“I’mexactlywhere I need to be.”
“Then I need you to leave me alone.”
My upper lip peels back. “Can’t do that, Milaje.”
In one swift motion, she’s drawn the blade I had strapped to my thigh. Has that, too, set upon my throat. “How aboutnow?”
“No,” I growl, pushing against the sting, hand tightening around her wrist to keep it there.“You’ll have to dig a little deeper.” The smell of my blood muddies the air, and her hand starts to shake—the slightest tremble that carves the edge from my voice. I loosen my grip on her wrist. “Drop the blade, Orlaith. Let me see your eyes.”
“Why?” She laughs—a cold, hollow sound that blunts my next breath. “So you can check your lie for cracks?”
I snarl, shoving back a step and forcing her to shuffle again and again until I have her pinned against the wall. I spin, fully prepared for those two blades to slash my throat clean open in the effort to see her face.
My forehead collides with cobbled stone as she seems to dissolve into thin air.
I spin again, to see her leaning against the opposite wall, a blade hung loosely in each hand dangling at her sides. Head swung to the left, she looks out the alleyway to the swirling crowd …
It’s like all her fight has bled free, leaving a hollow aura that guts me.
I wipe the trickle of blood from my throat and open my mouth to speak.
She gets there first.
“I keep having dreams.”
Nightmares.
There’s no heartbeat in the words that pass her lips, but her thought is a storm rioting through me. Catastrophic.
“About?” It’s an effort to keep the word steady.
“They change.” She looks down at the two daggers—hers smeared with the slick of blood she drew and mine, a simple iron blade with a wooden hilt. “The theme is the same every time.”
I watch her swallow.
“And that is?”
“Death.” The word lands harder than if she’d flung that iron dagger at my chest. “Every time. No matter how hard I try to stop it.”
The sky crackles like the blood in my veins.
“You killed me in one of them.” Her lashes sweep up, and I can’t tell if it’s her words or that empty stare that guts me, but they both attack nonetheless. “Put something sharp through my back. I felt my heart split. Felt the life drain from me.”
“Then what?” I regret the words the moment I set them free.
“Nothing.” Bile blazes a trail up my throat.“Darkness. A colder darkness than I’ve ever felt before.”
She drops her chin so the hat hides her eyes. Perhaps I should welcome the reprieve from her crucifying eyes, but I’m too fucked up to feel that way.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she whispers, the words snatched by a gust of humid air that teases fallen leaves down the alleyway’s gloomy throat.
She doesn’t think I care.
It’s almost enough to bring me to my knees.
I did that to her.
I fucking did that to her.
