Page 110 of Guiding Reason
Maybe she’ll be a leader like her father one day.“Fine, but Anandas said he wouldn’t need much time when I dropped him at that settlement.”
“They call it their summer home. Will you ever lose a city dweller’s ignorance, ma?”
Hyran managed a shrug. “Who knows, ma?”
She huffed but didn’t laugh.After today, she’ll have to relearn how to laugh. Maybe I will too.
Li and the mechanic’s daughter walked off. Sinex, though, went into the Old House to watch the survivors.
“Take me first?”
Hyran turned to see Taros wander his way from a house across from them.
“Sure. I’m just on transportation duty for the day anyway.”
Taros pushed a strand of purple hair back behind one ear. “These people would’ve been fucked without a healer,” he whispered. “And there wasn’t one here, meaning they’d have been fucked without you.”
“I guess.”
Taros grinned, his face a neat pattern of blades. “Take me first, and I’ll make sure Col doesn’t feel lonely.”
Fury rose, normally something Hyran could have suppressed, but today, after this particular day, he grabbed Taros’s lapel, bared his teeth to the other Guardian, who did nothing, that grin along with those blades not going anywhere.
“That was a joke. I’ll give him a report though so you don’t have to. You’re not too bad, I think. I’m cautiously approving of you and Col.”
“Cautiously approving? You Hound-fucker.” Hyran let go of him. “If I accidentally drop you, it’s not a comment on your cautious approval at all.”
Taros grumbled, the words unintelligible while he fumbled out his goggles and put them on. “Sinex? Hyran is going to take me first. Then he’ll come back for you and the others.”
The young mycologist nodded, and Taros climbed on Hyran’s back, leaned forward. “Did you know?”
“What?”
“That kid is a Conduit. I noticed when I handed him some food earlier. He was just buffering, and I don’t think he even knew he was doing it.”
Hyran looked back into the house where the wounded were resting in whatever peace Anandas’s medicine had brought. “I didn’t know that.”
“He might not be too old to come to Argentea with us, right? I mean, especially with us. Our team has influence.”
“You assume he wants to leave and live in a city.”
Taros sighed. “I want to leave this place, and I never even lived here.”
Exactly,Hyran thought but didn’t say.
“Hold tight. We’re off.”
The run was easy, the darkness of it even comforting Hyran, just as the thought that he was about to see Col’s face, touch him, hug him. Get the kiss he was owed.
He stopped, not making it as close to the house he knew Col was in because there were people out in front of it. Hounds, four of them. One was the one he’d left Col with. Avan.
In the single moment it took to stop and let Taros down, Hyran’s world came crashing down.Avan. He mentioned Avan. It was code after all, and he’s in trouble. What have they done, sold him to these Hounds?
“What the—”
“Who’s that?” Taros pointed a casually sharpened finger at the Hounds, who looked at them in mild shock, probably because the speed of their arrival had surprised them.
It didn’t last very long though.
