Page 40 of Oracle of Ruin

We swivel towards the sound only to find an older woman sitting on a rickety chair. Her sleek, black hair is peppered with gray strands and slicked into a low bun. Her angular features impose on the beauty of her face, but her gray eyes warn us not to come closer than she desires.

My eyes narrow. “You called him by name. Not one of those ‘radicals’?”

“Who? Mydarlinghusband?” She drawls the worddarling, those thin lips curving upwards in a wicked grin.

Amír’s face turns to steel, colder than the frost outside as Torin bows at the waist.

The other woman scowls as well. “None of that, boy. Stand up straight. We all know your allegiance is a farce. Don’t look so surprised. I won’t tell.”

“What’s in it for you if you don’t?” Torin rises nonetheless, but his posture stays rigid. “Lyra.”

Lyra takes a long drag from her cup, frowning at something in the dregs. “We are all just trying to survive, boy.”

Amír whispers something that sounds suspiciously like, “A tyrant for a tyrant,” but Lyra says nothing, just motions for us to sit. All but the gunslinger oblige just as the door to the room is thrown open. The two missing Nightwalkers stagger in, Blaine leaning on a bleeding Kya’s shoulder. The man looks worse for wear, as well, his high cheekbone already blooming with a violet bruise.

Amír rushes to her lover’s side, cooing and fretting over the blood leaking from the assassin’s hairline. Torin comes to support Blaine’s weight while I remain seated, locking eyes with Lyra. I drop my hood, granting her access to the sight of my face.

She says nothing. No small inflection of her voice or flinch in her countenance. Nothing to give away any sign of shock or appreciation. She sips again, cringing now. “Dammit. Empty.” She slides the cup across the table and nods towards the pitcher to my right. “Fill my cup, Noiteron?”

Unflinching, I pour the cup with steady hands. No foam rises and I catch a whiff of nothingness as I slide the cup across the table again. “It’s water.”

Lyra takes another sip and winks. “Still convinced we can do this without them?”

“They form quite the swarm. Maybe if we convince them that the Kijova are secretly gods, then they’ll tear them limb from limb for us.” Blaine catches the ire of my gunslinger for his retort, but he has a point.

“How am I to lead a people who are hardly people themselves anymore?”

Lyra scoffs gruffly. “They’re still people, little king. They’ve lost everything. Desperate times make more desperate people. They’re all just clinging to something to believe in. Have you ever seen a sinking ship go down when there’s only one life raft? Damned thing cracks and they all die anyway. We need another captain to come along with room on his ship.”

“I’m not a captain.”

“No. You’re just a boy playing assassin. Soon, you’ll have to play king too.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You cannot outrun fate, Rowan Banehart, just as you cannot outrun the mixed blood in your veins.”

My wrists throb at her words, aching as if in acknowledgment. I steel my face against her scrutinizing glare, not a single flinch to betray my racing heart. She used my mother’s maiden name. The burn from Amír’s stare does all but draw sweat to the back of my neck. None of my Nightwalkers know my full name. Not Amír, who has been with me the longest, nor Vera, who holds the better half of my soul.

Torin breaks in now, his gaze softened from that sharp and calculating face he wore earlier. He shakes his head, his hair splaying out like some spaniel as he offers a crooked grin. “It looks like they’ve cleared out enough that we can get out unnoticed.” Torin goes to bow, then catches himself, halting in a half-upright position. “Thank you for sharing your space with us, Lyra.”

Lyra nods, her dark hair falling in her eyes as she dips her lips to her cup. She lifts those gray eyes to meet my stare and they slant into a smirk.

I brush it off and stalk towards the door, my hood already drawn. Blaine jumps when I appear behind him, his face flushing as he softly swears. Torin leads the way, with the captain trailing close behind him. Amír follows, Kya leaning her head against her shoulder for a brief moment. When she lifts it, a dark stain remains on Amír’s cloak. The gunslinger’s fingers tap furiously against her holster. I tighten my own into a fist as I step out into the hallway, but my feet falter when a lilting voice speaks from within the room.

“You have her eyes.”

I shut the door and slip into the shadows.

Chapter20

Verosa

Dusk stretches across the sky as we crowd around a small fire, the heat melting the surrounding snow to reveal wet clumps of brown grass. Emi sits on the hem of Mavis’s cloak, still gloating about her victory over the general in their snowball fight and remaining silent about the hits I landed. Every now and then, she rubs the back of her head, or her left arm where the second strike landed. She doesn’t forget to throw a pointed glare in my direction before cuddling closer to the mercenary. Mavis hums in response, not mentioning anything about the young teen curled into her side, nor her sullied cloak.

I try to draw my gaze away from the muddy fabric, a streak of crimson across the white snow. My stomach churns and I swallow thickly. The howling wind weaves through the trees and I draw my furs closer. Neris returns at this moment, her arms filled with twigs and branches of varying sizes. The general drops them just far enough from the fire so that the embers cannot lick the wood into flame.

“Some of them are a bit wet so they won’t catch flame easy, but still be careful.” Neris settles beside me and plucks a few of the branches and begins to weave them together. She clears away some of the remaining snow and places her woven wood there. After she deems it acceptable, she rolls out a sleeping sack atop the frame and passes a few branches my way. “You’ll want to make some sort of pallet to go under your sack or the ground will steal all the heat from you while you sleep.”

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