Sword Buddies
“Nia.” Raphael takes a step closer, his sword drawn. He looks
confused, his dark eyebrows drawn together. A faint look of hurt
shines in his silver eyes.
I swallow. “Raphael.”
Talan unsheathes his own sword, the scrape of metal piercing the tense
silence.
I hold up my hand again. “Don’t, Talan.”
“It’s true,” Raphael says in a voice rough as broken glass. “You’re
working for this living nightmare.”
“Not working for me.” Talan’s smooth, silky voice echoes off the highvaulted ceiling. “I’m a terrible boss, ask anyone. She’s my wife. But I do
recognize you. The Pendragon agent who broke out of our dungeons. With
Nia’s help, of course. So lucky, having her watching over you.”
“This bejeweled psychopath is your rebound, Nia? Really?” Venom
drips from Raphael’s voice. “How unfortunate for you.”
“You told me about him, didn’t you, Nia?” Talan says quietly, his eyes
aglow with mockery. “The ex-lover who has a bad habit of running away
from things. The one who chose his work over you. I believe I said he
sounded fucking boring. And I must admit he has pretty eyes, but he is very
tightly wound. Must be exhausting.”
Raphael’s jaw tightens. “I’m not a Pendragon agent. I’m the boy your
army left for dead, the one whose mother your army killed in her kitchen
while she begged for our lives. That’s who I am.”
“I know.” My voice wavers. “But that wasn’t Talan’s order. He tried to
save the demi-Fey, you know that. Ask Ysolde about the Blue Dragon
Project later, if we make it out of here. We don’t have time for this
argument right now.”
He doesn’t lower his sword.
I take a step closer to him. “Listen, the Pendragons have created a
plague to annihilate all Fey and demi-Fey. I have it here in my bag, and I
want to destroy it. Talan is here to help us save the Fey. That includes
Hangi tür kitapları seviyorsun?
🔎 Polisiye
💕 Romantik
🚀 Bilim Kurgu
🏰 Fantastik
📖 Klasik
🧠 Kişisel Gelişim
🏛️ Tarih
😱 Gerilim
They are on good terms
Are you sure you don’t want to go back and see it?”
I stare at Kilorn like he’s just grown a second head. The suggestion is so absurd, I almost don’t answer. But he looks at me, expectant, innocent as a child. Or at least as innocent as he can be. Kilorn was never particularly innocent, even when we were children.
He shoves his hands in the pockets of his Montfort uniform, waiting for my response.
“See what?” I scoff, shrugging my shoulders as we walk across the Archeon airfield. Clouds hang low on the horizon, obscuring the setting sun, as well as the smoke still trailing from parts of the city. It’s been a week, and they’re still putting out fires. “A house on rickety sticks? It’s probably ransacked, if someone else isn’t living there,” I mutter, thinking of my old home in the Stilts. I haven’t been back and I have little desire to ever return. I wouldn’t be surprised if the stilt house were no longer standing. I can easily imagine Maven destroying it out of spite. When he was alive. I don’t care to find out either way.
“Why, do you want to go back to the Stilts?”
Kilorn shakes his head, almost bouncing in his steps. “Nope. Anything I cared about isn’t there anymore.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” I reply. He seems oddly eager to return to Montfort. “What about Cameron?” I add, careful to keep my voice low. Currently, Cameron and her parents are helping everyone else coordinate with the tech towns. Obviously, they know the former slums best, and how to repurpose them.
“What about her?” Kilorn smirks down at me, offering a shrug of his own. He’s trying to throw me off. A hint of a flush dusts his cheeks with color. “She’ll be coming out to Montfort in a month or so, with the Red Nortan contingent and some newbloods. Once things are a bit more settled.”
“To
my mother tells me i am a bird. when she says i am a bird, she means the whole world is my cage. in my dreams, i can fly, and there is no such thing as a cage, meaning there is no such thing as time. i have been here before. i mean i recognize that moon. i know, there are many moons, and my gratitude eclipses them all. so, i say thank you. thank you when i mean hello.
The Gods, The Dead and their children
“Hold on.” She didn’t touch the vial. “Tell me what’s going on before I
hurl my spirit into the abyss with you. Which god are we visiting now?”
“Not the gods,” he said. “The dead.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Altan? Did you find him?”
“No.” A shadow of discomfort flitted across Chaghan’s face. “He’s not—
I’ve never—no. But she is a Speerly. Most spirits dissolve into nothing
when they pass. That’s why it’s hard to commune with the dead; they’ve
already disappeared from the realm of conscious things. But your kind
linger. They’re bound by resentment and a god that feeds on it, which
means often they can’t let go. They’re hungry ghosts.”
Rin licked the tip of her index finger and poked it into the vial, swiveling
it around until soft, downy powder coated her skin up to the first joint. “Are
we speaking to Tearza?”
“No.” Chaghan took the vial back and did the same. “Someone more
recent. I don’t believe you’ve met.”
She glanced up. “Who?”
“Hanelai,” Chaghan said bluntly.
Without hesitation Rin put her powder-covered finger in her mouth and
sucked.
Immediately the Ketreyid campsite blurred and dissolved like paints
swirled in water. Rin closed her eyes. She felt her spirit flying up, fleeing
her heavy body, that clumsy sack of bones and organs and flesh, soaring
toward the heavens like a bird freed from its cage.
“We’ll wait here,” Chaghan said. They floated together in a dark expanse
—a plane not quite pitch-black, but rather shrouded in hazy twilight. “When
I found out you were marching to Tianshan, I went searching. I needed to
understand the risks. I know there’s no one alive who could push you off
the path you’ve chosen.” He nodded toward a red ball of light in the void, a
distant star that grew larger as it approached. “But she might.”
The star became a pillar of flame
“Hello,” said Coraline. “I saw a cat like you in the garden at home. You must be the other cat.”
The cat shook its head. “No,” it said. “I’m not the other anything. I’m me.”
