Maybe I could conjure that giant two-headed cat to eat them all.
“Nah…” Her smile only grew. “He wouldn’t try. He knows I can kick his ass.”
I laughed while she did as a very loud and painful cough came from the other room. We both looked toward it on instinct, our laughter growing as Ilyan interjected loudly, his voice muffled by the heavy walls of the house.
The laughter died quickly, leaving us standing in the middle of the dark, the dust swirling around us as the sound of the Vil?s continually grew louder.
“Wyn?” I fought the need to jump at her question, her voice so soft that I was surprised it had scared me so much.
I said nothing. I only looked at her in expectation, watching her jaw clench and unclench as she fought with some question that seemed to have gnawed off her tongue. I waited while her jaw chewing increasing to the point I was sure she was going to lose her nerve.
“What is it, Jos?”
“Do you think the sights are infallible?” Her question was broken and strangled, her eyes shifting away from me as though she was asking to borrow a car. The look was almost ridiculous.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, unable to restrain the laugh that swelled at her question. “You were the one who told Sain they weren’t. That they couldn’t be.”
“I know, but … this one … I mean … They feel different…”
“Feel different?” The question wasn’t right, but I didn’t know how else to ask, how else to understand. I had no basis for sight.
She only looked at me as the voices beyond the wall grew, the heavy footsteps making it clear they were coming, and it was time to get all these broken boys out of here. To get to the next safe house and see exactly what numbers we were dealing with.
“I don’t trust him, Wyn. Something’s off, something he’s not telling me.”
“Sain?” I asked, my stomach tensing at the connection. It was one I didn’t want to make and one I didn’t fully understand.
She only nodded as the door opened, the three men shuffling through the large gap with Dramin supported between the two more able-bodied.
Jos looked at me once more before she walked off to help the poor men, leaving me standing in the middle of the dark dust motes, staring at the four people that, in some weird way, had left me questioning everything I had thought to be clear and concise.
Hours.
It had only been hours, and now everything was not only filled with a frightening danger, but more questions than I cared to think about.
Trust.
It was such a fine line and confusing haze of knowing whom to trust and whom not to. After hundreds of years, I knew I could trust Ilyan. After everything in the prison, I knew I could trust Sain.
But now, everything was somehow becoming muddled. I could almost see a line being drawn before me, sides being chosen, knowing my turn was coming.
The only problem was, I was beginning to doubt which side I should choose.
OVAILIA
Twenty
I shouldn’t have been surprised that they had chosen the clock as their safe house. It was the obvious choice, after all. It hadn’t been used in at least fifty years. It was concealed visually and close enough to the river that it provided a quick getaway should things go south.
Which was probably why I was so surprised he had gone for something so … predictable. Of all the safe houses he had littered through this city, he had gone to the obvious one.
My brother never had been the smart one, no matter what anyone said.
I exhaled in disgust as a Vil? flew before me, its teeth gnashing in obvious rage, the tiny, sharpened points ready to dig into my flesh.
“Zdechnout.” The word ground from behind my teeth, and the filthy thing fell to the ground as if it had been stunned, its now lifeless body curling into itself before hardening into stone, its life nothing more than sediment now.
It was only rudimentary magic, but one I was grateful to my father for instilling in the things. With a one word command, there was instant death. A safety switch. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to lead Sain and his two lifeless companions through the street.
Of course, one was lifeless thanks to some handiwork I had been working on for a while. A little bit of arsenic for his mortal body, a little bit of omezující stone extract for his magic, a good helping of stolen soul, and he was good as dead.
That had been the easy part, of course—poisoning Thom. Convincing Sain to trust me and follow me had been a bit harder, but not by much. From the moment he had walked into the city, I had no doubt the voices in his head had grown louder, the internal manipulation my father had plagued him with for centuries igniting as though someone had flipped a switch.
In a way, we had.
If he had thought he had been in control all this time, he had been very wrong.
He had never been in control. And he never would be again.