Page 91 of A Chill in the Flame
“I can.”
“She can’t hear you. You don’t have to kiss her ass when she’s not around.”
Dwyn turned from where she’d kept her cheek to the wall, glaring. “Is it so hard to believe that my emotions are genuine?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they are. She’s gone from the most fragile, direction-less thing on the continent, to an unstoppable force. She fears nothing and accomplishes everything. There’s no one I’d rather have as a partner. Now shut the fuck up. I’m trying to listen.”
He pressed into her a little too close in the shaded alley as they arched their ears toward the gossiping going on just around the corner. She threw an elbow for him to get back, but he did not.
“…four of them!”
“All from Farehold?”
“Yes! But two…”
Tyr whispered, “What is she saying?”
Dwyn spun on him, shoving him with two hands so he created space. She fumed back at him. “You just spoke over whatmayhave been valuable information. Why don’t you disappear and go down there! Use your ghost power and make yourself useful!”
“Because I don’t speak the language!” he bit back, keeping his words to an angry whisper. “You’re the one who keeps sucking civilians dry so you can understand what they’re saying!”
She waved a hand to shush him.
“Which Iappreciate—” he tried to amend, remembering their conversation.
“Appreciate me later!”
By then, the bystanders had moved on to other topics. Dwyn was visibly annoyed, but they’d learned enough. The courtyard in front of the palace would host a beheading at sunrise. Given the city’s heat, she was grateful everything seemed to close around midday. She wasn’t sure if she would have been able to stand in the crowd to watch Berinth’s justice while baking to death, pressed against thousands of bodies.
“What do you mean, beheaded at sunrise?” Tyr asked.
Her face remained utterly expressionless as she met his gaze. “I mean they’re beheading him at sunrise.”
“But Ophir is the one who wants revenge. Why would she want someone else to do it? Why would Tarkhany get involved? Why would—”
“I’m sorry, do you have a fundamental misunderstanding for translation? I’m relaying the message. Their queen gave some decree last night, they’re spending a day informing the people and overseeing labor, and other than that, I have exactly as much information as you do.”
Dwyn had killed no fewer than six people since their arrival in Tarkhany, three of whom had unwillingly given up both their lives and their home so that the Sulgrave fae had a place to hide. Their horses now had a shaded place to stay, which had made Tyr happy. He didn’t like the idea of subjecting Knight to the heat just because he was on a foolhardy mission through the desert. Tyr had asked why she didn’t kill hundreds and stockpile blood but inferred from her answer that she’d tried something of the sort once, only to find borrowed abilities to be rather time-sensitive. He stopped himself from commenting on the mass murder of what had undoubtedly been a helpless village in the name of her experimental pursuit for power. He was trying to get on her better side, after all.
***
They’d been in the house for scarcely a minute before Dwyn stepped out of her clothes, leaving them in a pile by the door the moment it latched behind her. She collapsed onto the middle of the bed, dark hair sticking with sweat to her neck and part of her back.
“Move over.”
“Sleep on the floor,” she murmured into the pillow, voice muffled.
He made a face, looking at the rock-hard floor. It was cool, which was nice, but he couldn’t imagine a less comfortable night’s sleep. “The floor is stone while the bed is big enough for three.”
Three who remained were mummified husks in their very room, watching them with dehydrated, lifeless eyes. They had no place to bury the bodies in the sand, stone, andclay of Tarkhany’s capital. They’d remain in the room as dead sentinels, monuments to Dwyn’s callous theft of life.
Dwyn sighed and moved from her place comfortably in the middle to the far side of the bed. It was too hot to sleep under the sheets, but the family had barrels of water set aside. She’d been able to call to it in the form of a mist, cooling them intermittently to keep their body temperatures low. Tyr took off his shoes, then his shirt as he lay down next to her. He—as did most people on the continent—possessed a modicum of modesty more prevalent than the siren’s.
“You got an answer from me in the desert,” he said, folding his hands behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. “I want a secret.”
She rolled to her side. “Fine. It’s too hot to fall asleep. What do you want to know?”
