29. Nora
29
Nora
W ind howled through the rustling trees behind me as I peered over the village. The moonlight created silver slashes in the water, constantly bending from the restless sea. My bottom half chilled from the cold ground, and my upper half from the breeze. I’d been here for an hour and seriously considered going home. I had a bed and warm blankets beckoning from just a few blocks away.
“Been waiting long?”
I jolted, scrambling to my feet as my heart plummeted into my stomach. Chol’s lighthearted chuckle made me want to use the dagger already clutched in my palm.
“You scared me!” I growled, my words seething from the scare.
“You should be more aware of your surroundings. There’s dangerous people out here, you know.” His smooth cadence caressed me like silk, but his teasing reprimand had me squeezing the pommel.
“I’ve been waiting for an hour,” I snapped, rather than trying to defend myself that the wind and trees muted his steps I would have otherwise been paying attention for.
“Sorry, sometimes it’s hard for me to get away.” Any cheeriness faded, and his posture turned rigid. I stopped myself from asking what was wrong, curious to know what stress he so obviously carried.
Anonymity, I reminded myself. Finally lowering the dagger, I sheathed it back on my hip. “I have news.” This time, I took it upon myself to add a little lightheartedness to our exchange, probably in an attempt to help ease him out of whatever gripped him. For some reason, I cared.
“Oh yeah?” He remained stiff.
“You’d mentioned that boy, Clemmons Braht, disappeared during the day, changing the pattern of the attackers.”
He hummed his confirmation.
“Well, I did a little digging, and turns out it wasn’t during the day. The boy hadn’t even made it to his shift that morning, and his parents hadn’t seen him the evening the day previous. Whoever your sources were had it wrong. We might have stopped them from taking Sverik and his wife, but they must have already taken the boy.” I was careful not to identify Sharla, or he may have asked how I knew her name. She’d screamed for Sverik, so I knew his name was safe.
He stood lethally still. The kind of stillness that had my skin pebbling, but not from the cold. From concern. What if I’d revealed too much? That Chol, in fact, did have a hand in all of this, and was partnering with me only to sift out how much I knew before I became a threat. Maybe discovering the blatant lie was the deciding factor he needed to end me here and now. I firmed up my footing.
My hand slowly worked its way back over the pommel, ready to strike like an asp if he so much as flinched in my direction. I wasn’t the praying type, but if I was, that’s what I would be doing now.
Don’t do it, Chol. Don’t make me. Please be who I hope you are.
But he didn’t lunge forward. Instead, he crumpled to the ground, burying his masked face into his gloves.
Before I could register my response, I’d released my hilt and moved beside him, resting my hands over his back and on his arm. “What’s wrong?” He didn’t look injured, and the way he’d sat looked intentional, but my heart pounded regardless.
“I keep failing,” he whispered, the quiet admission barely hitting my ears as the roaring wind tried carrying it away.
“What are you talking about?” I dropped to my knees. With a life of its own, my hand moved back and forth between his shoulders.
“I can’t explain it.” His clipped, defeated words stung like a slap in the face. Screw anonymity.
“Try,” I said.
He peered at me, the moonlight making his irises sparkle just like the night sky. But something else, besides the lack of light, darkened them, too.
“I can’t get a grip on anything these days. I’m questioning everything I know, things I thought were true. I want to fix things, but it almost seems that whenever I try, I only end up creating more problems.” His head dropped in defeat.
A heartbeat passed, and then his strong jaw was cradled in my palms as I forced his eyeline back to me. “You have me. I’m on your side. You don’t have to question that. I don’t know what’s weighing on you, and I don’t expect you to tell me, but I want you to hear me when I say this, Chol. There aren’t many people willing to put themselves in the midst of this awful situation. It takes someone with courage, someone with a good conscience to even strive for what we’re attempting. One man, or woman, can’t be expected to solve the issues in the world. But as a team, we stand a pretty good chance, I think. Especially if I’m a part of it.” I released a light laugh. “So don’t count yourself out yet, because I need you by my side for this.”
He brought up his hand to cover one of mine, holding it firmly against his face, and he closed his eyes. The warmth seeped through his glove into my hand, and something unfamiliar settled within my bones. His touch was magnetic, a pull stronger than I would have anticipated.
For a moment, I forgot about the chilly wind, the rustling leaves, the restless ocean. My body melted into the comfort of his touch, of the one person who saw me being truest to myself. I didn’t know what he dealt with in the light of day, when he didn’t have fabric concealing his face, but I also felt as if I didn’t need to. Even concealed, I couldn’t fight off the feeling that we saw each other.
I saw a man who was well trained, strong. A man who held courage in his heart to stand up against evil. A man who probably had the opportunity to seriously injure or even kill me, but never tried to. Nothing to prove except to himself, no desire for glory. A heart set on doing the right thing, that pained under the weight of feeling like a failure.
He finally opened his eyes to catch me frozen intently on him. “Thank you, Ella.”
Too soon he let me go, and I made a concerted effort to drop my hand before I made it weird.
“I think you may have been right,” he said, letting his legs straighten onto the grass.
“Probably. But about what?”
He laughed softly, and the sun glowed within my chest. My mask hid my triumphant smile.
“I don’t know if it’s related, but some of the guards…it just seems like they’re hiding something. I’ve been trying to look into the murdered body on the beach, and the guards apprehended a suspect, but…” Chol struggled to find the words. “I missed my opportunity to learn more because I became distracted. The suspect died. There’s no more lead.”
I found myself placing my hand on his thigh, for no other reason than I wanted to. When I realized what I’d done, I retracted my hand with lightning speed and cleared my throat before continuing, “About that murdered man. I found out more about him.”
“What did you find out?” He sat straighter, leaning closer. I didn’t pull back, and my cheeks heated despite the cool breeze.
“I met someone today who knew him. She actually came here looking for him, suspecting he might have gotten into trouble. She said she’s from a place where others are disappearing too, but there, everyone who’s gone missing has magic.”
“Where?”
“She didn’t say. She carefully guarded that piece of information.”
“So we know the victim had magic, and wasn’t from this town, but we don’t know from where, and wherever this place is, they’re experiencing the same troubles.”
“Mhm, and when I went to visit Clemmons’ parents, they had willowroot in their home. I know it’s flimsy, but it could suggest they’re a family of magic wielders, too. Oh, and Mr. Gallagher, I’m going to look into him as well to see if he had any, or if he was simply a supporter.”
“Huh…” He quietly contemplated the theory. “I haven’t been aware of any upticks in magic resentment, but then again, there’s a lot I’m not hearing these days.” He dragged a hand over his hood, careful not to pull it back too far.
“Do you know where the guards are keeping the body of the man from the beach? I think my friend would like to confirm it’s him. Might bring her closure.”
“It’s been burned.”
My shoulders sagged, and he noted it.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you in that regard, but I did find something about the funds from the Crown’s treasury.”
Whatever he would tell me wouldn’t erase the bad news I’d have to pass along to Alaina. In fact, it’d probably be even more depressing.
“There’s been a discrepancy. The castle has been doling out a set allotment to help house and feed the homeless here, but it appears someone’s been skimming off the top. Now that it’s been addressed, the people should get the help they need.”
My thoughts turned to the dirt and tear-stained faces of children and their mothers huddled in the market. I wanted to weep at the thought that their bellies would be filled. Instead, I lunged for Chol.
My arms wrapped so tightly around him that I nearly knocked him flat on his back, but he caught us, supporting one hand behind him. It took a moment, but he slowly wound his other arm around my waist with a strength that secured me to him. I buried my face in the crook of his neck and inhaled his citrusy scent. My lungs took in a breath as if they’d never inhaled a full one.
“Those families haven’t received help in so long. I pass them every day, not able to spare anything myself.” The sobs began building, but I choked them down. Our chests swayed in rhythm with each other in silence when I cut myself off for fear I’d lose my ability to contain them.
“I’m sorry I didn’t help sooner,” he said, a solemn sadness dragging down every word.
My arms screamed to hold on, but I lazily released our embrace. He released his grip on me with the same slow speed until I stopped, only a hand’s length away from his face. His gaze assessed mine, and I lost myself in it until a sweeping wind forced my hood to billow and I jerked in reaction to hold it in place.
I shimmied back after ensuring it still concealed me. He adjusted, sitting fully upright again.
“Thank you. How the hell did you get access to that information? And manage to change it? Who are you?” I asked, somewhat joking, though the reality started to set in that he could hold a reasonable position within the castle.
He just shook his head. “Don’t thank me, Ella. Things like that shouldn’t have gone unnoticed in the first place.”
“It’s not your fault, Chol. The Crown is fucking corrupt. That’s probably a reason they don’t care that we wither in the streets. You don’t have to worry about an uprising if your opponents are weak.” I tasted the bitterness of my words on my tongue as I peered out over the cityscape.
“We’ll make it better,” he stated with such clarity that I fixed my gaze back on him. He’d also taken to staring out over the ocean, and I wondered if this time, instead of a seamless tapestry of moonlit waves and starlit sky, he saw a world in which we’d won. I scanned the dark horizon, searching for a hint of it myself. My father would have seen the same thing.
“Is that a statement of hope I detect?” I leaned into him, nudging his shoulder with mine.
Releasing a breathy laugh under his mask, he said, “I don’t know if I’m quite at hope, yet. More so, a determined focus because I don’t know what I’ll do if we can’t change things.” I could hear the mourning in his voice, a fear that he would fail.
I didn’t want to add to his doubts, since our task certainly seemed insurmountable. So instead of expressing my own fear that I wouldn’t make it out of this unscathed, to see the world we promised to create, I let those thoughts carry away on the battering wind.
“I won’t be able to make it out next until three days from now. But I’ll hopefully have more insights on the missing persons and their relation to magic. What will you do in the meantime?” I asked.
He filled his lungs, then released a deep sigh. “Being out here with you is the one thing I look forward to these days. How am I going to get by without you?” he teased, but it didn’t stop the heat from licking up my neck and stretching toward my cheeks.
I made an ugly, scoffing sound in my throat and rolled my eyes, though I did really enjoy hearing it. Knowing he thought of me during his normal life, like I’d thought of him, made my lower belly dance in strange ways. “Probably not easily.” I smirked and was sure he could hear it through my mask.