Page 169 of A Tower of Half-Truths
“Gods, when you ran after thatthing, I thought you were dead!”
“Oh, come now,” Neldren said with a smirk. “You know it’ll take a lot more than that to kill me.”
“Where’s Alain?” Mavery asked.
The two of them turned to her with blank looks, as if they’d already forgotten she was still there.
“He went off to sulk,” Ellice said, rolling her eyes. “Go look around back.”
Mavery shouldered her pack and took off at a slow jog—her aching body could manage no more than that—and found Alain on the other side of the tower. He trailed his hand over its stone exterior as he paced back and forth, muttering to himself.
“Alain!”
He turned around. He dropped his satchel, tossed his staff aside, and ran toward her. They collided in an embrace. Alain clung to her tightly, his face pressed against her hair.
“I heard the gunshots,” he said, his breath warming her neck. “Did he…take care of the beast?”
She nodded. “It’s dead.”
He sighed with relief. “I’m sorry for failing you back there. I should have told you I was weaker than I was letting on. My magic was useless against that—”
She pulled back. “You were anything but useless! You destroyed the anchor and disabled the wards. Not only that, your theories about the temple, about Aganast, were correct.”
“All fair points,” he said. “But I failed to protect you. I wish I could have done more in that regard.”
She placed her palms to his cheeks, angled his face until he looked her squarely in the eye. “Alain, I don’t need your magic, or your protection. I only needyou.”
She realized she’d been holding back tears. She let them fall freely as Alain gave her the warmest smile he’d ever given her. He raised his hand to her cheek, dried it with a slow swipe of his thumb. He leaned forward, lips parting—
“Well, this has been fun,” Neldren said.
Alain froze, and Mavery suppressed a groan as Neldren came sauntering over. Ellice clung to his waist, looking none too eager to leave his side anytime soon.
“Now that the job’s done, we’ll be taking our leave.” He extended a palm. “The other half of our payment, as we agreed.”
Ellice hissed something at Neldren, who mumbled in return. But Mavery was too preoccupied with wiping away her remaining tears and rummaging through her pack to make sense of theirbickering. She pulled out the old sock in which she’d hidden the five hundred potins, along with the syringe of resurrection serum. It was by some miracle that she hadn’t needed to use the latter today.
She held out the wad of cash to Neldren. For a second, he stared at it hungrily. But then his eyes flicked to Ellice, and that hunger faded. He sighed.
“Keep it.”
Mavery blinked at him. “What?”
“Consider us even. Besides, all this silver we collected should fetch a fair price.” He tipped his head to Mavery, then Alain. “Until we meet again.”
“Let’s hope we don’t,” Ellice said, though there was no malice in her tone. Her lips pulled into a smile as she looked to Mavery, who was too flummoxed to respond.
“Oh, you never know,” Neldren said. “This continent is only so big.”
He slung his arm around Ellice’s waist, and they parted without any additional fanfare. Once they vanished into the pine forest, Alain broke the silence with a heavy sigh.
“I, for one, am glad he didn’t decide to dole out another round of hugs.”
“Thatwasrather odd, wasn’t it?” Mavery said, then looked at the cash that remained in her hand. It had been almost as odd as him turning down a payment, but perhaps she’d underestimated his willingness to change. Why he could only do that forEllice, a woman half his age, Mavery would never understand. But she put that thought to rest as she returned the money to the sock.
Alain peered up at the tower. “Now thatthatbusiness is settled, we ought to give the tower another sweep.”
“Dare I ask why?” Mavery groaned.
