Chapter 19
Nyx was about to crawl out of her skin. Three days had passed since they’d moved into the Oasis Inn.
They had done nothing but trail Tristen’s mother to and from her job.
They sat in the tavern each day while Tristen watched Belas but never engaged with her even under the pretense of being a stranger.
He drank an excessive amount of alcohol for what small relief having to heal his own liver damage could provide, and Nyx spent an hour each morning and night draining his power into A-Queltr.
They were both irritable and snapping at each other whenever they actually spoke, which wasn’t often.
Tristen was irritable because of the magic buildup, and because he might be able to heal the physical damage caused by alcohol and sober up in an instant, but drinking that much liquor still made him crabby.
Nyx was irritable because sitting around all day doing nothing, while Griff was alone at her Station and she couldn’t get any updates on if Jevryn had contacted him, made her want to tie Tristen and Belas together with Gleipnir, throw them in an empty room, and let them sort things out.
It didn’t help that she was hardly sleeping.
The way Tristen was acting, she didn’t trust that a neighboring inn guest with the sniffles wouldn’t be enough to drag him out of their room in a compulsive need to heal.
Alihana had promised to wake her if Tristen left the room—being what they were, they didn’t need to sleep—but each night she woke two or three times in fitful starts, her subconscious mind convinced that this time, he would be gone.
Things came to a head on the third night, when they were walking home.
Tristen had a tendency to trail her and snap if she tried to drop back and walk beside him.
Since they were both Hidden during these walks, she didn’t force the issue.
He was trailing farther behind her than usual this night, because she’d lost her temper earlier and demanded to know when he was going to stop wasting their time and just talk to his mother.
It had blown up into a spectacular fight and they had both silently agreed to seethe with an appropriate amount of distance between them on the remainder of the walk.
When he stopped walking, she felt it because she felt the increased distance between her and the Hiding she’d placed over him.
She was irritated enough that she kept walking, because he wasn’t in danger of anyone seeing him.
It wasn’t until she felt him turn and move rapidly in another direction that she realized she’d foolishly forgotten he could be a danger to himself.
She doubled back, spotting the alley he’d turned down, but she was too late. He was crouched next to a supine, cloaked figure, blood pooled on the ground beneath them. Two other people lay to either side of the figure, the bloodied sword clenched in their hand telling the others’ stories.
Nyx opened her mouth to yell at Tristen when the tap on her Hidden magic opened wide, stealing her breath.
Magic geysered out of her and she dropped the Hiding before it could drain her.
Whoever lay dying in that alley, Tristen was both touching and healing them, and her magic could not Hide his existence from someone so viscerally confronted with it.
She cursed and ran, reaching his side as a deep puncture wound in the person’s stomach closed. “We need to go. Now.”
Tristen didn’t appear to hear her. Magic poured out of him, no doubt replenishing the blood the person—a Kerian woman—had lost when her stomach had been stabbed.
Her eyes suddenly flared open and she gasped, scrambling away.
Her sword, still clenched in her hand, scrapped against the stone street, her other hand clamping over her side where the puncture had been.
Her gaze lit on Tristen. Nyx saw understanding come into her eyes.
Understanding, and something else. Something that looked a lot like hunger.
The woman lifted her head and loosed a series of piercing whistles.
It didn’t take a superior intellect to deduce she was calling for backup.
Nyx wondered where that backup had been when the woman had been dying moments ago, but now was hardly the time to figure it out.
She grabbed Tristen’s arm and dragged him to his feet.
He was dazed, and when she tried to turn and run with him, he stumbled and went down.
The faint scuff of a toe on stone was all the warning Nyx got. She dropped Tristen’s arm for Alihana’s hilt, drawing the sword as she spun in a crouch. Steel hit steel, Alihana’s blade catching the strike that had been meant to bite into her neck.
No good deed goes unpunished, Nyx thought, keeping contact with the blade of the Kerian woman Tristen had just healed. Nyx surged to her feet, forcing her attacker to retreat or lose her balance. The woman chose to retreat, but swiftly cut back in.
Nyx blocked again and parried. The woman was fast, but she wasn’t particularly skilled, and Nyx had spent six recent months training with Jevryn A-Morridahn, who was both. It wasn’t even a contest. She didn’t think, she didn’t consider. She reacted.
When the opening came and her blade sank home, it didn’t quite feel real. Too fast, too easy. A matter of seconds was all it had taken to deal a death to a woman she didn’t even know.
She ripped the blade free, mourning briefly for the version of herself this would have bothered more.
The version of herself who hadn’t seen how unkind the universe could be, who didn’t know that the look in the woman’s eyes when she’d realized what Tristen was had meant there would be no reasoning with her.
As the blade came free, Nyx’s elbow thunked into something solid: Tristen.
She held her arm out, holding him back, because the woman’s new wound was drawing him as surely as the first had.
But unlike the first, which had clearly hit somewhere that would cause a slow, lingering death, Nyx’s hit had clearly punctured something more immediately vital.
The woman collapsed to her knees. Her eyes closed and she toppled over.
Tristen stopped trying to push past Nyx. He blinked, as if waking up.
“Come on,” she told him, “we need to go.” She worked to cloak them in a Hiding once more as she spoke, but it met immediate resistance, a pull on her magic so strong she had to let it go.
She spun in a circle, searching for anyone she’d missed.
There was no one. But there had to be someone because the only thing that could interfere with her Hiding was someone who already knew they were here.
Several someones, judging by how stiff the resistance had been.
Fear drew on the one part of A-Queltr Nyx could always reach without effort, her veins turning black as her body filled with death-infused strength.
“What is it?” Tristen asked.
“Someone’s—” She never finished the sentence. A weight crashed into her from above, knocking her flat with a force that would have broken her body had she not been relying on death’s strength. Alihana went flying, surprise knocking them from her grip. Nearby, Tristen’s scream rent the air.
The weight pinning Nyx down had fingers that wrapped around her throat, choking her.
She grasped those fingers and peeled them off, sucking in air as she flipped their positions, pinning her attacker beneath her.
She punched down hard, aiming not for the face but the throat.
Her fist connected and she heard a sickening crunch as something gave beneath her knuckles.
She shoved to her feet and ran for Tristen.
He was on his back, his attacker on top, holding Tristen’s arms pinned.
The Shaman didn’t have Nyx’s enhanced strength, and while he might have been able to throw his attacker off if he was unharmed, he clearly couldn’t now.
If he’d been hit anything like Nyx had, she guessed no small number of his bones were currently broken.
She was almost to him when a knife flashed in his attacker’s hand, slashing down, and she heard a wet gurgle. Tristen jerked his arm free. His hand grasped his attacker’s face. Magic punched the air and the figure slumped just as Nyx barreled into him, shoving the now lifeless body away.
Blood soaked Tristen’s neck. The moon didn’t provide enough light to see how deep his wound was, but the amount of blood said it was bad. She grabbed the hem of her cloak and pressed it hard against his neck.
Sound and movement came to her left, a staggering gait and wheezing breath, and she whipped her hand up just in time for Constance to form a dagger and cut into the chest of the man whose neck she’d punched.
She withdrew and stabbed again, this time at his neck.
She ripped Constance free and shoved the man back. He fell. He did not get up.
Nyx turned back to Tristen. His eyes were wild.
He tried to speak and a gurgle came out.
Her instinct was to portal them back to the inn, where no one could reach them, but Tristen couldn’t walk through a portal right now.
If she dragged him through it and he had a broken rib, could it pierce his heart? Would he heal from that if it did?
Her control over wrapping portal magic around them and portaling the way her father did wasn’t very precise, and she risked the same problem if she tried to do it that way. Besides, if she moved Tristen, would it interfere with his magic?
She tried to pull on a Hiding again and met the same damn resistance that meant someone was still watching them.
Weighing their odds of a successful attack?
Or just watching to take information back to someone else?
Either way, she couldn’t risk them leaving this alley.
Making a split-second decision, she pulled on a different anchor, opened a doorway, and yelled “Kaden!” at the top of her lungs.
A second passed. Two.
Tristen tried to speak. Again, only a gurgle came out. Fuck.