Page 27 of Light Up the Night

I shook my head and trotted after them.

“Don’t fuck with me, how many? How do you know it will hold, what if the center is still fire?” Questions shot out of me one after the other. Each step from the shore that didn’t end in an inferno and a drowning I considered the most sacred of blessings.

“Two hundred to the Iron Inlet. If the Glass Sea extends in favorable directions, I will travel through the Forest Wilds and flank her,” he said, as if it had already been decided. “No army. She knows me, if I am spotted, she will not have the same quick reaction she would with a group of men.”

I walked in silence for a time before I trusted myself to address him.

“What makes you think your one-man mission will be of any use? Even if you find the Savage Queen…”

“Azaria,” he corrected.

“Whatever!” My tone betrayed my lack of impression, and I quickly redirected. “Pariah… You’re asking me to trust that you will go behind enemy lines and do what? Assassinate her?”

I erupted in laughter and sighed much louder than I intended.

“Pariah…” I wanted to tell him that Chalice was everything to me. I needed him to understand. But I knew telling him that gave him the power to hurt me beyond measure. I stared into his hazel eyes. My eyes. We shared the same parents. The same face. The same passion for unleashing our inner torments in the most scandalous of ways… but that was where the line was drawn. He believed firmly that feelings were weapons. Thus, he lived alone, by choice, drifting from shore to shore earning coin and ending lives.

“I can’t say there’s anyone I want dead that isn’t already. So, no. I have no desire to kill Azaria of the Savagelands. I suspect she believes me in her pocket, which is an insult in and of itself, but she has never wronged me. If I take possession of her, it would only be for your pleasure.” All the play fell from his voice. He sounded educated and sincere. “You are my brother… if you are warring with this woman, then I will help you end your war.”

I heard him, and I wanted to believe him, but I knew from personal experience, nothing came without a price. I tried to figure angles and predict what he was getting at. Why? Never in life had he done something that benefitted anyone but himself.

“You want her?” I guessed.

“Azaria?” he asked, glancing toward me briefly. When I nodded, he scoffed. “I killed her father at her request. What kind of woman commands a coup on her own blood?”

I raised my brows, impressed by the woman’s ambition and my brother’s newfound morals.

“Fuck no. It’s Chalice I want,” he all but purred.

I gave him my best gambling face and twitched my lips in what I hoped appeared to be a smile, “You should have spoken with her.”

I could have gagged, but I somehow managed not to. For the next two days, he smiled like I had promised him the moon and the stars. I couldn’t help but think that maybe Azaria of the Savagelands wasn’t wrong. Her father was a heartless dictator, my brother a cold-hearted monster with a pretty smile. I’d kill him before I’d let his toxic ways poison Chalice, so, was I really any different than Azaria?

Somewhere around the sun’s mid-point, Pariah pointed to the Torch of the Sea. It was still billowing, but nowhere near as bad.

“This is where we part. You carry on toward Chalice, I’m going to meet you,” he excitedly plotted.

I nodded, wondering if it would be the last time I’d see him. I searched for some sign of dishonesty, but all I found was his chameleon’s smile.

“Safe travels,” I finally managed.

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