“Do I?” Arianna insisted.
“We are people, not worlds. And you commit the faults you blame me for. You judge me for the actions of my entire race. You see me as a Dragon before you see me as a man. You ignore my good will and attempts at peace, only looking for banners of war between my words. And when you find none, you invent them, so that I better fit your expectations.”
Her hands found no life, and her tongue refused her mental quips.
“Silence? The great and infallible Arianna has finally been silenced? Finally.”
Arianna studied the man. His broad chest rose and fell steadily in time with the deep breaths that were failing to keep his anger at bay. He was genuinely offended. She searched his face and eyes for a trace of deceit.
She found none, though she hadn’t seen any all those years ago, either.
“What do you want at the Alchemists’ Guild?”
He huffed in exasperation at the inquiry—he’d already answered that question and they both knew it. So she braved an honest question: “How do you think the Alchemists will help you overthrow the Dragon King?”
“I stole something from him, something that could give Loom a fighting chance.” His hand moved subconsciously to the folio he never let leave his sight. Arianna had suspected its contents were essential, but now he confirmed it openly.
“And you need an Alchemist to interpret or make that ‘something’?”
He nodded.
Arianna sighed heavily. “If all is as you say, if you are Loom’s ally, then help me do this. Show me that you are not my enemy, that you are the bigger man you claim to be. Prove to me that I can trust you by trusting me first.”
“I have no reason to trust you at all.”
“That’s rather the point.” Arianna eased away from the man, leaning against Eva’s old workbench. The wood was familiar under her fingers, soothing. She knew every burn mark and acid splash across its surface.
“You walk us to certain death.” There was resignation in his tone.
“I do not.”
“Arrogance and confidence are not the same, but both will get you killed.”
The words were louder than the crack of a foreman’s bell, echoing through her ears with the same mind-numbing resonance. Ari looked at the man before her, gripping the table to brace herself against the torrent of emotions that ripped her from toes to ears. His statement had unleashed a ghost within her. Not the Wraith she claimed to be, but a genuine shade from a time long past. Arianna didn’t like believing in things she couldn’t quantify. But she’d always believed in that woman.
“I will put my trust in you, if you put your trust in me.” The mechanisms of her mind were slow and squealing in warning. “And we’ll both make it through this.”
It was quiet for a long moment, neither of them seeing the present. Cvareh sought the future that was just beyond the horizon, as she drowned in the past.
“I don’t have much of a choice, do I? And we’re wasting time arguing about it.”
Arianna nodded and set herself to organizing their supplies across the table. She needed to be as prepared as she could in the short time she had. She needed to be over-prepared, because the last time she had made such a declaration, it had turned out to be a lie.
19. Leona
The very air itself was different on Loom. It was heavier, as if it carried the essence of the rocks and metals that the people themselves placed so much value in. It was warmer also, and Leona was certain that it made every Fen certifiably mad to wear so many buttons and layers and ruffles.
She wore tight bindings around her hips and chest, petals of decorative fabric floating around her hips. Camile also wore a fitted top, tight to her breast, her stomach bare. Andre had forgone a shirt altogether.
The more clothes one bundled themselves in, the harder it was to move and fight. The Fen gave up practicality for the sake of an insane notion of modesty. Leona could understand the argument for some extra clothes for the fragile race; even without coronas, their skin was thinner, their blood cooler, and they had less resistance to wind and cold built into their bodies. But she thought three shirts were excessive by any stretch.
Leona watched the gray people as they moved through the train station, utterly oblivious to the rank smell of Dragon blood that wafted up from the ground under their feet.
“You are the master of this station. You must know what transpires between its walls.” A dull thud scattered some of the more skittish Fen as Andre slammed the small frame of a man against a wall.
“I-I was not—” The man gasped for air, Andre’s hand tightening around his throat. “—here that day.”
“Then you are useless.” Andre’s hand tensed, his claws punching through the man’s neck on both sides. Crimson blood ran over his fingers, preparing the floor for where the lifeless body fell.