Page 65 of Kept to Kill
Most worshipped the gods, after all, but out of fear more than anything else. Few had any real liking for them. What if they turned away from him? Would he go back to the Mount? Would he be satisfied with that existence now that he had had a taste of this mortal one, so much more vibrant and real than anything he had felt in so long?
He was changing, he realized. He was no longer a god of the Mount, but neither was he a mortal man. He was some curiosity, an in-between thing that had no place. He could pretend, if no one else knew, but as soon as they did, he feared that the bubble he had put around himself would burst, leaving him adrift in a sea of uncertainty, never able to find a home. He would have to leave this realm and roam the others, searching for an imitation of what he had lost here.
He shook his head. Had this life really become so important to him already? Before Lily, he had not had any ties here. And now he cared for her, and he cared for Mal as well. He looked at Quin. Even Quin, who was, in truth, part of his family even if they didn’t share the blood of kinship.
‘I’ve heard you asking about the portals at the inns we visit. You soak up all the tales you’re told,’ Quin answered. ‘Why?’
‘Interested is all. Stop changing the subject. Lily doesn’t want to do this. We should not force it on her,’ Bastian said. ‘Have you not noticed how hard she takes every death she causes?’
Quin leant back in his chair. ‘We must all do things we don’t like. She simply needs to realize that these men are not good men.’
Mal made a sound of derision. ‘Neither are we,’ he rumbled, mimicking what Lily had said earlier.
Quin shrugged. ‘And that’s true enough, I suppose, but since when have you cared? When did you develop this strong moral compass?’
‘She likes me.’ Mal didn’t looked up from his task. He’d picked up his knife at some point and was rubbing it against the whetting stone again, though it was probably as sharp as it was ever going to get. ‘Likes you too, Brother,’ Mal drawled, finally leveling a look at Quin. ‘Why she’s sad you beat her.’
Quin looked surprised, whether it was at his Brother’s previously unperceived depth of emotional knowledge or that he truly hadn’t realized why Lily may have felt so betrayed, Bastian didn’t know. His Brother said nothing.
‘If you’re truly going to go ahead with this plan,’ Bastian interjected, ‘then we must ensure she understands exactly what she must do, what these men look like, who would be best to kill first, where the guards are stationed, how she will escape. She must know where she must go after, which of us will meet her, and where she will go from there in case he is delayed or not there. She must know her way back to this house or the closest safe place.’
‘Agreed,’ Quin said.
‘Where has she gone?’ Mal asked.
Quin gestured out the window. ‘She sits in the garden, safe for now.’
Bastian looked to where he pointed, approaching the casement so he could see outside. Lily was there, sitting on a stone bench, calm, and as serene as he had ever seen her. Birds tweeted. Flowers bloomed. It was quiet and peaceful. A part of him wished to join her, but he knew that if any of them intruded on her reverie, they would bring her anything but calm at the moment.
He cursed the fact that he had no powers of his own anymore, save his odd little quirks. If he could kill those men for her, he would. If he could make it look like an accident, he would. But he could not. ‘Would that we could destroy the wards.’
‘They’re worked into every stone of Kitore. Such a thing would be impossible.’
There was a tentative knock at the door, and it opened slowly as Jona entered.
‘This arrived at the Brothers’ cache in the city. I was told to bring it here,’ he said quietly, putting a sealed missive on the table in front of Quin. ‘I wasn’t followed,’ he added before bowing slightly and retreating, closing the door quietly again as if he’d never entered in the first place.
Quin cracked the wax with his thumbnail and looked over the elegant scrawl.
‘As expected, we are summoned this evening for an audience with the king.’
‘Why does he want to see us?’ Bastian muttered.
‘It isn’t an odd request for the king to want to see the Commander of the Brothers, especially given the unrest between us,’ Quin replied. ‘Make sure your clothes are clean at least. We don’t want to insult the cunt.’
Mal growled from the corner. ‘Fuck this,’ he barked, and then he was gone from the room.
Quin rolled his eyes. ‘I think I liked it better when that bastard didn’t talk.’
Bastian chuckled in spite of himself, turning away from the casement and his perusal of Lily in the garden to watch Quin reread the missive from the palace.
They’d tried to change his mind, but their Brother still wasn’t listening.
He turned and left the room, no longer wanting to argue so fruitlessly. Quin could see little but his own ambition. As he climbed the stairs, he wondered if Quin had always been thus. He suspected so. Quin was the youngest Commander the Army had seen in many, many years, and there was a reason for that. Quin was single-minded in his pursuit of the Army’s agenda, and Bastian feared that anyone who crossed him, even if that was Lily, would pay a steep price.
In that moment, Bastian vowed that, if it came to it, he would find a way to get around the wards and kill Quin before he let that happen.
But for now he had to primp and preen to be ready to see a king.
