CHAPTER 19
DAVINA
Three weeks ago
“ALE FOR YOUR THOUGHTS?”
Armand’s voice cut gently through the haze in my head. I looked up to find him standing above me, one hand extended, a glass in his grip. An almost clear liquid danced inside, thin condensation sliding down the sides in slow droplets.
I took it, muttering a quiet thanks.
He wordlessly took a seat next to me, a mirror drink in his hand.
We had gathered around a makeshift campfire in front of Rolla’s cabin.
Three half cacti, dried and stripped of their quills, served as crude benches arranged in a half circle around the flame.
The sun had disappeared under the horizon some time ago, and the temperature was dropping rapidly.
I had questioned the presence of fire earlier in a region so sun-scorched, but I understood as its warmth licked at my suddenly chilly skin.
Further off, Rolla, Zephyr, and Kwabena stood clustered around a second, smaller fire that had been left to die.
The smoldering embers left in its wake were being used to cook our dinner.
Sheets of thin dough, stretched and folded around bundles of spiced meat, lay nestled against the coals.
Their smell filling the air, making my mouth water.
I was starving. It hadn’t taken long for me to understand that the Kobrant desert followed a different rhythm.
Where in the Republic we spaced our days around four lighter meals, here they moved with the sun, most days having only two proper meals.
One at dawn and the other after nightfall. It was unbearable.
When I’d asked Kwabena about it, he’d shrugged. “In places where the sun tries to cook your insides, appetite can be hard to come by.”
“So?” Armand asked, breaking through my considerations and reminding me of his earlier question.
“Just hungry,” I said through a shrug.
He groaned. “Don’t even get me started. I could eat a horse right now.”
I huffed a laugh and glanced at him. Somehow, in the span of the last week, we had gone from reluctant allies to supportive ones. I suspected the strangeness of the situation, combined with the extreme conditions we were subjected to daily, were partly to blame for that.
But it wasn’t just the desert.
Our interactions had changed. They were more thoughtful, and more mature than they’d ever had the chance to be.
When I first got into that transport pod back in The Paragon, all I felt was indifference at best and annoyance at worst. Now .
. . it was different. I wasn’t sure if I could call him a friend, but I did trust him to have my back here in Kobra.
Even if I would never admit it out loud, I was even growing fond of his uncanny ability to use that obstinate charm to cut through tense situations.
It was both strange and natural, the way our relationship had evolved through the years.
I’d once been infatuated with him. Then I’d been with him.
And then, when he rejected me just like he had any other person who’d fallen to his bed, irrespective of gender, size, or color, I’d grown so blisteringly furious.
Because I wanted to be the one to tame him.
However. If I was being honest with myself, I could understand why a man nearing thirty would want nothing more than a wild night with a wide-eyed twenty-year-old girl.
Maybe not everything that happened between us had been on him.
Maybe my expectations—foolish and naive—had been partly to blame for the misunderstanding and subsequent sense of betrayal, too.
Or maybe we’d simply grown, and it was time to leave the phantom of the past buried behind us, where it had always belonged. I could hardly blame only him for young Davina’s lack of judgement in falling for a player and expecting more than he was willing to offer.
At the end of the day, it was probably for the best that we didn’t work out.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
He took a sip of his drink, and I realized I had yet to taste mine. The metal was just a notch cooler against my lips than it had felt in my hand. The liquid dancing within was . . . oddly pleasant. Fresh and citrusy and bitter, but not overly so.
“Fine,” he said through a sigh. “Tired of being permanently sweaty and running way too fast through my impressive assortment of shirts.”
I snorted at that, and he glanced at me, a half-smile on lips that could only be described as aristocratic.
Most of the Widesightian Forces were made of orphans like me that the Republic took in as charges and trained as soldiers if they showed potential and were willing to join their ranks.
In the majority of cases, it meant we’d get to have a life better than the non-inked did, even those that could bear no ink and worked in administration opted to lodging and provisions from the Republic.
Armand was a weird case. He came from an inked family.
His father was a senator for the Republic, one of the ten that were just a step below the chancellor himself.
He would have had access to sap even if he didn’t join the Widesightian Forces.
There were many easier, less risky jobs he could have carried out instead, yet he’d chosen to enroll.
Most thought it was vocational, given his competence, but I knew better.
He’d wanted to get away from his family. I’d never asked why, but I’d heard enough stories of arranged marriages among the upper classes to know that was not a fate Armand would be willing to commit to, given his tendencies. Regardless of what I thought of said tendencies, I respected his decision.
“Other than that, fine.” He shrugged. “You?”
I rested the glass on my knees, fingers tapping lightly against it as I considered. “I’ll be better once we find the damn stash and can go home, but . . . I guess it isn’t as awful as I thought it’d be.”
And I was surprised to realize that it was the truth. For all of its scorching sun, chaotic developments, spicy meals and moody babysitters, this mission was feeding my soul. Nurturing that side of me that had always wanted to see the world. To learn beyond the limits of what I knew.
Never mind that said limits were about to be pushed even further.
In less than two days, we would be hiking up the sides of Keftara, searching for tunnels buried who knew where along the expanse that was a place known as the tallest mountain of the kingdom of Kobra and all of Septune, if the texts I’d borrowed were to be believed.
Well, Armand, Zephyr, and I would, plus the guide we were going to be allocated.
Rather than risking slowing us down, Kwabena had offered to remain in Kamea, poring through the registration records to try and find any visits from the doctor.
Sircelen must have amassed his stash from somewhere, after all, and if this was the biggest reservoir in Kobra . . .
“We need to be careful,” I said to Armand, keeping my voice low. “We can’t trust them. The fact that we are forced to go down the rightful way every time is crap, and it’s costing us delay after delay.”
And why wouldn’t they make it difficult for us where they could? If we gave up on the mission, they’d get to keep all of the stash.
Something I refuse to let happen.
“Wow, Lachlan. Paranoid much?” He nudged my shoulder with his. “So far, so good, no?”
My lips pursed. “I don’t believe most of the things we’re being told, and only half of what we are shown and see with our own eyes.” I held his stare. “You should do the same.”
Before he could respond, a voice broke through the tension. “What are you two gossiping about?”
Standing just beside us was a striking woman with long, black curls and warm eyes.
Golden trinkets shone from her ears, neck and arms, catching the light as she fed more dry cacti into the flames.
Malena, Rolla’s wife and Kamea’s decorator.
She must have slipped from the house while my attention was divided between Armand and the other three across the fire to notice.
A rookie’s mistake I’d paid greatly for one too many times. One I couldn’t afford among Kobrants.
We’d been introduced to the striking woman earlier when Rolla had insisted we come to their parcel for dinner. The exchange had been brief before she’d excused herself to freshen herself. We’d gotten her name and little else.
“Just complaining about the sudden cold,” I said quickly, offering a smile.
“We’re not used to a change so acute between day and night,” Armand added, all smooth charm and an easy smile.
Her laugh was soft and melodic, like the tune produced by the glass orbs strung above us as they danced in the quiet breeze.
“You wouldn’t, no. Half of the Kobrant population isn’t, either.”
We fell into a quiet lull while she tended the fire. Once the last dry cactus left her basket, I bit my tongue, waiting to see what she’d do next. Malena set the basket down, then lowered herself onto the bench beside ours with a quiet groan.
“My back is killing me today.”
I offered an empathetic smile.
Armand, of course, wanted to know more. “How come?”
“What you’ve seen so far is the quiet version of Kamea.
We’re expecting a large group of workers to arrive in the next couple of days, though,” she explained, bracing her hands against the hard stem of the long dead cactus beneath her.
“Which means, lots of tents to prepare, and many, many cacti to dry for kindling.” White teeth peeked as she flashed a tired grin. “I haven’t stopped moving since dawn.”
“Sorry to have added to that,” I said. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Thank you, but no. I just need a good meal and more than a few hours of sleep.”
After a quiet moment, I asked, “What kind of workers are they?”
“Reservoir workers,” Malena said.
That got my attention, and she noticed.