Chapter 30

Iflip the sign to closed and shut the front door behind me, pulling my hood up as I ease into the crowd like a shadow ripped free of its maker.

Drawing deep, I catch a hint of her.

A breath shudders free, as though some great beast inside my chest just settled into a satiated coil, and I follow the trail, expecting her to lure me on another hunt through the city. I frown when I round a cart selling frosted dough balls to find her bunched on shallow steps that lead to the mail tree, seemingly watching a one-legged busker carve a tune from his fiddle.

Her arms are wrapped around her knees, cap pitched so low all I can see is the tip of her freckle-dusted nose, the slant of her rose-petal lips … the slightest tremble to her chin that makes the binds on my skin gnaw.

I brush my hand against the cart, then circle, lurking from shadow to shadow, stalking every breath, every bump of her knee or tap of her foot, every pulsing flutter down the side of her neck—devouring her like the monster I am.

So fucking selfish.

I move up the stairs, drag my fingers across the stone gate behind her, then step so close I could crouch down, weave my arm around her waist, and crush her against my chest. I could dip my head into her neck and fill my aching lungs ...

No.

I wrestle the pouncing urge and force myself back—down a step, another—until I’m easing between two lofty buildings a few long paces from where she’s sitting. An alleyway so tall and long, barely any light from the overhead streetlamps makes it down into its damp clutches.

Leaning against the cobbled wall, I survey the crowd bustling beneath the clawed reach of the mail tree. Watch them veer around Orlaith as though they’re afraid they’ll fall into her—whether they realize it or not.

A tear slides down her cheek, drips off the edge of her jaw.

I trace its trail …

Can she feel it? Does it cut like a blade? Caress like the breeze? Does she feel haunted, like she’s haunting me?

Another tear.

Don’t cry.

A fish-laden cart ambles between us, and I arch to the left—carving into the time she’s cut from my sight—only to see the step empty. Like she just evaporated into thin air.

“Fuck,” I mutter, about to shove forward when the stamp of a cool blade settles upon my throat.

A small warmth presses against my back and tames my rioting heart.

There she is.

The smell of amber and wildflowers wraps around me in the way her body does not, and I smile despite myself. “Hello, Milaje.”

Silence. Not even a breath.

She steps closer, pushes that blade deeper.

“Careful. The sword you’re flattened against is sharp.”

“So is mine,” is her rasped response—three words that temper my wild and narrow my attention on the weapon poised at my throat.

I reach up, thread my fingers around her wrist, thumb brushing the spot where I’ve seen the bitten scar that I’m almost certain she made herself. “I can see that.”

Gentle.

Don’t scare her off.

“How did you make so much progress?”

“I did all the breaking at once,” she snaps, the words pattered blows between my shoulder blades. “You’re in the wrong place.”

Wasting precious time.

Her thought comes to me like smoke on the wind.

“I’m exactly where I need to be.”

“Then I need you to leave me alone.”

My upper lip peels back. “Can’t do that, Milaje.”

In one swift motion, she’s drawn the blade I had strapped to my thigh. Has that, too, set upon my throat. “How about now?”

“No,” I growl, pushing against the sting, hand tightening around her wrist to keep it there. “You’ll have to dig a little deeper.” The smell of my blood muddies the air, and her hand starts to shake—the slightest tremble that carves the edge from my voice. I loosen my grip on her wrist. “Drop the blade, Orlaith. Let me see your eyes.”

“Why?” She laughs—a cold, hollow sound that blunts my next breath. “So you can check your lie for cracks?”

I snarl, shoving back a step and forcing her to shuffle again and again until I have her pinned against the wall. I spin, fully prepared for those two blades to slash my throat clean open in the effort to see her face.

My forehead collides with cobbled stone as she seems to dissolve into thin air.

I spin again, to see her leaning against the opposite wall, a blade hung loosely in each hand dangling at her sides. Head swung to the left, she looks out the alleyway to the swirling crowd …

It’s like all her fight has bled free, leaving a hollow aura that guts me.

I wipe the trickle of blood from my throat and open my mouth to speak.

She gets there first.

“I keep having dreams.”

Nightmares.

There’s no heartbeat in the words that pass her lips, but her thought is a storm rioting through me. Catastrophic.

“About?” It’s an effort to keep the word steady.

“They change.” She looks down at the two daggers—hers smeared with the slick of blood she drew and mine, a simple iron blade with a wooden hilt. “The theme is the same every time.”

I watch her swallow.

“And that is?”

“Death.” The word lands harder than if she’d flung that iron dagger at my chest. “Every time. No matter how hard I try to stop it.”

The sky crackles like the blood in my veins.

“You killed me in one of them.” Her lashes sweep up, and I can’t tell if it’s her words or that empty stare that guts me, but they both attack nonetheless. “Put something sharp through my back. I felt my heart split. Felt the life drain from me.”

“Then what?” I regret the words the moment I set them free.

“Nothing.” Bile blazes a trail up my throat. “Darkness. A colder darkness than I’ve ever felt before.”

She drops her chin so the hat hides her eyes. Perhaps I should welcome the reprieve from her crucifying eyes, but I’m too fucked up to feel that way.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she whispers, the words snatched by a gust of humid air that teases fallen leaves down the alleyway’s gloomy throat.

She doesn’t think I care.

It’s almost enough to bring me to my knees.

I did that to her.

I fucking did that to her.

Turning her head, she tracks the people milling about beneath the mail tree.

The cleft between us seems insurmountable. Regardless, I try. “I watched you climb down that building like you had nothing to lose ...”

No answer, but there’s acknowledgement in her silence.

She finally blinks, breathing deep before she meets my eyes and tosses my blade to the ground. It clatters into the space between us, and there’s a challenge in her stare. For some reason, it thrills me to the core—the way she looks at me like she’s unbreakable. But it also frightens me because she’s not.

Far from it.

I bend a knee, pick up my blade, and stab it in my sheath.

She doesn’t drop her chin—just watches me down the line of her nose, lashes dipped so low her eyes are nothing but lilac slits.

“How long are you here for, Rhordyn?”

“Until I get what I came for.”

“The ships.”

I don’t bother correcting her.

“Well, I need you to stay out of my way.”

I push up, towering over her as violence surges inside me.

Can’t. Won’t.

She glances at her bag, releasing a deep sigh before she bends and picks it up, tucking her blade inside. Turning, she moves toward the churning crowd on bare, silent steps.

“Orlaith.”

She pauses. “What?”

I reach into the pocket of my cloak, retrieving a heavy pouch I toss in her direction. Her hand whips up, and she snatches it without breaking her stare on the crowd, keeping her back to me. I hear the drawstring loosen, see her head drop the slightest bit. She half turns, looking at me over her shoulder, her eyes like purple gemstones starved of light as she cradles the yawning pouch in her palm. “What’s this?”

“Enough coin to buy every shop in the square and still leave you with plenty left over.”

Her face twists with a fury so potent I taste it on my next breath. “I’m not your problem anymore. I don’t want your charity.”

Never my problem.

Always my tragic ever after.

“It’s not charity, Milaje.” I step forward. “That shopkeeper short-handed you. I simply remedied the situation.”

“Remedied the—” Her eyes widen, and her sun-soaked skin seems to lose its healthy pallor.

I can see the question in her eyes.

What did you do?

Little does she know, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.

Except let her go.

She clears her throat, gaze dropping to the small sack of gold. “I remember finding that pickaxe on the end of my bed along with the matching hammer and chisel. At the time, I thought it came from Baze. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“Is there something you want to ask me, Milaje?”

She opens her mouth, pulls a breath. A long moment passes before she blows it out empty.

Disappointment lands in my gut like a rock as she turns to walk away.

“Don’t climb the wall that borders the city. It’s dangerous.”

Pausing, she scoffs. “What happened to ‘get out and live’?”

I arch a brow at the deep voice she puts on, swiftly lowering it when she steps so close we’re only separated by a charged slice of space I want to cut through. Leave in ribbons on the ground at our feet.

“What?” she purrs, the word scraping over my skin like a blade. “The rules suddenly change now that you’ve gotten me out the door?” Tilting her head, she looks up at me with that ice-pick stare. “Am I a bit hard for you to keep up with, Rhordyn? Now that I’m free?”

“Is that what you really think?”

She frowns, taking another step so that our bodies are flush. I look down into her. Relish her sharp breaths that batter us closer as I reach into my pocket, pull out her piece of coal, and hold it up.

Her eyes flare, and I hear her heart skip a beat.

Another.

“The entire time?”

“From the moment you stepped off that ship,” I growl, and she snarls, snatching the coal.

“Anything else you’d like to add?”

“Yes. Stay away from the town square over the next week.”

She looks over her shoulder at the bustling crowd. “Isn’t this the town square?”

“Market square. The other is bigger and on the eastern side. You somehow managed to avoid it during your sprint through the streets.”

She sighs, cleaving me with her full attention. “Why?”

“Because I noticed them cutting a tree down on the edge of the jungle.”

“And?”

“And things are done differently here. That boundary is only ever cut into when they’re preparing to burn someone at the stake.” Something flickers in her flat gaze, but quickly returns to the cold, apathetic mask that hurts to look at. “Cainon’s way of keeping the order—hacking into his peoples’ safety net then forcing them to watch somebody burn. You don’t need to see that.”

Her upper lip trembles, like she’s about to bare her teeth. Instead, she spits words at me like I’m nothing but a squelch of shit between her toes. “You don’t know me.”

Spinning, she stalks off, spearing a path through the crowd as though they share a hive mind, and I have to bite into my urge to follow.

“But I do,” I mutter, stepping back into the shadows.