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“Because he thought I couldn’t handle it.” Her sister was quiet for a while, rasping her nails over the rough texture of the table. “Enough about me. Tell me about how you two met?”
“Gavin and I?” Thalea nodded, and Violet took a deep breath. How safe was it to go over all their history, out here in the open? “We met in the army. I used to see him from time to time, although we were in different assemblies.”
“I bet you thought he was handsome.”
“Well, yes. He wasn’t my type.” Or so she’d kept telling herself. “Either way, a couple of months ago, I confided in the wrong people. I was planning on leaving the Iron City because of what I told you back at the house.”
“About Dargan?”
“Shh. Either way. Those bitches ratted me out, and the Crows matched us not long after.”
Thalea seemed to mull it over, biting her thumbnail while staring at the bar, where Gavin was chatting to the bartender with a pleasant smile and deep dimples. “Well, if that’s who you get matched to if you’re in the army, it doesn’t seem that bad.”
“It’s not like that all the time. I got lucky.”
“I’d say so.”
Violet smiled. “He got lucky too.”
“Sure…” Her sister shrugged dismissively, then chuckled at Violet’s open-mouthed glare. “I’m teasing you. Of course he did, but the better question is, do you love him?”
Her fingertips prickled with awakened nerves. The big words hung in between them. “I do, very much.”
Thalea’s lips turned into a warm, yet sad smile. “Then you should take the stone. I have no one but you and Mom.”
Violet reached for thalea’s other hand and it reached towards the silver chain that hung from her neck. “Don’t take that off. Your life is far more valuable than mine, Lea.”
“That’s not true. No one wants to be with me, not even Mom. I weird everyone out.”
“You’ve been hanging around where the dead rest, going to talk to them instead of heading here, where the living are.”
Thalea pressed her lips together and crossed her arms. “That’s unfair. Last time I was here, someone threw a drink at me and laughed as I tried to leave. You wouldn’t come back if that had happened to you.”
“Fair point.” And the anger surging through her demanded that she show whoever had done that to Thalea a lesson. “Who did it?”
“You don’t know Carter or Linus…”
Violet hummed and reached for her well-worn boot, and pulled out of it a small knife the size of her palm. She unwrapped the leather binding from it and revealed a polished handle and a sharp point.
She had borrowed it from the shifter tavern right before they left Tulahn. She doubted any of the shifters would miss it.
“Next time a cock like that does anything of the sort, you stab him with this knife, right in here.” Violet poked Thalea right in the spot where the shoulder met the arm.
Thalea hesitated, but picked the knife from the table, examining it with a frown. “I’m not sure I can kill someone just for not liking me.”
“You won’t. It’s small enough it won’t hurt them that bad… that is, unless you stab them in the face.”
“It seems rather aggressive…”
“Please. With the bounty hunters in town, it will make me feel better if you had it.”
“All right.”
“Hide it inside one of your boots. That way no one can see it,” Violet said, and her throat closed in as she remembered her father gifting her the knife she used to escape her fate in the Iron City. That seemed like such a long time ago. Now he was gone, and so was that knife.
The sound of the swinging doors to the tavern opening made them turn around. A group of people entered, mere silhouettes against the bright daylight. Which reminded her…
“When Mios and Ellie get here, don’t mention our father’s Neem, or that you were there,” Violet whispered, so low that she wasn’t sure Thalea had heard her for a moment.
