Evenfall, p.14
Evenfall, page 14
Which turned out to be Ada holding on to my free hand, Zaphine looping her arm through the bend at my elbow, and Eriyan clutching me from behind. Lyra, unfortunately, would have to lose a little time. I hoped she wouldn’t be too confused when she came to in a different place, but there was no way to ensure contact with her, as well. This felt fragile enough.
What made matters even worse were the seconds slipping by as we double-checked our positions. I kept casting glances at the wagon, begging it not to move before we closed the gap.
Ada and Eriyan delved into a hasty discussion about what we would do if the magic dropped before we reached our destination, how we would handle it if any of them lost their grip and succumbed to stasis.
I knew I should have participated, but my mind seemed to let go of everything but the sensation of the pendant resting in between my fingers, the will I always poured into it to activate its magic. There was something about this world that hindered its abilities, but maybe if I forced enough of myself into the metal, if my desire to freeze the flow of time was stronger…
“Ready?” I asked, clutching the silver tighter.
Silence. Then three mumbles of agreement.
I blew out a breath and—
We moved.
We moved like one across the dirt and rocks, sprinting beneath the starlit sky, through the ocean of utter tranquility. Absolute quiet.
I felt a presence inside me coming to life, connecting me with the pendant and feeding its magic so seamlessly I nearly stopped just to take in the effect. But my gaze caught on the sleek wagon Zaphine had pointed out, on the empty sowhl barrels that would be our way out of imminent danger.
So I didn’t stop. My steps didn’t falter.
Ripples of excitement that spread through the others echoed in my heart.
We rushed past the men and women tending to their own stock, past the horses with their still eyes and stiller manes, not slowing down until the white flap of fabric pulled halfway aside loomed just before us.
Careful not to break contact, Eriyan’s palms braced me from behind as Zaphine, Ada, and I leaped onto the wood, far enough to make room for Eriyan but not so far as to tear away from his grip. Still, his weight rammed into my back when he followed suit and sent me careening forward. I caught my footing a hair’s width from the nearest barrel, then paused so that all of us could catch our breath.
The instant I was certain we wouldn’t tip anything over when we moved, I dipped my chin. I forced us all to take a step back and put some more space between us and the merchandise to discern the safest path.
Magic flowed through my consciousness as my presence did through the pendant. I entwined the threads to make it last longer, then focused on my surroundings once more as we shimmied between the barrels as deep into the darkness as we could.
Only then did I let go, the world taking a collective inhale as it burst to life.
Soft voices rose, the neighing of a horse joining in. The sounds covered our quick climb into the empty, although still moist and definitely sowhl-smelling barrels. Eriyan took the one behind me, Zaphine the one to my left, and Ada was just about to tuck herself into the one positioned on my right.
Or she would have if someone hadn’t cleared their throat rather pointedly.
My body went taut, Lyra releasing a low growl. I looked away from Ada as she half dangled atop the barrel to the figure now blocking the square space of the flap. A man.
Lit from behind, I could only make out the most basic traits, but there was no doubt about it—he was looking straight at us.
Instinctively, I reached for the pendant, but the voice that filled the somber space cut me off.
Because it wasn’t coming from the newcomer.
It was coming from Eriyan.
And he was laughing.
Chapter Seventeen
The manifestation of what we feared the most draped us all in heavy chains of dread. Only the sound of Eriyan’s laughter still cascaded through the twilight. It morphed into a snort, then a muffled yelp when Zaphine reached over and slapped her hand across his mouth.
Between one moment and the next, the fury etched into the lines of her face turned into a cringe. Her gaze darted back to the man blocking the wagon, and she let her hand fall away.
Eriyan could laugh all he wanted. Bellow even.
We were caught either way.
My fingers sought out the pendant, but still I hesitated, Ada’s rule to avoid turning to magic hammering inside my skull, a twin beat to the pulse thrashing in my ears. We’d already used it once. And only because we believed we would be well on our way out of here by now.
I released the necklace.
One man. He was just one man against four.
And with every second he stood there, one hand braced against the wooden beam, he was giving us a chance to attack.
So why did no one move?
Muscles tensing, I readied myself to—
I didn’t know what, exactly, I would do, but anything was better than letting fate take its course.
“Stars,” the stranger said. He ducked his head deeper into the wagon, revealing a mass of tousled, dusty blond hair. “Eri, is that you? Why the fuck are you soaking your ass in my stinking barrel?”
I glanced over at Ada who was watching everything with a stern face. She wasn’t pulling out her dagger, which was a good sign, but the sharp cut of her jaw and fingers clenched on the rim of the barrel she’d scurried in sometime over the past seconds revealed she wasn’t at ease yet.
“Dantos, you son of a bitch.” There was a series of creaks, then Eriyan was shoving through the barrels, his lean form twisting lest he topple something over.
For a moment, I entertained the notion that he was going to tackle the stranger, but instead, Eriyan stilled right at the demarcation line between shadow and light.
“I’d hug you, you bastard,” he drawled, voice low, “but we’re kind of on the run here.”
Zaphine snorted. “Sure, why don’t you spill more of our plans…”
“Spill our plans?” Eriyan turned around, then motioned the coachman to crawl up into the already too crammed space. “I found us the perfect ride out. Or, well,”—he waggled his eyebrows—“the ride found us.”
Head bent at a slight angle, the man slapped Eriyan on the back—and kept his hand there. “Not a single letter all this time and you expect me to hand out favors?”
“As if you’re any better.” Eriyan scoffed, mirroring the stance. “Everyone knows I’m not to be trusted, but you, lovable oaf, were supposed to make up for my shortcomings.”
A thread of bitterness seeped into his otherwise light tone, and as if sensing the slip-up, Eriyan plastered a grin to his face, then spread his arms wide. “I’m more than willing to let you make it up to me now…”
“I swear to the Stars, Eriyan, if you don’t start making sense, I’ll twist your rutting insides,” Ada snapped.
Both men whirled on her, twin expressions of false innocence entwined with mock annoyance adorning their features.
A small laugh escaped my lips. “Now you know how I’ve felt this entire time.”
Ada glared at me. Then glared at Eriyan. But I heard Zaphine chuckle in the darkness by my side.
Good to know that we all appeared to be losing our minds.
But Eriyan—he definitely took the cake. He wrapped one arm around the man’s neck—the man who, I noticed, was about his age, but powerfully built, with corded muscles testifying he was no stranger to physical labor—and grinned at us all.
“Ladies, let me introduce you to Dantos. My cousin.”
After we exchanged a few less than coherent greetings, Dantos said to Eriyan, “I should have known the barricades had something to do with you.”
Eriyan clicked his tongue. “Such low opinion of me, cousin. I’m wounded.”
Dantos only stared at him.
Long enough that Eriyan threw his hands up. He winced as he skimmed the knuckles of one hand across the taut fabric stretched over the wagon, but quickly caught himself.
“Fine, yes. But not directly. I’m just helping this time. And now”—he gave him a pointed look—“so are you.”
Although Dantos shook his head, his shoulders moved with silent laughter. Like Eriyan, he was handsome, with the same eyes that seemed to shift between blue and green. But where his cousin appeared a little disgruntled, like a scholar who, well, drank a little too much sowhl after a long night of sticking his nose in the pages of a book, Dantos was a peculiar combination of rugged and polished. It suited him.
“Right.” He exhaled. “So I suppose you need a ride out of town without the Crescent Prince or his flunkies noticing?”
“If it wouldn’t be too much bother,” Eriyan chipped in with a sheepish smile.
“You were always a bother, Eri. That’s why our parents kept us apart, remember? But”—he raised a calloused hand—“I always liked you just as you are.”
Eriyan leaned against a support beam. “Is that why—”
“We really need to get going,” Ada snapped. Which earned her a scowl from Eriyan in return. “You can chat all you want once we reach Saros.”
Tension surged through the wagon. Dantos swept his gaze from Ada, to Zaphine, then finally settled on me. Could he sense I lay at the heart of it all?
I fought the impulse to cringe and shy away, deciding on something else entirely.
“Please,” I said. “The guards can’t find us.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Ada roll her eyes. She was hiding her pain well, but the effort seemed to have worn her patience thin. Luckily, she didn’t sneer at anyone, simply settled back down in her barrel with Lyra, her brows drawn.
“Saros, eh?” Dantos asked, then nodded, more to himself than us. “All right. I’ll take you.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Eriyan hugged his cousin in earnest and started to make his way back to his barrel, but Dantos—he didn’t leave us just yet.
Expression thoughtful, he cast a look over his shoulder to the torchlit darkness beyond, then back at us. “There’s a guardhouse set a little farther down the road, so make sure you stay in the barrels, though I doubt there’ll be any real trouble, just regular patrol.” An echo of a smile flirted with his lips. Like he knew something we didn’t. Oddly, my instincts didn’t act up.
Whatever it was, it wouldn’t harm us. Right now, that sufficed.
He scratched his forehead, that ghost of a smile turning into a rakish grin. “We’ve already had a visit from the guards, threatening us with the usual excruciating death should we take anything beyond the town line but our stock. Good thing you’re my stock now.”
When Dantos’s command to the horses rose beyond the sturdy white fabric, and the wagon started to rock gently on its way towards the outpost, I found it a little easier to breathe. Metaphorically speaking, at least.
I sat at the bottom of the barrel, my knees tucked close to my body and arms wrapped around them, my nose buried in the fabric of my coat to stave off the invasive, sour stench.
Briefly, I fought off a hysterical laugh at how absurd all of this was, but when my memory jumped back to the voiceless scream, the obsidian-filled eyes, and the coiling wisps of night retreating into my body…
I stopped the images before they could reach the regal features of the Crescent Prince. The immaculate, entrancing casing that concealed a monster.
Too similar to how my appearance, the ideal of who I was supposed to be, concealed me.
I hugged my legs tighter, wishing Lyra was with me in the barrel. Animals were supposed to sense evil, weren’t they? So perhaps, since she always looked at me with nothing but pure affection in her eyes… Perhaps there was some other explanation for the swirls of obsidian that had unspooled from my skin.
Another explanation—but the outcome would remain the same.
A man, lying on the ground, his lifeblood replaced by endless black.
I shuddered, almost relieved to hear Dantos tap on the fabric—our agreed-upon signal for the outpost. My mind snapped to attention, calming my breaths until they were inaudible whispers in the dark, muffled further by the thick coat. I couldn’t hear the others, nothing but the low rattling of the barrels stirring the calm. Normal.
The wagon slowed, then stopped—just a solitary tap of the hoof from a restless horse up front.
A second went by.
Another.
“Dantos Ellerian.” Papers rustled. “Brewery of Saros.”
Whatever answer the man gave sifted through to my ears as nothing more than a grunt. Footsteps retreated, but when another voice curled through the night, I realized there wasn’t just one guard.
There were two.
“Headed back already?”
“Wanted to avoid the rush,” Dantos replied, no note of panic or traces of tremors in his voice. He lowered it a notch. “Besides, I figured I would catch you before the end of your shift.”
The stench, the cramps that had taken up residence in my legs—it all faded as Dantos’s words registered.
He knew the guard.
“Got anything for me?” The man’s hushed tone carried over.
I wondered if Ada heard. What she would do if she did…
But Dantos simply said, “Tomorrow. If you can send in your brother while I’m unloading, I’ll set a barrel aside.”
“What time?”
The tension in my spine loosened. Grew into gratitude when Dantos drawled on, annoyance plain in his voice, “If your comrade doesn’t take forever to verify my papers, I’m hoping to fill these beauties up tonight. I could come half an hour before the others, make sure we aren’t interrupted.”
The man barely sounded his agreement when footfalls marked the second guard’s return.
“You check out.” Papers rustled again. “Your license expires next month. Make sure you renew it if you want access.”
“Of course.” Dantos.
I heard him settle into his seat up front, a whisper of reins—
Then footsteps.
“Oy,” Dantos shouted, a tightness seeping into his tone before he replaced it with a trained demand. “What do you think you’re doing?”
But those footsteps—they kept marching towards us.
Chapter Eighteen
“I need to take a look at your load. The Prince’s orders.”
“Now you listen to me,” Dantos shot back as the thud of boots grew closer. “Your men already rummaged through my wagon. Twice. You’d think they were scraping sowhl off the wood the way they were going about it.” He huffed. “Now enough of this nonsense. I still have to clean them out and fill them up, not to mention take care of my lady, if you know what I mean. The night isn’t young any longer.”
“You dare defy the Crescent Prince.” A threat. Not a question.
“Who said anything about defying? I’m just trying not to get my ass whipped when I stumble home in the wee hours of morning. I’d like to keep my head as it is. Attached to my shoulders.”
Silence.
“Let him go, Kalian,” the other guard drawled, sounding fed up and bored at the same time. “Make a fuss now and you’ll lengthen our shift, too. I stared long enough at your rutting face for one night, man…”
“Prick,” the guard spat, but the sound was fainter—farther away.
“Your finest,” the other whisper-crooned to Dantos, who snorted in return.
It seemed impossible, but the wheels squeaked beneath us and the wagon swayed, taking us deeper into the desert.
As I slumped against the damp wood, Dantos muttered, “As if I ever bring anything but the fucking best.”
For a long while, nobody spoke. We didn’t even crawl out of our barrels, as if we were still slowly coming out from the daze, fighting off the nightmare.
Dantos hadn’t said anything, either, perhaps slightly rattled by the close call. If that guard hadn’t intervened…
I didn’t allow myself to think about it. We were on the road, past the patrol, and all I felt was a deep gratitude for whatever side dealings Dantos had going on that had eased our passage.
I half expected Eriyan to call him out on it, though given how low the voices had been, I wasn’t certain how much of the conversation had translated. Or if Dantos had even wanted us to know.
I certainly wouldn’t point it out. After all, I was the last person to flash around other people’s secrets…
So I remained crouched, trying to push the ache building up in my legs and my back from my mind, and submerged myself in the calming rattle of wheels once more as I imagined Nysa fading in the distance.
“Stars, this stinks,” were the words to finally bring us all to the surface.
I untangled myself with a groan and peeked over the rim. My lungs greedily sucked in the somewhat clearer air, my vision spinning for a moment.
“No better than you, Eri,” Ada fired back at a grimacing Eriyan. The look she gave him was laced with disgust, but the corners of her lips were turned up, and blunt relief made her eyes flicker brilliantly in the somber light that filtered from Dantos’s lantern through the protective fabric.
“I must say I agree,” Zaphine grumbled. “On both accounts.”
She hoisted herself up on the edge of the barrel, scowling down at her crumpled dress. A frustrated breath later, her mouth twitched. She cast a sideways glance at Eriyan.
“Makes you see your beloved sowhl in another light, huh?”
Eriyan’s jaw dropped. “What? That would be like judging food based on what you leave in the toilet.”
Zaphine graced his response with a flat stare. I struggled to hold back a chuckle. “Are you even aware of the shit coming out of your mouth?”
“I was talking about the one coming out of your—”
Lyra spared us all as she let out a little yelp, squirming in Ada’s hands. I smiled at her, then at Ada. She’d been observing me for a while, but I pretended not to notice. I was just happy to see her faring a little better.
