Page 196 of What Lies Within Masks & Shadows

“I can?—”

“Then do it. Take fucking care of yourself.” He pushed off the post and turned up the street. “You do not need a monster’s help. You have made that perfectly clear.” Garrik cursed and brushed his hand back through his hair. He raised a palm, flicking his wrist in a rough command.

Smokeshadows whirled in front of her on a chilling wind, pulling at her palm. She uncrossed her arms and, with a rotation of her wrist, flipped it over, letting the shadows dance across.

Silken touches gently brushed her skin. When they drifted away, a rolled parchment remained, almost tumbling from her fingertips before her warm grip closed around it.

On closer inspection of it, a perfectly marked route on an Alynthian map sat, marked in red strokes. From her location and her rough determination, the end of the route was, perhaps, a fifteen-minute walk, near the outskirts of the city.

Her fingers brushed the parchment. Their camp was at the main gate, and she was walking in the wrong direction. In fact, she had crossed through the mountain range and found herself on the other side, in the Sunless Valley. Another half an hour walk and she would’ve been at the city wall opposite the legion.

Alora looked up from the map to find Garrik leaning against a building twenty feet away. Smokeshadows danced around his shoulders and hands before he quickly adjusted his tunic over his chest.

“Start walking.” His words were distant, cold.

Alora stepped toward him, hitting an invisible wall, unable to get close to him. Physically feeling the barriers she had helped him erect to keep her out.

In a vicious, outstretched cloud of shadow and ash, Garrik shot into the air on Smokeshadow wings and disappeared into the night sky.

Thalon leaned against the crumbling foundation of a half burned-out two-story hovel—what was left of one. In fact, not a single structure still stood whole amidst the churned rubble. Smoldering ruins sent up smoke, reeking of charred timber and sizzling flesh. Collapsed rooftops spilled in on themselves, yet their foundations clung to a semblance ofshape and bore gaping wounds where flames had licked their walls.

All around her, flakes of ash swirled through the weary air, dusting the blackened bones half-buried in the debris. Destruction and devastation inescapable to the eye. An amber glow lit the sky as the few remaining structures burned to the ground.

The attack from earlier was contained to this area alone, as if the dragon had continually—ruthlessly—relentlessly attacked this portion of the mountain. Until it had done enough damage to satisfy whatever brought it there and carried itself away with death and destruction below its wings.

“You look horrible.”

“Not as bad as this place.” Thalon was right, though. Her face hadn’t stopped throbbing since the punch. The bruise under her eye had swollen horrifically.

Alora avoided eye contact, and silence fell between them. The occasional groan of splintering architecture yielding to gravity haunted the silence with moans of further obliteration.

She glanced at him. Thalon had taught her how to defend herself. She had watched soldiers in the ring get their asses reamed by their swords-master when they suffered careless blows enough times to know that she’d suffer the same fate. Even through the swollen and purple bruise, she felt blood scarlet her cheeks and nervously shifted in front of him.

Thalon registered her apprehension, tapping an inked finger to his cheek. “How did it feel?”

Alora rolled her lower lip between her teeth. “Being punched in the face? Like all the other times, I suppose. This one just…” White hair glowed in the moonlight as she paced, shaking her head. “I was careless. I messed up.” Shame settled in her voice before she slammed her back into the wall beside him and crossed her arms.

“Hurts enough to remember what not to do next time?”

She pinched her eyebrows, pivoting her head to look at him, and replayed everything from the moment Jade threw the first punch. And somehow … she couldn’t help but think he meant her words to Garrik, too.

Eventually, Alora nodded.

“Good. Tomorrow, you’ll show me precisely what you should’ve done until it becomes as simple as blinking.” Thalon rolled his head in her direction, his Earned clacking together before he smiled.

Alora took in a heavy breath. Not as bad as she’d expected. She could handle sparring in the ring. Preferred it over talking with …

She hadn’t realized until now. Garrik wasn’t there. Sapphires to the sky, she gazed around the stars clouded by rising smoke as if he would swoop down on Smokeshadow wings at any moment. When his muscled body didn’t fall from the sky, she scanned the ruined street around them. Not even the shadows danced in their usual unsettledness when he was near.

“He’s upstairs with our recruit. Garrik preferred to do this introduction alone.”

The located Mystic. Her eyes shifted to the burned door. “Then why are we here? He can’t handle himself?” Even talking about him made her blood boil. Her own stubbornness caused her long walk there, yet she still blamed him for not offering to bring her. And she knew it was foolish to think that way but didn’t care. For now, she’d let herself be selfishly mad. It felt better.

Glowing golden eyes watched a small flame burn down to its last flicker across the street. Once puffed out, the gray smoke danced into the air to join the rest.

“He’s asked a lot of his magic today, seen and unseen, and after what happened to him in Galdheir … his powers are greatlydiminished. They haven’t returned to full strength. Though we like to believe he’s all-powerful like heroes in books, he’s still bone that can break, flesh that can be cut, a mind that can fall to exhaustion. He’ll never admit it, but he’s tired. Angry. Not at you nor I. Just … angry.”

The unseen. The four hours that he was gone. And then, the deep wounds on his arms. What had he been doing in the time she’d been wandering the city?

---