Chapter 8 #2
“It was not my choice. I didn’t want her training at all, after the first time it happened.
But Scythians are stubborn. Tamrin insisted she would rather risk death than be less.
As if not training could make her less.” Evra’s words turned bitter.
“My mother was so proud of her. Tamrin was so fearless, so dedicated, so strong. I was the weak one for wanting her to be safe. And when mother insisted I take her with me on the prisoner transport, I was the weak one for losing her.”
Nyx reached out and squeezed her hand. “Caring doesn’t make you weak.”
Evra gave her a humorless smile. “It is words like those that make me certain there is not a drop of Scythian blood anywhere in your ancestry. Mother likes to claim Father polluted mine, while she ran true in Horus and Tamrin.”
Nyx flinched. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”
Evra shrugged. “That is Moriana al’Daemon.”
“Also, I thought your father was Scythian.”
Evra sighed. “My father is a farmer.”
Nyx blinked. “Like tilling soil and planting seeds and harvesting vegetables? That kind of farmer?”
“What other kind of farmer is there?”
“Knowing what I know of Scythians, I thought it might be something more along the lines of Farmer of Fear or Sower of Bloodshed. You know, the kind of farmer who reaps a deadly harvest.”
Evra snorted. “Alas, even Scythians must eat. It is why the planet has a robust immigration policy for people willing to do all the necessary trades Scythians would rather not. My father was one of them. He is a sweet man. Stars alone know what drew him to my mother. She is as mean as a Morabeast.”
“You know,” Nyx said casually, “Morgen is a sweet man, and some might describe you as, ah, prickly.” Evra shot Nyx a glare of death, proving her point, but Nyx wasn’t foolish enough to point it out. “Anyway, how did your father feel about the situation with Tamrin?”
“After her heart stopped the first time and Mother allowed her to continue training, he did not speak to Mother for six months. It made family dinners quite awkward. When Tamrin’s heart stopped the second time and Mother allowed her to return to training, my parents separated and he attempted to gain sole custody.
“He thought he had a chance, as it had to go through a hearing with representatives from both parental cultures, but greater weight is always placed on the family side native to the planet the child is being raised on, and none of us al’Daemon children have citizenship on our father’s planet.
Mother insisted we didn’t need it. My father had made his life on Scythia with no plans of returning to his homeworld, so he had not thought she was wrong.
“She was as vicious in court as she is on the battlefield. She went for the quick kill and she did not fail. By the time she was done, he only retained visitation rights because she allowed it. He was completely stripped of all decision-making in Tamrin’s life.”
Nyx’s face must have displayed her shock, because Evra said, “It is what Scythians are taught to do—win at any cost. I think it horrified my mother, afterward. My parents had had a mostly happy marriage before they disagreed over Tamrin’s condition.
The cracks were there, of course, as I believe they are in so many relationships.
Most people are simply not run through the crucible that will turn those cracks into breaks. ”
“I’m sorry.”
Evra shrugged. Nyx was starting to have a very good idea of why Evra was the way she was.
It wasn’t that Nyx hadn’t had an inkling before—this wasn’t the first time Evra had said something offhand about Moriana al’Daemon that most people would be shocked by—it was that Evra rarely talked about personal matters.
In fact, she pretty much never talked about them unless asked.
“Hey, you know you can talk to me about stuff like this whenever you want, right? Like, you don’t need an invitation, I’m always here.”
Evra side-eyed her. “What? I am supposed to come to you and say ‘Nyx, I am feeling maudlin, please listen to my sad familial complaints?’”
“Yes. I mean, you don’t have to open with ‘Nyx, I am feeling maudlin’, but I’m happy to listen to the sad complaints of all parts of your life whenever you want. That’s kind of what friends are for.”
“You have had enough to deal with of late.”
“Evra, I love you, so please don’t take this the wrong way, but stop tiptoeing around me, okay? You guys keep handling me delicately, like you’re afraid I’m about to break, and honestly? I liked the bitchy you that showed up in Calista telling me I was being selfish better.
“I would be happy to listen to your problems. I want to listen to your problems. Okay?”
“As you sa—” Evra cut off mid-word and mid-stride, halting before a boutique shop purporting to sell vintage accessories and antiques. Her gaze had snagged on a necklace, a choker of black velvet with what looked like an oval moonstone set in the center.
“What?” Nyx asked.
“You do not feel it?”
Nyx started to ask Feel what? when suddenly she did. A soft wave of magic, something she hadn’t noticed because she was now accustomed to feeling it in Earth Between, and hadn’t clocked that here, in Dead Earth, it was quite unusual indeed.
Evra pushed open the door, striding in with determination.
Nyx followed, realizing as she did that the choker wasn’t the only thing magical in this shop—everything was.
It also all gave her the creeps. Now that she was on this side of the glass door, when she looked at the choker she got the feeling it might actually choke her if worn.
Evra strode directly to the empty sales counter, where she rang the old-fashioned desk bell with repetitive abandon.
Nyx slipped behind a Hiding, cloaking herself just as an older white woman, thick gray hair bound in a braid that trailed over her left shoulder, came out looking cross.
She was dressed in severe black, and reminded Nyx of nothing so much as the type of witch from fairy tales who would eat small children.
The woman clapped her hand over the bell and slid it out of Evra’s reach, then looked the over skeptically.
“May I help you?”
Evra smiled a wolf’s smile. “For your sake, I hope so. There are so many things in here that directly violate All Council law.”
The woman’s lips twisted into a moue of distaste. “I don’t know who you are, but I’ll tell you the same thing I told the last two who came in here spouting that nonsense: I don’t answer to any council.”
Slipping Veritas from its sheath at her thigh, Nyx slipped around the counter.
“And I’ll make you the same offer I made them—get out of my shop now, and I’ll let you leave it intact.”
The woman was reaching under the counter, and Nyx didn’t want to find out what for. She darted around behind the woman, wrapped her arm around her neck, and dropped her Hiding just as she pressed the tip of Veritas to her throat. “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
The shopkeeper made an irritated sound but dropped her hand back to her side. Nyx pressed Veritas’s blade a little deeper against the woman’s throat, enough to break the skin and trail blood down the blade.
“I was wondering where you went,” Evra said.
“Do me a favor and bind her with Gleipnir,” Nyx said. “I don’t really trust her to behave.”
Evra came around the counter, unwinding Gleipnir from its usual place on Nyx’s body impersonating a bracelet, and used it to bind the shopkeeper’s wrists before tethering the other end to the metal counter leg bolted to the floor.
Nyx eased Veritas off the woman’s throat and came around to stand beside Evra.
“Who are you and where are you from?” Evra demanded.
The woman gave the a disdainful look, but apparently decided, given her current circumstances, that it was a question that didn’t cost her much to answer.
“Mary Turner. Brooklyn.”
Evra’s brow furrowed. “Before that.”
“Brooklyn born and raised, girl.”
“That is not—”
Nyx nudged Evra. “She’s telling the truth.” The blood on Veritas’s blade had turned blue, indicating truth. “She’s from here.”
Mary’s nose wrinkled. “Not here. Brooklyn. You haven’t been in New York more than a minute, have you? You don’t know the difference.”
Since Nyx didn’t think saying No, I meant here as in Earth would have any positive effect on the conversation, she didn’t correct Mary.
“Do you know that everything you are selling here is dangerous?” Evra asked.
The shopkeeper shrugged. “It’s just junk.”
The blood on Veritas turned black. “She knows,” Nyx said.
Mary cast her eyes heavenward in the manner of a woman had seen far too much in life and couldn’t believe she was now being bothered with this. “People know what they come here for. It’s no business of mine if they hurt themselves with it.”
“And if they hurt others?” Evra demanded.
“Then it’s even less my business. And don’t you be all high and mighty.
You’re clearly no stranger to getting what you want by the means available.
” She lifted her Gleipnir-bound wrists. “So let’s make a deal.
Give me this little bauble here, and I won’t send anything nasty after you when you leave. ”
“Counteroffer,” Evra said. “We have questions. Answer them, and we’ll take that ‘little bauble’ off you.”
Mary laughed. “No, I don’t think I will. Neither of you has the stomach for torture, so what are you going to do? Stay here all day, waiting for me to talk? Take my first offer. Give me this little delight”—she indicated Gleipnir again—“and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“That ‘little delight’ is off the table,” Nyx snapped. “It’s worth more than your entire shop put together. And it was a gift.”
“Lover?” Mary asked.