CHAPTER FOUR #3
The words were stuck in my throat. Every syllable I forced out was released on a wave of white-hot terror, like a faucet that couldn’t release water without pushing out dirt and grime from the pipes. I tried to swallow, but the muscles in my neck weren’t cooperating.
The clink of Kieran setting down his fork was the only sound in the room. It was shortly followed by the low rumble of his voice. “You don’t have to say it,” he murmured. “Whatever it is. We get it. Trust me, we get it.”
Nya’s dark gaze shifted just over my shoulder, and I knew she was exchanging another look with him. When her eyes returned to me, they were full of warmth.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” she said finally. “And your parents. All of it.”
It took a moment of quiet self-soothing, of reassuring myself that I wasn’t going to have to talk about Irene’s death after all, before I could find the ability to respond. “Me, too,” I said finally. “It’s not easy being alone.”
“No. It’s not.” Nya’s response was as soft as my own.
She picked up her fork and knife and began to cut into the chicken.
I lowered myself onto the carpet and leaned against the strip of wall between the desk and the balcony door.
As my body continued to come down from the panic, the gravity of what I had just shared with two Strangers hung in the room between us.
Why did I tell them the truth? Was it a betrayal to Cyllene to share something like that with people from Outside?
These were people whose mere existence disgusted The Council, disgusted Cyllene citizens.
Wild, animalistic people, and many of them exiled criminals.
As intensely as Cyllene feared magic, the city would celebrate if magical beings actually did the job they had been expected to do and wiped the Strangers out of existence.
Nya and Kieran didn’t speak as they polished off everything on their plates. I knew that Nya had to be as hungry as Kieran, but she still cut her food into polite, bite-sized pieces and swallowed each mouthful before moving on to the next.
Kieran continued to cram as much as possible into his mouth at once.
He finished eating first. Then he flopped back on the bed, sighing contentedly, and closed his eyes.
When Nya finished, she grabbed Kieran’s empty plate and carried both dishes to the sink. She turned on the faucet to rinse them.
“Just leave them,” I called over the running water. “I’ll wash them later.”
Nya obliged and sat back down at the desk.
“Since you shared something with us,” she began carefully. “I’ll share with you that we followed your advice, and we got what we needed from the marsh wolf pack. With no losses on our end.”
A smile spread across my face.
She added quickly, “Don’t make me regret telling you that.”
“I won’t,” I promised. My body felt suddenly light, as if releasing tension that I hadn’t even realized had been there. “So what can I help with this time?”
“One second, let me grab the map.” Nya reached under the desk and pulled out her same blue backpack. She began digging through it. “I’ll go ahead and warn you that this map is as skillfully drawn as the last one.”
I chuckled.
While she was doing that, I felt a chill coming from the glass door beside me, creeping in between the shoddy weather stripping. I tried to remember another time when I had had a reason to sit on the carpet, against the wall like this.
I couldn’t think of one. I had never had to make space for guests before.
I began to unravel my braid. I ran my hand through the roots a few times, loosening the strands against my scalp, then let the soft waves fall over my shoulders, savoring the warmth.
A rustle on the bed caught my attention.
Kieran’s eyes were open now, and he was staring at me.
I was so surprised that I couldn’t stop myself from staring back at him.
His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and the corner of his mouth turned up.
Heat flooded my cheeks. Then it proceeded to flood my whole body.
I had tried to write it off as curiosity. As the piqued interest that anyone would have observing someone with such unusual features. But in that moment, I knew it was time to be honest with myself.
I was incredibly attracted to him.
And I suddenly, overwhelmingly, did not want him to know this.
“Your eyes,” I blurted out. “I did some research on them.”
His smile widened. He rolled lazily onto his side, propping his head on his hand. “You researched me, huh?”
“No,” I said quickly. Too quickly.
His eyes were an almost shimmering silver now, dancing with amusement.
“What I mean is that your eyes are very…interesting. And I kept thinking that I had seen eyes like those before, in one of the books in the Library. Turns out, I did.”
“Did you?” he asked, his voice dripping with the over-the-top enthusiasm that you might use when speaking to a child.
Annoyance prickled in me at his tone. “I did. Years ago, a citizen of Cyllene saw a being with eyes like yours outside the walls. Right before he and almost everyone in his party disappeared.”
“No way.”
I don’t know what I had expected his response to be. But the sarcasm made me wish I had something to throw at him. I was more than just annoyed now.
“Kieran,” Nya said reproachfully. She had the map out and was carefully moving my candles to make room for it on the desk. “You’re being rude.”
Kieran laughed. A deep, rumbling sound that traveled up from his chest. I wanted to tell him to shut up and never stop. “No, you’re being rude. Be quiet and let Maila finish telling me about my own family.”
In spite of myself, I felt a thrill at the sound of my name on his lips. Of course they both knew my name. How else would they have tracked me down? And yet, it was the first time he had spoken it.
I was aggravated with him, though. More aggravated than I probably should have been. But I couldn’t quite place why that was.
“Never mind,” I said, standing to go look at the map.
Kieran caught my arm. His hand was warm and rough from what felt like many years’ worth of calluses.
“Hey,” he said, his already-low voice dropping an octave. The humor had vanished from his face. “I’m not making fun of you. I just hate talking about my family. If you even want to call them that.”
“So you really are…” I swallowed reflexively. “Whatever that being was, that that group encountered in the forest. That’s what you are? What your family is?”
“I’m half that,” he corrected. He sat up and threw his legs over the edge of the bed. He was still holding onto my arm, and I struggled to process his words while every part of my brain zeroed in on that contact. “My mother was human.”
A thousand questions boiled up in me all at once. “Your mother married a…” Again, I searched for the right words, not wanting to offend him. “A magical being?”
He laughed. “No, they weren’t married.” His voice had resumed that patient tone, like he was speaking to a child. “That wouldn’t have even been a possibility. My father was absolutely forbidden to marry a human woman. And I doubt he wanted to, anyway. But they did like each other.”
His grip on my arm tightened a bit, and his thumb grazed my skin ever so slightly. A movement just subtle enough that Nya, leaned over the map at my desk, didn’t take notice of it.
“Apparently,” he said with a grin. “My mother couldn’t resist my father’s eyes.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat wouldn’t cooperate. I scrambled for something witty to say back. My mind was blank. Apparently my entire body was going to fail me in this moment. To my horror, what suddenly escaped my mouth was, “I think your eyes are really nice.”
“I know you do,” he said, chuckling softly. His laugh wasn’t mean-spirited or poking fun at me this time. It was more like…like we were sharing a private joke.
We were staring at each other again. But this time, the heat that flooded me wasn’t from nervousness. And maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see, but I could have sworn it was matched in his eyes.
The silence was broken by a gagging noise coming from my desk. “I’m going to start requesting that someone else accompany me on these missions,” Nya said without looking up.
“You know you don’t mean that,” Kieran replied, but he still let go of my arm.
Not wanting to continue standing there awkwardly, I resumed walking over to the desk. My head was tilted toward the map, but my eyes were unseeing.
“I do mean it. In fact, maybe I’ll bring Xiomara.” Nya finally looked up. She was the one smirking now.
“You’re no fun, Nya,” Kieran sighed. I had my back turned to him, but I could tell he wasn’t smiling anymore. There was a soft thump as he flopped back down on the bed.
I wanted to ask who Xiomara was, but something told me I wasn’t going to get an answer.
“What we need this time,” Nya explained, her voice all business now, “is assistance with raiding a cave devil lair.”
I thought at first that I hadn’t heard her correctly. “A cave devil lair?”
She nodded, her mouth twisted into a grimace.
“I want to make sure we’re talking about the same creatures. As far as our Library is concerned, ‘cave devils’ are huge, nasty, humanoid beasts who build their dwellings in the sides of rocky hills and mountains.”
She nodded again.
My eyes flitted over the map, and this time I actually took in what was before me.
Drawings—crudely done, as promised—of trees and other foliage, rocks, something that I took to be dirt paths.
And taking up almost the entire top half of the map, a sketch of what looked to be a colossal rock formation, with multiple… holes? Windows? No, doors. Entrances.
“There’s a cave devil lair near here?” I couldn’t hide the disbelief in my voice. Did The Council know about this? And if so, were they taking any precautions? Sending Enforcers on a supply run when cave devils had settled in the area was like sending them straight to their deaths.
“It’s not that close,” Nya reassured me, and I nearly sagged with relief. “But a week’s travel on foot will get you there.”