Three #3
find out that you serve another and you have been leading Sparrow right to her.” The deadly spearhead came down, pointed at
the iylvahn. “If not for our battles together, the times we stood against the same enemy, I would call for a blood duel right
here.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Kysa, Sparrow.” Halek stepped between us and Raithe, both hands held up in a soothing gesture. “Fighting
each other isn’t going to help anything now,” the Fatechaser said in a surprisingly reasonable voice. “Trust me, I’m as shocked
as you are, but this is not the greatest place for a discussion. Why don’t we get into the city and away from all the things
that want to kill us before we try to figure this out.”
“Into the city,” Kysa said flatly. “Where the Deathless queen is.”
Halek shrugged. “We came all this way,” he said. “We can’t turn back now—where would we go?” He gestured at the ruined body of the massive abomination. “Besides, let’s not forget that the queen just saved Sparrow. If she wanted us dead, she would’ve let the abomination take care of it.”
My hand went to my forearm, where the Sathis hound’s needle teeth had sunk all the way to the bone. True, the queen had saved
us, and she had healed my arm, but at what cost? Halek, Kysa, and Raithe had given up a piece of their lives.
“Halek is right.” Raithe’s voice was a stranger’s, his expression cold and blank as he looked at us. “The queen isn’t like
the other Deathless. She takes care of her people. She’s protected this city for thousands of years. Sparrow . . .” His pale
eyes finally shifted to me, the mask slipping for just a moment. “If I believed she meant you harm, I would have never asked
you to come.”
I glared at him. “I don’t believe that, Raithe,” I said, and my voice shook even as I tried to stop it. “You’ve never been
able to tell me what your queen wanted, or why I had to speak with her. You’ve been keeping secrets all this time, and I didn’t
question it, because I trusted you. But now . . .”
My eyes stung, hurt and anger burning even hotter through my veins. The fear I thought I had let go of—that everything Raithe
had done, everything we had shared, the times we had laughed together, comforted each other, protected each other, it was
all to bring me to his queen—came rushing back. How much of that had been real? And even if it was real, how much of it mattered?
His duty and loyalty had always been to her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered, gazing at Raithe through blurry eyes.
He studied me, his expression carefully guarded, the emotionless mask of the kahjai.
“There were . . . so many times you could have told me, Raithe. On the strider, in Damassi, out on the Barren Steppes. You never said anything about the queen being Deathless. Were you afraid I would leave if I found out?”
“Yes,” Raithe said simply.
My stomach turned over. I stared at him, stunned, and he let out a quiet breath. “I thought the thief I met in Kovass, who
watched the Deathless King destroy her city and everything she loved, would run away and not look back if she knew she was
going to see another Deathless,” he said.
Bile burned my throat, and I turned away from him, hating both the iylvahn and the truth. Because the Sparrow he had met in
Kovass, the Sparrow who belonged to the Thieves Guild, was concerned only with saving her own skin. She had been wary and reluctant to trust the kahjai assassin in the first place;
if she’d known his queen was Deathless, she might’ve fled his presence altogether.
Or maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe she would have trusted him regardless. But it was useless to speculate what might’ve happened.
That had been long ago. A lifetime, it felt like.
Kysa let out an explosive breath. “We waste time,” she said, and her voice was hard. “The sun is setting, and as Halek said,
we cannot turn back.” Turning to Raithe, she narrowed her eyes and gestured with her spear. “Take us to your city, then, iylvahn.
Let us meet with your queen and see what she wants with the Fateless. But if I don’t like what I hear—if you have led Sparrow
straight into the clutches of another Deathless who wants to use her—you will be the first one I come for. I promise you that.”
Raithe didn’t answer. He nodded, then walked away, disappearing into the shadows that now cloaked the bottom of the Maze.
Kysa whistled for Rhyne, and my stomach clenched as I looked around for Ratuk.
The rock beetle stood passively in the same spot, his beady eyes locked on mine, and a lump rose in my throat as I walked up to him.
“Ratuk.” I reached out and put a hand on his carapace, my vision blurring. “You did good,” I whispered, blinking the tears
away. “You’re going to be fine, I promise. I won’t let anything else happen to you.”
The rock beetle made a puzzled chirping sound, nosing me very gently with his horn. I swallowed the tightness in my throat
and stepped back. “Come on, then,” I whispered, and gathered the shredded remains of my courage. “We have a meeting with a
Deathless.”