We held that stare for a long, long moment, a silent battle of wills playing out in the inches between our faces.
“Fine,” I said primly. “You don’t rape me, and I don’t attack you.”
The sound he made was something between a grunt and a scoff. “Did the Arachessen like that sense of humor?”
He took my arm and I decided not to fight him this time. His touch was barely there, light over my sleeve. He led us to the tent door and opened it.
The moment we stepped outside, the camp went silent. Attention was unblinkingly, unwaveringly on us. I could feel all those threads of presence wrapped around our throats as clearly as I could feel Atrius’s hand on my arm. Their curiosity. Intrigue.
And… hunger. Unmistakable hunger.
The hairs rose on the back of my neck. These were vampires, after all. Blood drinkers. Corpses of drained deer had been piled along the outskirts of camp, but I knew that human blood was the most enticing to them.
Atrius didn’t address anyone, and no one addressed us, as we walked through the camp. When we reached the outskirts, he leaned down and murmured in my ear, “Never leave your tent without permission and me or Erekkus with you. Understood?”
I wondered if he sensed what I had. The hungry intrigue.
“In case I get eaten?” I asked. “You don’t train your men to have better discipline than that?”
His lip twitched with distaste. “My men have impeccable discipline. But there will be difficult times in this war, and is there any amount of discipline that will stop you from crawling to water in the desert?”
I was the water in this metaphor. But did that mean that Glaea, a country populated by many humans, was the desert? That didn’t make any sense.
He took me far beyond the outskirts of camp, out into the rocky plains, where the grass was so tall that it tickled my thighs. The ground beneath it was rocky and uneven. “Watch for that,” he muttered, pointing out a particularly rough patch of gravel and guiding me around it.
“I know,” I said, stepping around it easily, and felt his stare grow a little more intense.
He was interested in me.
That was good—to capture curiosity. It couldn’t keep me alive forever, but it would keep me here long enough to earn his trust. Maybe curiosity was the real reason why he was willing to take the risk of having me join him.
It was a powerful thing.
He led me down a steep incline through narrow openings in the rocks, the grass now gone in favor of jagged stone. I knew this area—I’d killed his last seer not far from here. He brought me to the edge of a lake, all the way down to where the water lapped at shores of gritty sand.
At last, he released my arm and leaned against a sheer stretch of rock. “I need you to seer for me.”
Atrius, I was already certain, was not a man who liked to have things handed to him easily. If I wanted to earn his trust later, and make him believe that he had earned mine, I would need to make him work for it. People did not believe in the value of what was too freely given, and I needed him to believe in me.
So I said, “What makes you think I will?”
He let out a rough exhale, almost a laugh. Then he stared out over the lake.
“Can you see this?” he said.
“In all the ways that matter.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I know the water is still and flat. I can sense that there are no ripples in it. I know that there are rocks on the other side, more on the west, and grass on the eastern edge.”
“Those are facts. That’s not the same as seeing it.”
“In what way?”
“When you see the moon rise, some might say there’s something more to it than coordinates in the sky.”
For some reason, I found myself unwillingly thinking of my little painting of the sea.
It’s the ocean.
No, it is paper.
The memory hit me with an uncomfortable pang I didn’t want to look at too closely. I shrugged it away.
“Why are you asking me this?”
“Just wondering if you’re smart enough to know the value of things that can’t be quantified. Like the value of the offer I made you.”
“I don’t think it was an offer. Offers can be accepted or rejected.”
“You can reject it.”
“But you’ll kill me after.”
He didn’t say anything. Just gave me a grim little half-smile.
“I don’t like forcing people to do things,” he said. “Bad way to earn loyalty. And I do require your loyalty, and your services. I can take them permanently, or you can offer them temporarily. I can get them by your fear or your choice. I’d rather the latter, but I’ll do either.”
“So why do you care?”
He shrugged. “Seems a shame for my generosity to go unappreciated.”
I was silent for a long moment. I let him believe it was because I was considering his words, but instead, I was considering how much I should let him win now.
I should give him something. Not all of it—that would be too easy. Plus, the thought of rolling over for him…
It made me think of his entry on our shores. Raeth’s body beneath his armies.
I was supposed to be the good actress, the perfect spy, playing my role without complaint. My personal feelings shouldn’t matter. And yet… I couldn’t shake that anger when I considered the possibility of complete acquiescence.
No. Not yet.
But I’d give him something.
“The Arachessen are more effective and persuasive than you can possibly know,” I said haltingly.
“I’ve had plenty of experience with cults.”
I hated how dismissively he called us a cult.
“They’re worse,” I bit out. “Worse than you can imagine. They see everything. As long as I remain in Glaea, it’s only a matter of time before they find me.”
“I already told you that—”
“You can’t protect me from them.”
He laughed.
Outright laughed, from deep in his chest, like what I’d just said was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. The sound was rough and unpracticed, like he did it very rarely.
I was a bit offended on behalf of my Sisterhood.
“You laugh because you don’t know them,” I said.
“I laugh because you don’t know me.”
He straightened, crossing his arms over his chest. “I told you, Sylina, I do not lie. If I say it, it is true. I protect my people. If you’re one of mine, the Arachessen will not touch you.”
Such hubris. And yet, he didn’t say any of it with the boastfulness of a bragging commander. He said it as if was nothing more than fact, and his presence radiated not cocky showmanship but steady truth.
He believed it.
That was strange to me, that a man who recognized the power of the Arachessen—recognized their ability to make trouble for him—would still be willing to cross them on my behalf.
It was confusing.
I let out a sigh, showing him all my reluctant consideration, carefully measured. “I don’t understand how you can make that promise.”
“You don’t have to understand. You just have to seer.”
He stepped away from the rock, extending his hand, the question silent but obvious: Deal?
I drew my lips thinly together. The thought of taking his hand sickened me.