Page 29 of Heart's Escape

Chapter16

Phaedron

ONLY ONE BED

Humans, huh?

There aren’t any humans in the Lands Below, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But it turns out humans aren’t so different from the hardscrabble villagers of the World’s End. I offer vague compliments and a wide smile as I ask the woman behind the bar for a room, then slide one of Alindra’s stolen gold coins across the polished wood.

Alindra stands silently at my side, gazing around the inn’s common room like perhaps she was expecting to see skeletons in the corners or cages of wild dogs hanging from the ceiling, and once again I wonder how often she actually left Grathgore’s castle. Magicians in the Lands Below are free to come and go as they please, with some choosing to live in the castle and others only coming in when needed, but I’ve learned enough about the Kingdom of the Summer by this point to keep from making any assumptions.

“Just the room, then?” the woman asks as the gold coin I handed her vanishes under the bar.

“Just the room,” I agree. “And lodging for our horse.”

“And a bath,” Alindra adds.

I turn back to her, blinking. Alindra gives me a shy sort of smile, and the woman behind the counter sighs.

“Fine,” the woman says. “But don’t go spilling water on the floor, you hear?”

I nod, trying to look pleased and agreeable through my human illusion as the woman shuffles us off with promises that she’ll call us when our room is ready. Alindra and I settle into a narrow booth in the back of the room, and a young human serving girl brings us mugs of foamy, bitter beer without even asking what we’d like.

“So,” I say, after taking a sip of the beer and then placing it back down as quickly as possible. “What do you think?”

Alindra’s fingers wrap around the mug. Her bright, dark eyes shine through the human illusion she wears as they trace the contours of this common room, moving from the dark walls to the strange carvings near the ceiling and the dusty windows open to the cobblestone street.

“I don’t feel any magic,” she whispers. “I don’t think anyone else has been here.”

My shoulders finally relax. They’re still hunting her, damn it. The man who tried to incinerate us in the canyon is here, in the Silver City, showing anyone who’ll listen exactly what Alindra looks like without an illusion protecting her. But at least she doesn’t think anyone else from the Kingdom of the Summer has been here.

Yet, my mind whispers. How long until they search every corner of the Silver City?

“This seems like a good place,” Alindra whispers as her eyes linger on the wide windows that open to the street. “Maybe I could stay here. Get a job as a cook, or something.”

She raises her mug to her mouth. The beer leaves a streak of foam above her lips. I stop myself from reaching across the table to wipe it away, and something deep inside my chest twists. I can’t imagine leaving Alindra here, alone, without magic. In a city where men are hunting her.

The feeling pulls deeper, like a hook buried between my ribs, and I realize with something like horror that I don’t actually want to leave her at all. I turn away and stare at the empty space behind the bar, at the neat rows of clean glasses and bottles filled with greasy, opaque liquids, to keep my face from betraying me.

Because I didn’t think I would ever feel this way again, and especially not with a magician. After Shenarah, I thought that part of me had slammed shut like a door. I had my chance, my one bright, shining shot at true love, and I’d blown it spectacularly. So I picked up the shattered pieces of my heart and went back to being a nobody, the joke of a sentry in my little joke of a town, the guy who’s good for a few nights of casual sex and not much more.

Yet here it is again, the same low tug between my ribs, that ache deep inside my chest. The fear that I’ll never feel complete if I leave this woman behind.

But what choice do I have? My world would kill her, as sure as the glowsoft orbs in the Lands Below go out at night.

Someone makes a coughing sound. I realize the serving girl is back. I didn’t even hear her approach, and that realization sends a thread of fear up the back of my neck. The young human is holding two steaming bowls of something that smells rich and spicy.

“You two picked a good night,” the girl says, oblivious to the way my body is flashing hot and cold as my mind screams with contradicting desires. “With the full moon and all,” she finishes.

“Oh?” Alindra replies as the girl sets a bowl in front of her.

The girl runs the back of her hand over her nose in a way that’s not exactly appetizing, then sets the second bowl down in front of me. But after four days of surviving off river trout and cattail tubers, I’m willing to overlook the Spotted Dog’s questionable sanitation. Whatever’s in this bowl isn’t likely to kill me, right?

“Tours of the Towers,” the girl says, with a shrug. “The Keepers give ‘em on the full moon. They’re spooky.” She draws out her last word until it’s almost a haunted sound, then gives us a childlike grin.

Alindra’s eyes gleam. “It’s worth doing, then?” Alindra asks. “These tours?”

“Oh, yeah,” the girl replies. “They’ll start as soon as it’s dark out. You should go!”

---