Chapter 3
His eyes widened, and he shoved himself away from me. He stared, horrified, dark brows drawn together as he fought to recover from the shock of having someone on the outside touch the pain he internalized.
My breaths came in rushed waves. That agony I felt within him—I hadn’t felt anything like it before. Just one dip inside it had my legs weakening, my heart slamming into my ribs, my head throbbing. It wasn’t normal. Something was seriously wrong with him.
Once he recovered, he tightened his hands into fists, expression hardening like steel. “Don’t fucking touch me like that,” he snapped. “Now, do I need to throw you over my shoulder again?”
I could hardly focus on anything but the lingering memory of pain. “N-no, don’t.”
“Never thought the person I was trying to save would cause me this much trouble. Not even a Siren.” His gloved fingers wrapped around my wrist as he pulled me out of the alleyway, back into the flickering light of the lampposts that lined the main street.
I glared at the back of his head and dug my heels into the cobblestone to make it a little more difficult for him to drag me along.
Warm wind tossed grains of sand from the surrounding desert against my cheek.
With most of the city guards occupied with the pirates and putting out the fire that raged at the banquet, we didn’t come across a single one as he yanked me towards the outskirts of town.
The houses and shops were eerily quiet and still.
Curtains had been drawn across the windows, and the few civilians we passed by ducked their heads and didn’t even acknowledge us.
It was as if the normally bustling, bright capital city of Arvensis had all already received word of the attack on the party tonight and were cowering in fear.
Lampposts weren’t even lit in the seedy neighborhood he dragged me through. We walked in silence until I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had too many questions burning on my tongue, starting with, “Who exactly is your employer?”
No answer. Not even a look behind him.
“Why do you think the Druinn general put this necklace on me?”
Still nothing. Asshole.
“This is your first time, isn’t it?”
That actually earned me an over the shoulder glare. He took a deep breath through his nose and tightened his free hand into a fist. “First time what?”
“Saving someone. You’re doing such a good job.”
He scoffed at my fake praise and jerked to a halt so suddenly that I ran into his back. “We're here.” Nameless Asshole pulled out a tarnished brass key and unlocked the dingy metal door we stopped before.
I threw a glance up and down the shabby, dimly lit street. This was the perfect place to be kidnapped and sold like a product instead of a person, but I’d already been through that once. What were the odds of it happening again?
Inside the door, a single lit torch halfway down the stairs brightened a cold, dark descent.
I hesitated, but he shoved me by the shoulder and followed me like a haunting shadow down the stairs.
Our footsteps echoed in the cramped tunnel of stone, each sound heralding a fresh wave of unease through my body.
The distant drip of water somewhere off the ceiling wasn't comforting, and neither was the odd chill down here.
I usually liked the cold, at least compared to the devastating heat that was this desert city, but this cold felt clinical.
I shivered.
He led me down a dark hallway and pushed open the door at the end with a screech of metal.
The room inside was significantly brighter, with lamps strewn about all over the floor.
Open crates lined the walls, filled to the brim with tools and spare metal parts.
No bed, no wardrobe, absolutely nothing comfortable about this place.
It felt like a dungeon. Or maybe…a laboratory.
At the far end of the room, a standing lamp had been adjusted with a focusing piece of glass to provide a spotlight on a worktable littered with stacks of books, papers, and a small pile of platinum jewelry.
Someone sat on the stool examining a ring that glittered silvery in the light, but he jumped and whipped his head around at the slam of the door and the resounding lock afterwards.
“Oh! Finally, you made it! What took so long, Rei?”
He was a teenage Human boy, and a hideously dressed one at that, in a collared shirt and a mud-brown vest made of scratchy-looking material.
He wasn’t actually wearing burlap, was he?
Perhaps I was too used to Nightwhisper’s wealthy clientèle, but he looked like a poor servant in serious need of some fashion assistance.
“The Druinns must have hired pirates to be their little distraction. They attacked the banquet. Had to fight my way out. Don’t worry about me, I’m perfectly fine,” Nameless Asshole said sarcastically, holding up the hand I had bitten.
“She tried to take a chunk out of me, though. Like a baby shark.”
The boy had called him Rei, so I supposed that meant he wasn’t nameless anymore. Still an asshole, though. I looked with pride at the two little holes I had made in the nice leather of his glove. Should have bitten him harder and drawn blood.
The boy grabbed a crutch leaning against the worktable and used it to help himself stand with a bit of effort.
He approached me slowly, a slight limp in his gait, favoring his left side.
“Um…hi there,” he said, his voice the soft drawl of someone raised in one of the fringe villages, and not the well-educated, larger cities of Arvensis. “I’m Ash.”
He limped close enough to stick out his hand towards me in that silly Human custom I’d never understand.
What did holding someone's hand and moving it up and down do to serve as an introduction? I narrowed my eyes as I studied him. This boy looked maybe…sixteen, seventeen? His pale, freckled face was clean-shaven, as if his frail body didn’t have the strength to grow a hair there.
He wore a tiny gold loop earring identical to Rei’s.
Enchanted Druinnic jewelry that allowed them to communicate, I realized.
My eyes drew to the walking aid he used, made of fine wood etched with intricate carvings of swirling vines and leaves.
“Lost my left leg from the knee down a couple years ago,” the boy said. “Learned how to walk again using this, so even if I don’t need it, it’s kinda comfortin’ to me, you know?”
I forced myself to look away. What was wrong with me? Gawking at someone when I was so familiar with how uncomfortable it was to be the one being eyeballed. “Sorry. Wasn’t trying to stare.”
The boy, Ash, shrugged and ran his fingers through his halo of fluffy golden waves. “Oh, it’s fine.”
There was something adorable about his accent, and the way he said that. Fahn. I pursed my lips and crossed my arms over my chest, staring him down.
“Er, you have a name, ma’am?”
Nobody had ever called me that before. It was surprisingly respectful, coming from a Human. This kid’s oddly proper, country bumpkin way of speaking had me almost too stunned to remember my name. I blinked at him slowly. “It’s Zephra.”
His face was painfully bright when he grinned, so I had to darken my expression to contrast.
“Don’t tell me you’re this asshole’s boss.”
He froze, comically wide-eyed, while Rei snickered and strode past, pausing only to ruffle Ash’s hair. “Oh, he’s more than that. Introduce yourself properly, kid.”
Ash’s youthful face pulled into a grimace, and he half-heartedly swiped at Rei’s arm.
The exchange between them was so relaxed and habitual, like Rei always messed with his hair, and Ash made that same attempt to swat him away every day of their lives.
My eyes darted between them, trying to put together their relationship as Ash complained, “But I hate my title.”
“Well, you’re stuck with it, great and powerful one.” Rei meandered over to the worktable and dug through the unkempt piles of things there.
Ash straightened up as best he could, like a child that had gotten in trouble for slouching. “I-I’m the Timebreaker. Ashkade Synnex. Nice to meetcha.”
The room went perfectly still and almost silent, save for Rei’s laughter. The explosions at the banquet must have damaged my ears. I must have heard him wrong.
The Timebreaker was a genius, a damn war hero to the Humans.
According to recent legend, he had somehow cracked the code to time magic without needing the god of time.
He used it to single-handedly end the war that arose between the Druinns and Humans.
The Circle of Gold kept his identity a secret, but I refused to believe that this child was the one who had shattered time across Terrakor, allowing the Humans to overrun their land while they were frozen in time. It simply wasn’t possible.
“I—no! You can’t be the Timebreaker. You’re just a kid. The war ended two years ago. You would have been, what, fifteen?”
“Fourteen.” He grimaced, then nodded back at Rei. “Since he probably didn’t introduce himself properly either, that’s Reiven Miyasagi, my, er, bodyguard.”
Why would the Timebreaker need a bodyguard?
The man in question gave us a mocking bow, and I couldn’t help but imagine a haughty raven perching on his shoulder, watching me with empty eyes. Surely there was a way to insult his stupid name. I just had to find it.
While I fumbled for the precise scathing words to hurl at him, Reiven retrieved a battle-worn cutlass—not the weapon of a noble bodyguard, I thought—from the pile of tools and flourished it as if we were boring him.
He had changed his gloves while Ash and I were talking.
Now he wore fingerless gloves made of sturdy, dark leather that didn’t come with Siren bite marks.
“It’s hilarious to watch him try to tell people who he is. Not much to look at, is he?”