lies for a taste of it?”

“I wouldn’t.” Because I don’t need it anymore. Even if I can still smell it—like a delightful fragrance I can’t help but chase with a second, long draw. But I bite back the urge to confess that. I like holding on to the inexplicable secret. “I don’t feed off those who disgust me.”

“Is that what I do, Annika? Truly? I disgust you?” He moves in closer, reaching up to toy with one of my curls. “It’s even softer than I imagined,” he whispers, winding it around his fingertips.

“You’ve imagined touching my hair?” I attempt a mocking tone, but instead it comes out shaky.

Long, dark eyelashes flutter as he peers down at me with a heated look that stirs my pulse. “I’ve imagined a lot of things where you are concerned.”

I swallow against this unwelcome reaction stirring inside me. I hate Tyree. He is a Ybarisan, a murderer, a kidnapper. I hate him with every stitch of my—

A rustle sounds in the trees, and Tyree’s attention whips away from me. A boy of maybe ten in soil-stained clothes stares wide-eyed at us from beneath a branch, like a doe caught in the crosshairs of an arrow and aware of it.

“Hello,” Tyree says calmly, stepping toward him. “Can you tell us where we are—”

The boy turns and bolts in a flurry, earning Tyree’s curse.

He starts running after him.

“Hey!” I yell.

“What?” He peers back and, as if remembering he has me bound to a tree, he curses again. The vines fall to the ground.

He takes off after the boy. “Hurry, or he’ll get away!”

We tear through the dense forest, flat leaves slapping at our faces no matter how often we duck from them. Eventually, Tyree grabs hold of my arm and stops. “He’s just a boy. How did he outrun us?”

“He’s short?” I scan the trees, looking for movement, my breaths ragged.

“He can’t have gone too—”

Branches snap to our left.

We take off in the direction of the sound, me at Tyree’s heels, until we emerge in a clearing where the dense foliage has been cut back. The boy stands in the middle of it, his chest heaving.

“He’s mortal,” I whisper. I can hear the telltale heartbeat from here.

“No wonder he’s running. He’s terrified of you.”

“As if he knows the difference between us,” I snap. Idiot.

Tyree holds up his hands in a sign of surrender. “We will not harm you. We just want to talk.”

The boy shouts something in a language I don’t recognize before taking off with a leap.

Tyree groans, and we give chase again.

I can’t say if it’s him or me who trips the wire, but suddenly we’re entangled in a net and dangling high in the air.

24

Romeria

It takes every ounce of my courage to not arm myself with my affinities as Solange leads me inside the walls of Nyos’s Casters’ Guild.

While the towers that loom ahead are imposing and unfriendly, at this level, the view is far more welcoming, with winding stone paths and manicured grounds of low hedges and glowing lanterns that give off a charming light.

Solange and Fatima are silent as they lead me down a main street, and I steal glances at the many buildings and alleys between them, making a mental map, should I need to rely upon it later.

---