Page 36 of Fate of Echoes and Embers
I would kill the man before I allowed him to take Hawthorne from Issa. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I shook my head. “No, you did not. You gave him your trust.”
“Stupidly.”
I had no wish for Cormac to hear Issa berate herself. Standing, I pulled her up with me. It was time to go.
“Until next time,” I said to the hardened smuggler. One I dealt with out of need and not desire. He was as unsavory as they came, but to his credit, Cormac had delivered.
“Good luck,” he said to Issa, pulling out my parchment, holding it up in gratitude that I took no pleasure in receiving. Willing myself to keep a smile plastered to my face, I nodded and led Issa from the room back out onto the street.
We walked back toward the dock, Issa silent.
It wasn’t until we stood in an abandoned spot with a view ofTidechaserand the sea beyond her in front of us, the tavern we’d return to at our backs, that Issa finally spoke.
Or tried to.
She lifted her gaze to me with such a look of despair, I acted without thinking. Pulling Issa into me, I wrapped my arms around her. It only occurred to me to be surprised she allowed it as Issa wiggled in closer, her arms going tentatively around my waist.
We’d held each other this way only once before, after our only kiss.
She felt better than I remembered. Too good, in fact.
With Issa’s head settled on my chest, I had to resist kissing the top of her head. Resist lifting her chin up and claiming those full lips once again. Familiar dockside sounds of water lapping against the pilings and the distant creak of ships at anchor filled the silence between us.
“Is it all true?”
If only I could confirm it wasn’t. That Cormac was full of shit and Hawthorne Manor was safe from Lord Draven’s designs. Unfortunately, the opposite seemed to be the case.
I pulled back to look at her, kicking myself immediately as Issa, seeming to realize for the first time she was actually in my arms, stepped back. I felt the loss of her body heat immediately. Maybe it was for the best.
“In all the years I’ve traded information with Cormac, I’ve never known him to be false. There are few ports, few people, in Elydor with more knowledge than him.”
She shook her head, as if still disbelieving.
“But… how?”
“How does he get such information?”
“That. And how… if it’s true… how could I have been so blind? Warren tried to tell me. Edric never liked him. Even Kael tried to tell me that Draven couldn’t be trusted. But… my father.”
“Was fallible too. We all are, Issa, especially with those closest to us.”
She looked so miserable. Draven was lucky he was so many miles from us. For now.
“I am not good at discerning men’s true nature.”
“Because you trusted a man your father clearly trusted too?”
“He wasn’t the only one I misjudged.”
She was talking about me. And she wasn’t wrong.
Biting back my long-held fear of vulnerability, the one that had kept me from letting anyone too close, I exhaled slowly. “Come with me.”
Leading Issa to a winding stone staircase not far from The Drowned Oath, we climbed it to my favorite view of port, a secluded outcropping of rock with a weathered wooden bench beneath it. We sat, the soothing sound of waves crashing below.
“All Thalassari have an affinity to water. Some prefer the gentle lapping of the tides along shore. Others, the trickle of a fountain. For me, it’s the crash of waves against the rocks. No matter how fierce the storm, the waves always return, steady and unyielding. It reminds me that some truths can be buried, but never washed away.”
I’d sat here many times, Valmyr one of the ports that elicited the most information in all of Elydor. Remembering the last time I’d sat on this bench, after leaving Hawthorne Manor, it was hard to believe Issa sat beside me now. Convinced she would never speak to me again, and not willing to risk finding out, I had instead attempted to forget her.
