Chapter 5 #2
Ian shook his head, looking at Fox with a worn expression.
“Until things calm down, I don’t know how to get anything to them.
The mangroves are being torn down—I don’t know if someone talked or Harlow is just guessing.
Every scouting unit is out in the forest right now, trees are being burned and cut, and we don’t know where the dragon took them.
The old base is under watch, so they didn’t go there.
And I can’t even think about leaving. Harlow assigned me half the damned drowned quarter to sweep, and I’m trying to get things done before the Dragonborn start starving in their homes. ”
“It’s the dragons. He’s looking for their nesting grounds and a way to control them.”
“I can try to intercept anything my unit finds,” Ian said. “But there are three other units searching the other portions of the city, including where most of our people are.”
Our people. Were they Fox’s people? When had they become Ian’s?
“How long have you worked for them?” The words slipped out even as his mind screamed that he didn’t want to know. “Did you join after they killed your best friend or before?”
Ian’s gaze didn’t falter, his eyes meeting Fox’s with determination even as he didn’t answer immediately.
“When I was eighteen. Before I even joined the king’s men.”
“King’s balls,” Fox said. “Why?”
“You’ve never asked me about my family,” he said, eyes moving out to sea. “Did Leon ever tell you anything about them?”
Fox had never even thought about Ian’s family.
He didn’t want to admit that out loud. He and Ian had never been close, the major bond between them Ian’s and Leon’s friendship and losing him.
But he still spent time with him. Ian had helped him train for the king’s men.
He was the closest thing Fox had ever had to a friend.
Ian saved him from answering. “My father was a merchant. He was rarely in Suvi, spending most of his time in Falais bartering for goods and setting up deals with the farms there. When he was here, he spent half his nights in the Drowned Gods brothel.” Ian turned, pointing somewhere east of them into the city.
“It used to stand over there. It was burned down a few sun cycles back in a raid. My mom worked in that brothel.”
Fox felt his stomach drop, acid in the back of his throat. “Your—”
“When she got pregnant, my father tried to kill her. He didn’t want a half-Dragonborn bastard son.
He failed, obviously, but it didn’t matter.
My mom died two sun cycles later when a king’s man killed her for daring to say no to him.
” Ian’s lips quirked up briefly, his smile a bitter thing.
“I hear the owner of the brothel killed the man herself before throwing his body in the ocean.”
“How did you end up in the military quarter?” Fox asked, remembering specifically that Ian had lived just south of them.
“My father’s sister found out about me. She apparently had been keeping an eye on me and Mom from afar. She swooped in and adopted me before I was thrown out onto the streets. She and my father never spoke again until the day he died. She saved me.”
“No one found out?”
He shrugged. “She told any who asked that my mother was Falain. My father wasn’t going to reveal the lie.”
“I didn’t know,” Fox said. He hadn’t felt like this since Sofia had given him her lectures.
How much else would he learn about the city he’d been raised in?
How many other horror stories hid in the shadowed corners of Suvi?
He looked up at the city now from where they stood on the beach.
The buildings sagged under the weight of sun cycles, exhausted by their own need to keep standing.
“When I finally got the chance to join the resistance, I didn’t hesitate. I don’t regret that decision.”
“And Leon? Did he know? Do you regret his dying because of your resistance?” Fox could feel his breath in his chest, heart slamming into his ribs, trying to escape.
Ian didn’t say anything for a long moment. Too long. Only Fox’s breath filled the silence.
“Do you?” Fox asked, chest tight, voice desperate.
“I don’t want you to hate him,” Ian said.
“I would never,” Fox said, answering before his mind started to unravel what Ian was about to say.
The realization must have shown in his eyes.
“He wanted to tell you,” Ian said, his words slow and careful. “He planned on telling you one day, but you were still so steeped in trying to make your father happy. You were always so loyal to the king and Harlow, and he was afraid of how you would react.”
Fox was already shaking his head. Ian was right. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to hear the words.
“Your brother was a part of the resistance, too.”
Fox choked on his next breath, the world spinning beneath his feet.
“But the bomb…” he said through numb lips.
“He wasn’t supposed to be there,” Ian said, voice soft. “We had worked to empty the fort as best as possible that day, sending out rumors of false sightings and the breach. But then you…”
You were there. You disobeyed his orders. You killed him.
“He wouldn’t let you die.” The words felt like they were coming to him through water and when Fox looked up, his vision swam, Ian’s face a distorted blur. “Fox—”
“No!” he shouted, unable to listen to more. He stumbled on the rocks, stepping into a puddle and feeling the icy water of the sea penetrating his boots. “I have to go.”
Fox wandered the streets, mind spinning and stomach churning. He didn’t intend to start a fight—not at first. But the moment he turned the corner and accidentally bumped shoulders with a heavyset Dereyan man, he felt something inside him settle.
Kings bless the man for snapping at him for an apology. Fox stared back, his blood already thrumming.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” the man asked. “Are you stupid or something?”
Fox didn’t wait. He was long past ready.
He threw the first punch.
It wasn’t a fight he was going to win. The man was shorter than Fox by a few inches, but he was wider, his arms corded with muscle.
The man’s first punch sent Fox’s ears ringing and the second had him against the wall.
But Fox didn’t stop fighting back until his mind ceased its racing and the pain clouded his grief.
Fox returned to the barracks that night with a bloody nose and two black eyes.