Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
- LORA -
T his time Lora is really going to kill him.
She paces in her armor in the common room of the tavern. Despite the singing, partying crowd of last night, the place is silent now. Whether the patrons have gone home or are simply sleeping off the hangover upstairs, Lora doesn’t care. Only Tavish, Peregrin and Bronwen sit in the corner table. And, Saga, of course, nestled beneath Tavish’s feet. Xylie signed that she intended to wait upstairs until they were ready, perhaps afraid that the place would still be overstimulating.
But Ayc is not here. Lora hasn’t seen him since last night.
She and her Five only have another fifteen minutes before they all must leave if they hope to arrive at the air dock on time. They are supposed to board the ship that will carry them to the Lux Aester city, and from there, find an ocean ship that will sail them to Velphin. She threatened Ayc that she’d leave without him, and she really doesn’t want to find out whether she actually meant it.
And all because he’s up there fucking Wren.
Lora’s fists coil so hard she nearly breaks the skin of her palms. “I’m really going to kill him this time.”
“You know,” Bronwen muses, sipping her tea with a calm that sets Lora’s nerves even more at edge, “if you had just told him you were jealous, none of this would have happened.”
“I am not jealous!” Lora growls.
Tavish snorts into his own mug. “And I’m the one who’s blind.”
“I’m not,” Lora insists. “He’s late because he’s sleeping with an enemy. I have perfectly valid reasons to be angry at him.”
Bronwen twirls the end of her braid around one finger. “Are you upset that he’s sleeping with an enemy , or you upset that he’s sleeping with someone who isn’t you ? I’ve seen you with other males, Lora. And a female or two. You’ve never let any of them get under your skin the way Ayc does. Not even Wylder.”
“I really don’t want to be part of this conversation,” Peregrin groans, rubbing their temples.
“That makes two of us,” Lora says through her teeth. She paces away from her First, before she surrenders to the urge to pretend she and Bronwen are back in their first year at Adamant. First years are pitted against each other, battling until one of them is unconscious or bleeding. It’s not how most friendships are made, but somehow, it worked for Bronwen and Lora.
Bronwen snorts, and Lora almost tells her to shut up, but that will only grant her more satisfaction. What had Bronwen said? You only tell me to shut up when you know I’m right.
Xylie can see facts and solve puzzles and divine logic in ways that defy explanation, but Bronwen understands people. She watches everyone from behind a teacup and then can tell them things about themselves that they never dare to face. Lora hates that about her. And also loves it.
Bronwen must have noticed how Lora laid awake for most of last night, knowing Ayc was in another room. She listened quietly, wondering if she might hear the moans of pleasure, but the night was still. She heard nothing at all, except for the whispers of a late-night traveler leaving their room and departing the inn. Or perhaps, Bronwen saw the way Lora so foolishly pulled Ayc toward her last night. She hadn’t thought about the people around her. For a reckless moment of time, Ayc was all she could see, and she’d almost given into the impulse to haul him to her.
But Bronwen is wrong. Lora understands how it looks, but it means nothing. When it comes to Ayc, Lora’s mind and body simply betrays her sometimes. The way it betrayed her when she and Ayc rode Tempest and she found herself unable to control the way his hands on her stomach built an ache between her thighs. It betrayed her when her hand wrapped around his throat and he taunted her to squeeze harder, making her eyes flare silver, but not in anger. And most devastating, it betrayed her when she watched Ayc in her grandmother’s kitchen and foolishly wished they could both stay there forever.
This was why asking him to be her Fifth was a mistake. She thought that, after four years apart, she would somehow be immune to the way he always crawled beneath her skin. She was strong enough now; she could handle him being so close. She was wrong.
But I’m not jealous, Lora insists to herself. Whatever complicated things she feels for him, she refuses to call it jealousy. Ayc can go and fuck whoever he wants. But why does it have to be Wren? Wren, the woman who, seven years ago, pinned Lora in a dark corner of Wyntra and told her that one day she’d kill Lora to get revenge for her mother’s death. Even though she knew Lora, too, lost a parent that day.
I’m not jealous, Lora repeats it like a mantra in her head. I’m not jealous. I’m not fucking jealous.
A creak of stairs draws Lora back to reality.
Xylie frowns around the room. She approaches, her hands already speaking. “ What’s going on? What are we waiting for?”
Lora grunts. “Ayc.”
Xylie’s eyes fling wide. “ Is he still sleeping?”
“I don’t know,” Lora says. And I don’t want to think about it anymore.
“ Has no one checked the room?”
“I don’t know what room Wren was in,” Lora says. Or she might have dragged him out of there by his ear already.
Color drains from Xylie’s face, turning her warm black skin grayish, like she might be ill. “ What do you mean he never came back from Wren’s room?”
Lora frowns, unsure what’s caused the horror on her cousins face. “I mean exactly what that sounds like. He’s apparently found her company far more appealing than ours.”
Xylie shakes her head so quickly her braids lash side to side. Her lips move, mouthing with no sound, No, no .
Alarmed, Lora rushes a step toward her, but Xylie retreats backward.
“No.” This time it makes a hoarse sound.
“Xylie, what’s wrong?” Bronwen says, pushing to her feet and rounding the table.
Xylie’s hands tremble as she signs. Lora translates, and as she does, Xylie’s panic spreads toward her like a dark, creeping smog. With each word, Lora grows colder.
“Xylie saw Ayc before he went with Wren. He said he didn’t trust her, but he wanted information. He said he’d explain later, but Xylie didn’t see him again. She just assumed it got late, so he went to Tavish and Peregrin’s room after.”
“No,” Tavish says. “He wasn’t with us.”
Peregrin shoves to their feet, bracing themself on the table. “He said he didn’t trust her? Then where the fuck is he now?”
Xylie mouths the word one more time. No.
Lora’s heart stops utterly and then takes up the same cry as it restarts again. No, no, no.
She catapults herself toward the front desk and rings the bell to summon the innkeeper. A fae with gold-hued skin stumbles from the kitchen, clutching a mixing bowl and blowing a strand of green hair from her face. “Yes?”
“What room was Wren of the Bromalis staying in?”
“I can’t tell you where my guests were staying without significant reason.”
Lora hesitates, trying to decide whether significant reason means a blade or a coin, but Bronwen slaps a stack of silver down on the counter.
Bronwen gives a smile that hides a threat behind its sweetness. Lora has seen her friend offer someone that smile right before she’s cast a spell to turn them inside out. “Is this significant enough?” she asks.
The innkeeper sets down her mixing bowl. “That ought to do.” She wipes her hand on her ale-stained apron and reaches toward the ledger sitting on the counter. “Ah, yes, Wren. She checked out about one after midnight.”
“Was there a man with her?” Lora demands, her heart slamming in her eardrums.
“Wasn’t any mention of a man. Isn’t any of my business. But—” She taps the book. “Says here she left a letter.” She shuffles back a few pages in the book and removes a folded piece of paper. A name is scrawled across it. “You wouldn’t happen to be Loraphne, would you?”
Lora snatches the paper from her hand, ignoring her protest. She marches a few steps away and fights to control the shudder in her fingers as she unfolds the letter. Somehow, she knows what she will find. Still, when she reads the words, she drops the paper. It flutters from her hands and drifts down to the floor.
Her vision turns silver. With fear and a flash of tears, yes, but that’s gone quickly and replaced with something else. Something that burns so bright, her eyes blaze and her soul trembles. It should make the world tremble, too.
Rage.
Lora is going to kill them all.
“What does it say?” Peregrin demands, as Bronwen grabs the letter from the floor.
Lora replies through her teeth, her canines growing to deadly points, “If you want him, come and get him.”