Sadie #2
“And I thought us musicians were dramatic.” Kian laughed as he plucked my knife from the trunk and tossed it at my boots.
I curled my lip at my now-muddied weapon. “Did you follow us?”
He threw his head back and let out a mocking laugh. “I followed the map.” Producing the leather-bound songbook from his breast pocket, he waggled it at us as if in evidence.
“Why are you here, Kian?” Navin said tightly.
“Are you the only ones allowed to use whispering wells now, oh fearless leader?” Kian asked his brother incredulously. “Some of us have our own personal messages to send.”
The muscle in Navin’s jaw flickered. “Personal messages to who?”
“An old friend.” Kian shrugged. “She’s always been sweet for me, but alas, our timing has never worked out.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, about to spit more vitriol his way when a shadow appeared overhead.
With a rush of wind, a large object fell from the sky and collided with the ground.
Kian leapt backward, narrowly avoiding impact.
The object splatted onto the overgrown grasses, smoke curling up from its sizzling form.
My nostrils flared as Haestas let out a clicking rumble from above that I swore sounded pleased.
There, in the center of the clearing, was the charred body of a dead mountain goat.
“What in the Gods’ names is that?” Kian balked, lifting his tunic to cover his nose.
I grinned at Navin in congratulations. “That is dinner.”
AS THE DINNER TABLE CONVERSATION TURNED INTO DRUNKEN song, I let out a groan.
“Sweet Moon, spare me,” I muttered, dropping a quick kiss to Navin’s lips and excusing myself from the table. I’d heard these melodic songs too many times over the last few weeks. I swore I could hear them on the whistling wind, in the crunch of leaves, and the low of the oxen.
With a bellyful of dragon fire–roasted goat, I went to go sit at the front of the wagon. I craved the sight of the evening sky as we rolled farther into the vast southern forests of Damrienn. I was almost halfway through the window to the front bench before I realized Kian was sitting there.
“Too much singing?” he asked knowingly.
“Something like that,” I grumbled as I climbed the rest of the way onto the bench. I’d debated retreating at the sight of him, but that would’ve seemed weak and I didn’t show cowards like him weakness.
He chuckled, the sound so similar to Navin’s own. I hated that there were any similarities between the brothers. “I’ll admit, I missed the sound,” he said, and it took me a moment to realize he was talking about the music, not his laughter. “But I’m more comfortable with silence than song now.”
“No cheery battle songs amongst the Rooks?” I snapped and he slid his gaze to me.
It still lingered there between us, unspoken. The whole journey we’d exchanged hateful looks but neither did we acknowledge the last time we’d met at the tip of each other’s blades. A few weeks didn’t change that. Maybe a lifetime wouldn’t, either.
“I think my brother believes that becoming a Rook was the easy way out,” Kian mused, craning his neck back to stare up at a strip of stars peeking through the pines.
“Was it not?”
He let out a bitter laugh. “I traded one danger for another,” he said with a shrug.
“I was a child when I pledged my sword to Sawyn. A hungry, scared child pledging myself to a sorceress who I knew thought I was as disposable as an insect. No one would mourn my death. No names carved above the mines. No altar to say goodbye.”
“Poor you,” I said tightly.
“Poor him,” he echoed bitterly. “Whoever that child was, I didn’t get a chance to know him long. It didn’t matter which tune he’d choose, they were all sad songs after that decision.”
I shook my head. Despite his choices, he still spoke in lyrics and riddles just like the rest of the Songkeepers. Studying his shadowed expression, I watched as his mind traveled back to unspoken horrors. “Then why? Why choose her?”
He let out a long, weary breath. “It’s amazing what you’ll do when your stomach is empty and your hopes are worn raw.
Sometimes the only choice is to survive or not.
I didn’t think I’d survive the mines. So many didn’t .
. .” His voice trailed off and I knew he was thinking of his father.
Navin had told me so much of their father that I’d built an image of him in my mind.
He seemed like a good man. One his sons both mourned, but unlike Navin, I could now see Kian radiated guilt along with sadness.
“I suppose I can’t entirely hate you for that,” I muttered.
“Entirely?” Kian asked with a rueful smile.
“I hate you very slightly less.” I held up two fingers so close together they almost touched. “Only slightly.”
“I’ll take it.” He smiled at the stars. “If it matters at all, I wish I could go back and choose differently. If I’d known what my life would become.
The things that sorceress would make us do.
” His breath curled in a whorl from his lips into the cold air.
“The world was better the day she died. I could feel it, like a rift starting to close, a wound starting to mend.”
“You can take the boy out of the Songkeepers,” I muttered at his poetic nonsense.
“And now there is that rift again,” he continued. “Another sorceress to take her place.”
It was like someone had stomped their boot directly on my throat, clogging it, the pain radiating down through my limbs in panging waves.
Maez—my best friend since we were pups—was a sorceress.
She’d saved my life with that power. She’d saved a lot of lives from Luo, I would wager. But at what cost? How many more would she take? How long until she turned just as dark and twisted as Sawyn was herself?
“I don’t know if we’ll survive this war,” I said, pulling Kian’s gaze. “But if we do, I won’t stop until I find a way to free her from that magic.”
“You seem stubborn enough to do it,” he replied, sounding very much like his older brother then. I opened my mouth to reply when I caught sight of something through the trees. “What?” Kian asked, suddenly alert, straining to see farther than his human eyes would allow.
“I think we’ve arrived,” I said, mouth falling open as I took in the shadowed buildings circling a central spire. “The temple of knowledge.”
“Is anyone there?” Kian asked, voice dropping to a whisper.
I sniffed the air, trying to hone my sense further, grateful for the breeze greeting us face on.
I couldn’t see any movement, nor fires, nor flashes of light or reflection off steel.
The place seemed long deserted. I closed my eyes to focus on the scent—nothing but old wood, dried pine needles, and dusty tomes.
“It’s abandoned,” I replied. At that assurance, Kian let out a sharp whistle that had me covering my ears with a scowl. “A warning would’ve been nice.”
“It was a warning,” he said. “But for everyone inside.” As he said that, the songs from within the wagon abruptly stopped and Navin stuck his head through the curtain.
“What is it?” he asked, gaze darting from Kian, to me, to the knives still safely tucked on my belt.
I rolled my eyes. Did he really think his brother was sounding the alarm because I’d stabbed him?
I smiled at Navin with feigned innocence.
If I wanted to stab Kian, I’d make sure he couldn’t make a sound. Navin narrowed his eyes at me.
But Kian didn’t seem to notice the silent exchange between his brother and me as he said, “We’re here.”