101. Rorax
“Iam leaving for a summoning.”
Rorax looked up from the book she had been buried in. Ayres was standing across the table from her, gripping the back of the chair and watching her with wary eyes.
She forced a blank look on her face, even as anger and fear spiked its way through her chest. He was abandoning her. Now? “The felidra trial is tomorrow.”
Ayres’s jaw clenched, and he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I know. But Cannon and Piers are already gone. I don’t know when they’ll be back, and the summonings are in two separate directions.”
“You’re going alone?” A new fear, a different fear, that Rorax wished she could smother, spilled like cold water though her chest. “No. Take Kaiya or wait a day. You can’t go alone.”
Ayres studied her face, agony guttering from his dark eyes. “You haven’t spoken to me or even looked at me in two weeks, Rorax.”
Would you even care if I didn’t come back?The unspoken question lingered between them. Her heart ached in her chest. Ayres had been trying to speak to her, to touch her, to even get her to look at him for nearly two weeks with no results.
Rorax was too exhausted. She was tired of the people she trusted most keeping secrets and hiding who they were from her. And she was still angry. So angry. Angry that Ayres hadn’t told her the truth and angry that she hadn’t seen it, hadn’t noticed that she had been fucking the Death Harbinger. Angry that he had threatened to kill her and had forced her to accept the oath, and most of all angry at herself that she had fallen so deeply under this man’s spell that she missed him almost as much as she missed Volla even as he lived and breathed right in front of her.
Rorax forced those thoughts away and crossed her arms over her chest, leaning back in her chair. “Take Kaiya. Or Milla. Hell, you could even take Jia. But you can’t go alone, Ayres.”
He was the Death Harbinger, but he could still die and if he did it would be catastrophic to his House.
“You need a four-person team tomorrow to help you through a felidra den.”
“I’ll ask Kiniera to fill in. You can’t go alone.”
Ayres reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger before dropping his hand and blowing a long breath out of his nose. “I’ll bring Kaiya.”
“Okay, I’m glad that’s sorted,” she said, before bowing her head back down to her book.
Ayres stood there for a few beats before coming over to her side of the table. Slowly, he kneeled to the side of her, and she forced herself to look at him.
He had dark circles under his eyes, but his gaze was cold and angry. “How long are you going to keep this up?”
Rorax cocked her head at him. “Keep up what, Ayres?”
His eyes narrowed into slits and the muscles in his tattooed throat strained. “You haven’t spoken a word to me in two weeks.”
She resisted the urge to spit in his face. “Until you remove the Oath, this is our new normal, Ayres. I would suggest you get used to it.”
“Be safe tomorrow, Little Crow. I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry I won’t be there.” His mouth tightened and something almost vulnerable glittered in his eye.
Be safe, Harbinger. Come back to me. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but instead Rorax only nodded to signal she had heard him, before she turned away and went back to her book.