Chapter 18 #2
Arriving outside the Last Outpost coated in dust and sweat, Nyx realized she had forgotten just how much she hated the heat.
And being covered in dust. And dry air. And the desert in general.
Nearly two years away from the desert had put the unpleasantness of the climate firmly from her mind, but now that she was standing beneath an unrelenting sun, covered from head-to-toe to protect her from that sun’s rays, and sweating her ass off, she was easily reminded of why dying had felt like a better option than being stuck alone forever in Tempe, Arizona.
They walked straight to the Lost Road Tavern, following the city map Morgen had provided.
It was barely past mid-morning, but Morgen had assured her the place would be open.
It was. Probably because, by the looks of things, it never closed.
Tristen stared at the building, making no move to go inside.
There was nothing to see, because the tavern had no windows, but he kept looking as if he’d get some kind of answer out of it if he stared long enough.
Nyx waited patiently, observing the drunk people who occasionally stumbled out and the sober people occasionally walked in.
Everyone in this place seemed to have a vested interest in revealing as little of their identity as possible.
On the one hand, it meant she and Tristen wouldn’t stick out.
On the other hand, it meant there was a higher-than-usual chance that everyone here tended towards violence, and she couldn’t observe much about anyone.
The only thing she could note for certain, because they were easy to identify no matter what they were wearing, was that there were a higher number of Livkai than she usually saw.
This being a desert area, that made sense, as she’d read the reptilian race had a strong aversion to the cold, even if they could withstand it.
Twenty minutes passed before Tristen finally asked, “Can we go in like this? Where no one can see us?”
“That depends on how busy it is. If it’s crowded and we’re going to be brushing up against other people, I can’t hold it forever.
We’d need to make it back outside before my magic breaks, or we’ll have much bigger problems.” Suddenly appearing out of nowhere in a bar full of drunk, dangerous people was not an experience Nyx wanted to have.
She could tell Tristen wanted to risk it anyway.
He might want to see his mother, but he didn’t yet want her to be able to see him.
Nyx, who was afraid of how long this visit might get drawn out of it he had that kind of anonymity, nudged him in the opposite direction.
“She won’t recognize you.” Plenty of people—most of them, in fact—had had their hood cloaks and masks up, obscuring their features.
The masks undoubtedly came off indoors, or they’d never be able to drink, but she was willing to bet a fair number of the hoods stayed up.
Eventually, he nodded. They found an out-of-the-way spot for Nyx to drop the Hiding, then walked back.
Tristen had changed his typical prosthetic for one that he could wear a shoe over, because as much as he’d argued with Morgen, neither Tristen nor Nyx wanted to be seen, however erroneously, as easy targets.
His gait wasn’t quite as smooth in this setup, as he clearly didn’t use it as often, and enough people eyed them on the street, probably thinking he might be injured, that Nyx put her hand on Alihana’s hilt.
She couldn’t effortlessly glower like Evra and Kaden could, but when she let black creep through her veins, people finally found somewhere else to look.
They reached the tavern door, Tristen pulling the hood of his cloak more firmly over his head as they entered.
They stopped just inside, Nyx blinking as her eyes adjusted from the bright glare of the sun outside to the dim, windowless interior of the tavern.
It was busy, all but one of the seats around the bar taken along with nearly three-quarters of the tables.
Tristen scanned the room, and Nyx followed his gaze.
A woman was working the bar, middle-aged with dark brown hair and skin gone leathery from too much sun.
Nyx shot Tristen a questioning glance, but he shook his head.
Not his mother, then.
The Lost Road Tavern seemed like the kind of establishment where you seated yourself, so they took one of the empty booths along the wall that offered a decent view of the rest of the room and waited.
A few minutes passed before a harried looking woman came out of the back, her black hair scraped away from a wan face.
She looked tired and a little nervous, and Nyx knew, by the way Tristen went rigidly still as she approached, that they had found Belas Veld.
Her exhaustion only became more apparent as she drew closer, tight lines pulling at the corners of her eyes.
Nyx was struck with the thought that she looked too young for those lines, and also younger than Nyx would have expected her to be, having a son of Tristen’s age.
She couldn’t be more than in her early forties.
Doing the math in her head, Nyx figured she’d either aged extraordinarily well—which was unlikely, given how otherwise rundown she looked—or she’d been about sixteen or seventeen when she’d had Tristen.
Belas managed a brittle smile for them, and Nyx had the thought that she must be blinding when she was happy. It was easy to see how her entire face would light up. Nyx also suspected she hadn’t been happy in a very long time.
“What can I get you?” Her voice had a musical lilt to it that didn’t fit in a place like this. She didn’t seem like she was made for harsh places or people. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who could sell her son.
She looked at Tristen expectantly. His head was dipped down and he lowered it further, ensuring the hood of his cloak revealed nothing of his face. Belas’s expression, which had already been guarded, turned more so.
“He’s shy,” Nyx said.
“Not to worry,” Belas said tightly. “We get a lot of shy in here.” Shy, in this case, clearly implied prefer-not-to-be-remembered, likely for nefarious reasons.
In the end, Nyx ordered for them both, choosing drinks at random.
The fruit platter she picked with intention, asking Belas to leave out the starfruit.
Over the past few days of eating in the Drahl household, Nyx had noticed Tristen didn’t like it, and she watched Belas’s face.
A shadow passed across the woman’s eyes.
Was she remembering her son hadn’t liked them?
Belas walked away as soon as the order was taken. Tristen hadn’t said a single word. When the food came, he didn’t touch it, only sipped at his drink. He also didn’t talk. He watched, his hand clenched tightly around his glass, his eyes tracking Belas’s every movement, her every interaction.
But though he observed, he did not once interact.
She also didn’t think he was seeing the same things she was.
The way it seemed Belas’s exterior was a shell that had been forced to become hard too fast, and thus become brittle, as if the slightest blow would shatter it.
The way she glanced at the door every few minutes, as if expecting someone to walk through it.
The way every time she did, the woman behind the bar shook her head, her expression a mix of pity and disgust.
They sat for two hours, watching. They ordered two more rounds of beers that Nyx made Tristen drink, because someone had to drink them to justify their continued presence, and Nyx couldn’t magically sober herself up like he could.
Every time Belas came to check on them, Tristen tensed, his body readying for action, only he didn’t know which action to take.
Finally, after Belas walked away from them yet again, he said, “She seems so normal.” His voice was wistful. “Like I remember.”
Nyx didn’t say anything. She’d argued with him a lot over the past few days about how to handle this moment. This meeting. So she knew if she suggested he just talk to his mother, his back would go up.
“Is that what yours was like?” When he read the confusion on her face he clarified, “Your mother. You said she wasn’t a good person. But was she with you? Was she just…normal with you?”
Nyx shook her head. “No. She was never normal with me.” Though it had taken Nyx a long time and a lot of books to understand that fact. She hadn’t had any outside frame of reference to compare her life to. “My mother…she never loved me. She never even pretended to.”
Nyx had thought Viktor loved her, when she was little.
Then she’d grown old enough, learned enough about Hidden magic, to understand what Elena had done to him.
And Nyx was grateful she’d had her illusions, early on.
Grateful that, in her formative years, she had at least believed an adult had cared for her.
She didn’t want to know what kind of person she might have become if she hadn’t had that.
“Mine loved me,” Tristen whispered. “I thought she loved me. I guess she loved money more.”
That, to Nyx, was another piece of this puzzle that didn’t fit.
If Belas had sold him, why was she working in a place like this?
Yes, people could be bad with money. Lottery winners went broke all the time.
It was possible Belas had squandered it all.
Or maybe the people Belas had given Tristen to had double-crossed her, and she’d been left with nothing.
There were a lot of maybes, a lot of different possible scenarios.
But with the singular exception of Kaden Moor, Nyx had always been good at reading people.
She’d had to be, had had to understand her mother’s every shift in expression to know what was or wasn’t safe to do or say.
And she didn’t read Belas Veld as a cold-hearted bitch. She read her as broken.