“Solace.”
They murmured as her feet carried her slowly across the tan rocks. She had chosen this place as her base of operations because it was relatively uninhabitable, and was an ancient place where gods once walked the earth. The Warlord would never think to venture here, and the girl scoffed slightly at the thought of his shortsightedness.
The girl found a spot on an outcropping of rock where Cael often gathered their followers together and waited. Cael’s second, Folami—a dark-haired, dark-skinned beautiful woman native to The Sandstones—approached quietly, the beads in her hair clicking together as she moved and sat in silence with the girl while they waited.
Soon enough, the sound of horses thundering across the open expanse reached her ears, the tittering and gasping of her followers not far behind.
The prodigal son returns.
The girl squinted against the sun, trying to make out the shapes moving quickly across the desert stone and into their camp, but she could discern less than a dozen distinct shapes.
What happened? Solace, why was I not shown this?The girl vibrated with rage as the horses and Mages came into view.
“There’s too few.” Folami spoke what the girl was thinking. “Why are there so few?”
Fewer than a third of the Mages she sent to that backwater village in the Borderlands returned, and no Child of Fate in tow.
The fact that Solace hadn’t shown her this possibility was alarming, and a cold sweat broke across her brow and back. Her vision flickered to the hallway again, but Solace didn’t provide any further explanation.
Frustrated, the girl pushed to her feet and stalked to where Cael flung himself from his horse. He was dirty. Sweat caused the dust from his ride to stick to his skin, darkening his complexion and turning his normally light hair a faint hue of red.
His gaze swung to the girl’s and his expression was one of contrition.
“Youfailed,” she hissed, and her palm cracked across his face. The sound of her hand hitting his flesh rang out, the camp growing quiet at the show. She hadn’t hit him in years, but she suddenly felt that she couldn’t control the anger and the desperate feeling of failure that sang through her blood.
“Months,years, of planning, and you fuck it all up,” she seethed. Cael stood still, his cheek growing red where she struck him.
“I’m sorry for the loss . . .”
“That’s not the failure! I have plenty of men and women willing to die for our cause.” She flung her hand behind her. “You were told to return with the girl and I. Don’t. See. Her.”
Cael bowed his head, and it took everything for the girl not to kill him on the spot.
“You need him still. We need him still. Be patient, daughter,” Solace’s voice rang through her head, and she almost wept with relief at the sound.
“While not what you requested, I did bring home something that might appease you. Someone . . . better,” Cael said cryptically, his eyes meeting hers, searching for acceptance.
The girl gave a jerky nod. “Show me.”
Cael turned on his heel and approached a horse in the rear of their company, a hooded and tied rider suddenly visible through the throng of people that had gathered around the exhausted and battle-weary group.
Cael pulled the person from atop the horse, their feet stumbling as they hit the ground before Cael grabbed their upper arms to steady them. He then grabbed their tied hands, pulling them toward the girl as they stumbled and tripped.
Cael stopped in front of the girl and ripped the hood off the figure, revealing their face. There was no fear in their expression, only a deep-seated hate. They spat at the girl’s feet to a collective gasp from the onlookers. For the second time that day, the girl slapped someone across the face.
“Cael, see that your Mages are fed and washed. You may visit the pleasure tents tonight, if it pleases you. Just don’t let it get out of hand again.” The girl gave Cael a pointed look and he nodded his head jerkily. “It appears all is not lost,” the girl mused.
She stepped closer to the figure, pulling their hair back until their neck was craned to look into her eyes. “Hello, Bondsmith,” she said, a serpentine grin on her face. Solace’s maniacal laugh rang through her head as she had the prisoner dragged back to her tent.
“All is not lost, daughter.”
Chapter 49
Rohak
The walk from Faylinn’s rooms on the second floor to Alois’ study on the first was quick and uneventful, though I could already feel the exhaustion from the trip and the last few weeks catching up to me. It was like my body knew it was home and safe and was ready to collapse on my bed and not wake for a few days, at the earliest.
I huffed a grunt at that thought, knowing that I really had no time to rest, and I’d be lucky to get a few hours of sleep tonight, if any at all. Between the dreams, the mounting neglected paperwork, training Faylinn, and performing my daily tasks as both Alois’ second-in-command and the General of his armies . . . I had so much to do and not enough hours in the day to see it done. So, sleep was sacrificed.
