Chapter 17 #2
I’m stunned into silence. Slowly, his hand disappears beneath his hood and mask. I hear the faint sound of chewing. Swallowing.
“So, there’s a face under there after all,” I murmur to myself.
I’m shocked when he speaks again. Even more surprised when he reaches out and takes another mushroom from my palm, being careful not to touch my skin in the slightest. “As opposed to?”
I shrug. “A beak? A coil of snakes? A black hole?”
He makes a noise that sounds halfway between unimpressed and … and almost amused. “All of those would qualify as a face.”
“True. Which means you still could look like a monster under there.”
He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t pull his hood back and remove his mask to assuage my curiosity. He just keeps taking mushrooms from my palm until they’re all gone.
“I have more,” I say warily, walking back to my things.
As much as I hate him, I need him at full strength.
And maybe this could be the start of a true partnership.
One where I might actually be able to offer him something else of value, more than just the map …
and he might, in turn, change his mind about training me.
I uncurl my leaves. All my food, out in the open. I sit in front of it. It takes a few minutes, pointed staring, and a long-suffering sigh from him, but—to my surprise—he joins me.
Good. This could be … good. We eat in silence, hands far away from the other’s. But at least we aren’t fighting.
Just when I think we might have formed a tentative truce, just when I think he might be capable of not being an asshole for just a few minutes, he says, “Why would someone like you be so desperate to go on the quest?”
My eyes narrow. “Someone like me?”
He takes a mushroom. Pops it into what I presume is, in fact, a mouth. “Breakable. Weak.”
I should have let him fucking starve.
Fury boils beneath my skin. I have to remind myself why I’m working with him. Why I’m feeding him. “Excuse me, even though you have an immortal ego, you are very much human too. Just as breakable as me.”
He tilts his head in a movement of utter arrogance, clearly disagreeing with that statement.
I roll my eyes. “I’m here for revenge,” I say simply. “You?”
If his silence is any indication, my answer has surprised him. I suppose it would be shocking. Most people who make the journey are after the magic. He considers his answer for a moment. “You could say I have a similar purpose.” He looks back at the spread of food.
I snort. “Who would be stupid enough to piss you off?” I ask, wondering if they’ve seen him with a sword.
Very slowly, his head tilts back up to me. I can feel his gaze locked with mine, even though I can’t see his eyes. His voice is jagged steel against stone. “I don’t know, Aris. You seem to do it quite often.”
Aris.
He says my name for the first time, and my skin prickles. The way he says it … like his voice is both caressing it and mocking it … makes my pulse stutter.
But there’s something else.
“How do you know my name?”
I’ve never told him. I’m not sure the Watchman ever even called it out. I’m certain he doesn’t remember that day, two years prior, when we first met.
He says nothing.
I don’t ask again. Instead, I give him a sugary smile, trying to ignore the stammer in my chest. “What can I say? I hate you. I’m sure I’m not the first.”
He doesn’t seem surprised by my hatred. He’s probably used to having enemies all around him. He just continues to stare at me from the darkness of his hood, and I roll my eyes. “It’s rude, you know. Keeping that hood on. I can’t even see you glaring at me.”
Raker just shakes his head and turns his attention back to the mushrooms.
We eat the rest in silence. When everything is gone, I carefully fold the leaf into a square. I look up and am shocked to see him offering something to me.
His water.
For a moment, I just look at it. I blink. I consider refusing. But in the end, I take it. Eyes fixed on where his must be, I slowly raise it to my lips. Take a sip. Try not to groan at how good the clean water feels sliding down my dry throat.
I offer it back to him, but he stands. “Keep it,” he says roughly. And I know it’s not because of generosity or care for me. I just know it.
I repulse you, don’t I?
You have no idea.
He let me keep it because he doesn’t want to drink from something my lips have touched.
We don’t speak the entire next morning as the mud beneath our feet turns to dirt.
Any hope of clean water withers as the crimson streams darken even more, to a thick metallic tar with an oily sheen.
The sun is like an eye, staring me down, heat blazing.
I make Raker’s canteen last most of the day, then I’m thirsty again.
Mid-afternoon, Raker drops his pack by another riverbank and wordlessly slips away to hunt.
“I’m doing okay, thanks for asking,” I say in his direction long after he’s through the trees. I sigh.
If only I had literally any other travel companion.
My body is aching and spent. My legs want to buckle beside this putrid stream, but I slide my sword from its scabbard. I take a deep breath.
Then, I do the same slashing move I practiced before.
And I don’t stumble. I keep my stance.
I keep my stance. I almost grin, realizing last time wasn’t just a fluke. A jolt runs through the metal, striking my blood.
I tense.
I could be losing my mind. But I swear my sword just … congratulated me?
It could be the dehydration. Or the loneliness. Or my metal is really communicating with me. Whatever it is … it’s the push I desperately need.
Time to see if I can do it while switching stances.
I can’t.
I almost slice through my thigh actually, the blade careening forward.
Again.
My muscles burn as I shift my feet and legs, knees bending then straightening, yet every time my sword moves in its slicing motion, I lose my balance. It seems impossible to do both at the same time.
But I mastered it once, with a lesser blade, moving from wooden practice swords to metal, as a child with Stellan.
I can do it again.
I’m so focused on my shifting stances, that I don’t even notice that the woods beyond the riverbank have gone deathly quiet.
I don’t even see the glowing sword—
Until it’s at my throat, casting a crimson light the exact shade of blood.
My breath catches. All my questions about how this sword is glowing come second to the fact that my pulse is currently beating against its metal.
I slowly turn my head to the side, only to meet a sparkling gaze. An immortal, whose skin is dry and split, like this is what happens to someone who spends too much time in this rot.
“Such a pretty sword,” he whispers, in a strange lilt. “Lordship will love it.”
I scream as loudly as I can.
Then, the glowing red sword’s hilt smacks against my head, and the world goes dark.