Page 36 of Dawn of Chaos and Fury
“I’m sure it’s simple,” Lange scoffed.
“Remove my bands. I can easily take care of the few sentinels here. Then we can simply walk up and take a boat.”
“Until we cross the border and are spotted by Serafina sentinels,” Corbin shot back. “Then we’re back to the beginning. You’re trapped, and we’re dead.”
“We need to get into the Serafina Kingdom,” she replied. “Once we are on the other side of the border, I know secrets that will keep us safe. We just need to get there.”
“If you’d bother to clue us in on what we’re doing, we might be more willing to help,” Lange drawled from the backseat.
She hadn’t really considered that. Her entire life had entailed watching her Master and others keep their secrets close. When someone knew your secrets, they had leverage over you. No onefreely gave up information; just like no one trusted one another. You got what you wanted through coercion and force. Not by simply asking. The mere idea was madness.
“All you need to know is that we need to get into the Serafina Kingdom,” she finally answered, her fingers flexing the smallest amount where her palms were flat on her legs.
“Why?” Lange pushed.
“Either come up with another idea, or we are stealing a boat,” she replied, a hand sliding to the dagger she had stashed in her coat. The same coat Tessa had brought her when she’d been held in Faven. “Unless you are willing to remove my bands.”
“We’re not doing that,” Lange snapped. “But we’re not inept. We have power of our own, you know.”
Of course she knew that. She had just assumed they wouldn’t be willing to help her. Even the insinuation now had her suspicious.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Lange went on, his head tilting as if he heard something. “Why trust us, right? But the truth is, you’ve dragged us in too deep. If we go back now, we’ll be killed. If not for running, they’ll say we kidnapped a Source. No matter what, we’re fucked. We have as much to lose in this as you do now.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but she wasn’t ready to reveal her true motives to them yet. Perhaps they had a point, but they would need to prove themselves. She couldn’t just blindly trust them. Anyone could use words to make something sound shiny.
“You would use your magic to aid in this situation?” she asked, eyes narrowing as she watched for any tell he was lying.
“Will we use our magic to ensure we don’t end up dead?” Lange drawled, rolling his eyes. “Yeah,bellana.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, turning to face forward once more.
“You blackmailed us and endangered our lives. I’ll call you whatever I like,” he retorted.
“Lange,” Corbin sighed, rubbing at his brow, but Eviana’s head had tilted at Lange’s words.
“Don’t scold me,” Lange replied, once again flopping back in his seat. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and it’s been ages since we’ve had a good fu?—”
“Lange!” Corbin barked.
“I’ve never stopped you from receiving pleasure from each other,” she replied plainly, once again focused on the patrolling sentinels.
Lange muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t quite make out. She also couldn’t quite process what was happening here. No one ever spoke so candidly around her. Except that wasn’t true. Legacy spoke as if she wasn’t in the room unless she was being used for something. Fae never spoke to her. All of this was rather confusing.
“A plan,” Corbin said through gritted teeth. “We need a fucking plan.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lange grumbled. “I have one of those.”
“Do share,” Corbin said, sounding exasperated.
“We enter the Serafina Kingdom through the river,” he replied simply.
“We already discussed why we can’t steal a boat,” his partner countered.
“I didn’t say anything about stealing a boat. I said we use the river. You have water magic. I have wind,” he said, as if this was obvious.
“You want to enterthroughthe river,” Corbin said in understanding, but Eviana still had no idea what he meant. “We could go a few miles upstream where the river isn’t guarded. Slip in there.”
“Precisely,” Lange said. “We can go as far as we can before our magic runs out, and we need to come up for air.”
