by A J Gala
“Some of it was always real,” he whispered. “I do still love you. As bitter as I am, Ana, I still love you. But I’ve done so much harm against you and this city, I don’t know how you will ever find me trustworthy—”
“You’ll know when you’re king.”
Saying the words made her breathless. Her fear was gone. She knew exactly what she was going to do, but she never got the chance to smile. He kissed her again and laid her down.
Birds chirped in the late morning sunlight as it peeked through the white curtains of the Lion Suite. The rain was gone. For now.
Rhett scanned the note that had been delivered to him last night. He’d read it a dozen times at least, and he’d easily unscrambled the Whisper Magic protecting its contents.
Sinisia apparently didn’t think he could figure out how to uncover something more complex. She wanted to meet again outside the south wall of Suradia. She’d made sure to emphasize her last sentence.
Different business this time.
He smirked and left The Clarinet. Since their first meeting, he wasn’t comfortable out in the open anymore. Things were different. People looked at him like they knew who he was and the terrible things he’d done. And he hadn’t done them well. His stomach twisted, knowing that Aleth had most likely lived.
No one would want him dead more than his little brother.
“I have the edge.” He threw his hood on as he strode down an alley. “Remember. I have the edge.”
He’d spent just as much time devoting himself to daemonology as Aleth had spent growing into a nightwalker. It didn’t matter how strong Aleth was, how fast he was, how hardy he was… Rhett was confident that there was still a daemon capable of ripping him apart.
Then, he heard Sinisia’s voice in his mind, questioning him. Judging his hatred. She didn’t understand.
The alley was packed full of The Clarinet’s patrons enjoying vices that weren’t allowed in the building. He cut through a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke to get to the next street and headed south.
The warmth of the sun did wonders on the sea of mud that had formed inside and outside the city walls. But Rhett still didn’t wear his nice boots. In fact, he had dressed down altogether to throw anyone off his trail. His soles slid and stuck in the slowly drying muck. Through the trees and down a trail, he would find the meeting place.
The Bold Pike Brewery.
Definitely not Sinisia’s kind of place. Flag poles outside boasted a myriad of colorful cloths with names and sigils of families in the farmlands. The building itself was mostly wooden, covered in decorative lattice. Smoke belched from the chimney.
He was nervous. He hated it. He was never nervous. Why now? He was safe outside the town and in his boring clothing. He was safe. But he didn’t feel like it.
He gathered up what courage he had left and walked inside, and he recognized Sinisia at a table right away, despite a wig of thick brown waves that hid her striking silver hair and pointed ears. There was no hiding those eyes. The violet pierced him the second he came through the door.
She sniffed the ale in her glass as he took a seat, but she didn’t drink.
“Why’d you buy it if you weren’t going to have any?” He scooted his chair in.
“To look inconspicuous. Take off your damn hood, you’re ruining my efforts.”
He drummed his fingers on the table as he deliberated.
“Take off your hood, and you can have the ale.”
He pulled it down. “How do I know you didn’t slip something in it while you were waiting for me?”
“You don’t.” She winked and took a sip before sliding it over to him.
The edge was still warm when he brought it to his lips. “What is this? Are you buying me a meal too? Feels an awful lot like you’re trying to court me now.” He drank and then set the glass down with a grin. “Little late for that, isn’t it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Will you shut up? This is very serious. You remember that, don’t you?”
“I remember.” The ale was leagues above anything he’d had on the Fallarian Isle. He savored it for a second before continuing. “Did you run to your queen after all? How much time does House Hallenar have before she sends an army to burn it to the ground?”
“I haven’t told anyone.”
He studied her and the way she averted those violet eyes. “Why the hell not? You’ve got the whole mainland at your fingertips with that information! It’s like I told you—everyone’s got one piece or the other, but no one has the whole—”
“I don’t know why!” she snapped. “I don’t know why I haven’t told anyone. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be caught in the middle of Queen Allanis and Queen Anavelia’s fallout. Before my father found trouble in Vandroya, sure. But not now. I need to assure his safety before I die for something so…” she stopped and shook her head, “… so stupid.”
“What’s the father of a bitchy High Elf spy doing in Vandroya?”
She huffed, deciding it couldn’t hurt to tell him. “My father studies arcane artifacts for Vandroya. He swore his loyalty to King Mabus long before I became Anavelia’s Master of Dusk. He’s a powerfully loyal man, and Mabus has trusted him for years, but the simple truth is that now he just knows too much. He’d never tell a soul about Mabus’s secrets, not even me. He’d take them to the grave. But Mabus still sees him as a threat, so for the time being, he’s in prison.”
“No, he’s not.” Rhett’s humor was gone as he stared into the half-empty glass. He set it down and folded his arms on the table. “You say he’d take those secrets to the grave? Then he already has.”
She shuddered. “No.” She tried to swallow but couldn’t. “No, Orin said he was still alive.”
“Duke Orin? Does he have anything to gain by telling you that your father is still alive?”
“Oh my gods.”
She covered her mouth, replaying the night where Anavelia had told her to quit the assignment of tracking down Aleth. She replayed the part where Orin pulled her into a room and told her to do it anyway.
“I have to go.”
“Wait, Sinisia—”
She shoved herself away from the table, stood up, and stormed out of the Bold Pike.
5
Suspect
Aleth was heavy in a way that could only mean deep sleep. Bit by bit, he could feel his consciousness rise as a sensation gently traced up and down his arm. He breathed in deep, the scent of fragrant wood in a hearth fire filling his lungs. He surrendered and woke.
He had been sleeping on a rug by one of the fires in Sheerspine’s kitchen. Tizzy sat beside him, dragging her fingertips up and down his arm.
“There you are.” She smiled. “You’ve been out for a while.”
“What time is it?” he asked, rolling onto his back. He could see glimpses of Troll Daughter working behind them, jumping from workstation to workstation.
“A bit late, but don’t worry about that. It sounds like you needed the rest.”
Aleth struggled to remember why she would say something like that. Why did he need the rest? He started to sit up, but she pressed her hand firmly to his chest until he laid flat again.
“Relax,” she said. “Doddie’s bringing something over for you. How do you feel?”
“Confused.” He waited a moment, searching through mind fog, when a sudden sharp pain in the pit of his arm caught his attention. “Wait…”
Tizzy folded her arms as she watched him come to his senses. Moving around had agitated a wound under his arm. He touched it, then groaned in defeat.
“That’s right. I went hunting with Kenway this morning, and that stupid boar got me…”
Troll Daughter plodded over to them and handed Tizzy a tin cup of something warm. Tizzy sniffed it and turned up her nose, then waved as Troll Daughter left the kitchen for the common room, mumbling about how long it had been since she’d taken a break.
Aleth rubbed his temple. “How many hours did she say? Have I been out f
or that long?”
“Since Kenway brought you back.” She passed him the cup. “This is for you.”
He detected a hint of blood in the concoction but couldn’t identify whose it was. He sat up, differently this time, rolling to his good side before getting upright.
Mid-sip, Tizzy’s questions changed.
“What made you go out on that hunt this morning?”
He couldn’t find a satisfying way to answer the question. “I—” He stopped, staring blankly into the cup. “I don’t know. Kenway asked, and I just said yes.”
“Is that something that he does? It didn’t seem like provisions were getting low.”
He couldn’t tell what she was getting at, what deeper answers she was looking for, and was hesitant to respond. He gave her another opening for conversation and continued drinking Troll Daughter’s concoction.
“You left before I even woke up, Aleth.” Tizzy shrugged at him, then stared off into the fire. “You’ve been a little shifty lately. I was worried you ran off.”
“Shifty?”
His anger was heavily veiled, but she knew it was there. She could feel it in him.
“Poor choice of words,” she said. “I’m sorry. But I get the feeling that we’re not okay somehow. I know I was insensitive the first time I brought Maran around—and I am sorry for that, I really am—but did I do something else?” She glanced back at him from over her shoulder. “Don’t be afraid of me. You need to tell me.”
He shook his head, more feverishly than he’d meant to. “It was nothing like that, Tizzy.” But now his breath was tight in his chest. He couldn’t get the vision out of his head. There were sounds and images of things she’d do that felt closer now than ever. But he couldn’t think about them now. Not now.
Though he wasn’t sure what was worse—someone finding out about his vision… or no one finding out about his vision.
“Then why are you so quiet? You’re worried about something, I know you are. Look, I know that all of that is coming from a good place, but I just—” she sat up straight and faced him. “I just wish you thought better of me.”
“Tizzy, I think the world of you.” And it was true.
“The world after I’ve gone and burned it to the ground.”
He stared up at nothing, trying to bite his tongue on words, but they came out anyway. “You are going to burn it to the ground. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
“I don’t want to burn it to the ground!”
“Not now. But you will.” Shut up. But his mouth kept going. “Something will happen, and you’ll be so full of rage and power that you won’t be able to stop yourself.”
Tizzy swallowed hard. It didn’t sound like just another thing he worried about. He spoke like he knew. “No.” Despite the fire next to her, a chill ran over her whole body. “I’m not going to do that. I was something like that once, and I hurt you, and I ruined everything. I’m not going to do it again. I will have control of myself before—”
He tried to fight the sad, wry smile working its way onto his face, then forced a laugh. “Before what? That’s the part you know I’ll be worried about, isn’t it?”
She rubbed her arms. “Alright. My original choice of words wasn’t going to be great, but I don’t know how else to say it. I will get control over myself first before I get control over everyone else and this situation. And when I’ve fixed everything, I’ll relinquish it all. That’s my plan.”
A moment passed them by where there was no sound but the crackling fires and the ambient sounds from the common room. He looked her over, knowing he should be vigilant in stopping her, but some part of him was losing to the fear of futility. What if there really was no changing it? If the vision that he had was truly fate, then all the distance he would put between them would be for nothing. He stared into her eyes, and the smile she gave him warmed the room. But the darkness was there, beckoning as always.
She noticed his silence. “You know, I was thinking about everything that I’ve learned and… and can’t nightwalkers sustain each other? For how long does that work?”
“It depends,” he said, sitting straight and rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders. Sleeping on the rug had not done him any favors. “Depends on your bloodline and how strong it is. Other nightwalkers could definitely feed on each other and get by, but our bloodline is about the purest there is, so we couldn’t sustain each other for very long. We could try, but eventually, it’ll stop staving off the impulses, and then we’d have to move on to mortal blood.” The words were sour in his mouth. “And our abilities wouldn’t grow, feeding off each other. Not like they would otherwise.”
She hugged her knees. “I was trying to come up with a solution. I was trying to be better for you.”
“I know.” His smile was heavy with sadness. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Maybe that’s enough. Be good to her, Tizzy.”
She huffed out a petulant sigh and rested her head on his shoulder. “Oh, don’t say it like that. Of course I will. And if you keep talking like that, I’m going to kick your ass.”
He smirked and turned his gaze to her, falling weak for her devilish charm. “You could try,” he whispered, “but I’m still stronger.”
“For now.” She rolled her eyes and got to her feet, dusting herself off. Their fire was getting low, and she felt as though she needed to leave him before she said something else and broke him. Something was still wrong. He was still like glass. Fragile but sharp.
“Tizzy.” He studied her face. She seemed just as hesitant as he did. “What is it? Am I really that difficult?”
She wet her lips. “Only sometimes.” She wanted to smile for him, to lessen what she’d say for him, but it wasn’t the time. “But I don’t mean to say that you’re a problem. You’re just… different. When you first came back, I thought for some stupid reason that you were exactly the same. It was incredible, that no matter what our lives had been like apart from each other, you were still so much the same! But now that we’ve spent more time together, I’ve come to realize it’s not like that.”
He was cold and found himself staring at the floor instead of up at her.
“It seems like the same you on the surface,” she said. “But that’s just the stuff that you’ve left behind for others to see after you’ve buried the rest. You’ve buried so much, and I know that if I’m patient and gentle, I will get to know whoever it is that you’ve become.”
“You don’t think this is me?”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “It’s all you. But you’ve been juggling me back and forth between a you who trusts me and a you who doesn’t. Honestly, if you were anyone else, I’d be upset. But this is different.”
Finally, he glared up at her. “Because it’s me?”
“Because of what you’ve been through.” She put her hands on her hips and stared at the door. It was so close. She needed to shut her mouth and slip out before she did any more damage. “I can’t relate, but I’ll always try to understand. How can you possibly trust me when I start to have things in common with people who were cruel to you? That’s a steep wall for me to climb. But I’m not giving up.”
“Tizzy, I’m fine. Really. You say all these things like there’s something wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” She gave him her softest smile and brushed her fingers across his cheek. “I thought I told you… you’re perfect.”
He had hated it the first time she said it, and he hated it this time too. It unearthed all the memories that proved he was the exact opposite. He could feel the tightness of scar tissue on his hand from the first time Louvita had made it clear just how less than perfect she thought he was.
Perfect. “Why would you say that?”
“Because someone should.” She folded her arms. “Think about it. You’ve got a lot going for you! Fear be damned, you’re still the bravest person I know. And you’re capable and strong—”
“Alright, sure, so physica
lly, I’m sturdy as a rock.”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “But you’re forgetting that emotionally and mentally, I’m a ripe tomato.”
Her laugh started small, but soon she was leaning back and shaking with boisterous noise that filled the kitchen. “Beautiful comparison. I agree.”
“I’ve always wanted to have my shit together, and I just can’t do it.”
She shrugged and started for the door. “Don’t let it make you feel any worse. You are the way you are. Honestly, I don’t think you were ever going to be the kind of person to have your shit together, no matter how things in your life happened. Just like I was always going to be dubious and jaded. It’s just the messed-up way the gods made us.”
And she was gone before he could even figure out why she was leaving. The conversation had him feeling just as wrecked as the hunting outing had. He took a few deep breaths and finished Troll Daughter’s concoction, then decided to head out too.
But not far. Just past the kitchen doors put him behind the bar. Which was not the side he wanted to be on. He came around and found himself a seat, ignoring all the chatter from the common room behind him. For a second, he considered retreating to his room, but Tizzy’s words had his mind too shaken to fall back asleep.
Surely their conversation was not over.
Suddenly, a hand clapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey! Doddie says we did pretty good!”
Aleth glanced at Kenway for only a second, then swallowed hard and hid his face. “Yeah. Says it was an improvement on that time we brought back seventeen pigeons.”
“Desperate times, desperate times! How’s the arm?”
“You mean the gaping wound in my armpit where I was gored by a wild animal while in the shape of a small dog?” He ground his teeth. “It’s fine.”
“You’re healing faster now, I’ve noticed. And I’d call you more of a medium-sized dog. You are on the small side for a border collie, though.”
Aleth touched under his arm, remembering when the wound had been fresh. He had only meant to help Kenway track the boar, but somehow he’d been on the front line when the creature had decided to attack.