I hope you’ve enjoyed your time off. Such a shame you failed to make us aware of your survival. Had you not been so selfish, we wouldn’t have lost so many green recruits. There’s a lot of innocent blood on your hands.
I grit my teeth, seeing the words for exactly what they are: emotional manipulation. Sereme’s second-favorite weapon, right alongside her lust for making me crawl for her in crippling agony whenever she feels slighted.
Seems she’s been honing both against a whetstone while I’ve been away, sobering from the serpent’s poison.
To atone, the Elding has given you a job.
You’re to travel south to Bhoggith where a fae with silver hair and silver eyes is camped out deep in The Fade’s western outpost, behind yellow double doors carved to look like the sun. For your convenience, I’ve inserted a map of his supposed location and the miskunn’s sketch of the doors. You’re
Sereme.
This bitch.
I refold the map and note, pressing each seam viciously tight, making them sharp as blades. “Is this fae beaded? Politically corrupt? A rapist or child abuser? And howexactlyis he a threat to The Flourish?”
“Uncertain on all accounts.”
I snort-laugh. “New rule: I need more to go on than a simple note and a slit down the spine.” Not sure what’s come over me, butthis …doesn’t feel right. “Aren’t you the Elding’s squire? Does he not trust you with important details?”
The glare I receive is so hard it would bludgeon most folk to their knees.
Perhaps it’s the slower, sturdier beat of my heart—bolstered by my bond with Líri—but it doesn’t so much as dent my current state of mind. In fact, my instincts prickle like there’s a predator in our midst.
“The miskunn foresaw this individual would bring an end to the refuge we’ve worked so hard to build. That’s all the information you require to do the job that’s been ordered of you.”
I tilt my head to the side.
Bet this guy’s pillow talk leaves a lot to be desired. Throwing around words likeorderedanddo the job.
He’s exactly the sort of shit staining this world. And where there’s one, there’s more, because if there’s anything I’ve learned since I clawed free of the mountain I woke beneath all those phases ago, it’s thatattitudespreads like a disease, good or bad.
“And if I don’t comply?” I ask, waving the note about. “If I decide I’m done being ordered to do the Elding’s dirty work without a lick of proof that the blood I shed is making a difference, rather than simply making the world morebloody?”
The squire stares at me for so long I start to wonder if he heard me correctly. Or at all.
With a click of his tongue, he reaches deep into his pocket and pulls out a curly quill that’s unlike anything I’ve seen before—bold red and glittery, almost like Essi’s hair. A thought that strikes like a shiv, catching me unawares.
Next comes a small silver bottle that makes my heart still, the ornate chalice a near-replica of the one Sereme wears around her neck.
I barely have a chance to pull breath before he presses the quill’s sharp tip against one of the filigree engravings and drags it down.
A slash of pain shreds my spine.
I fall to my knees, eyes bulging, mouth agape. Though my seizing lungs fail to gasp even a sip of air.
“Should you not complete the mission, The Flourish will fall. A weight you’ll take to your grave, eliminated by those you once calledacquaintances. The Ath have too many secrets for one such as yourself to be untethered.”
The pain slits around me and hooks on something in my gut, as though he’s flaying me from belly button to sternum.
“We expect you to deliver the package to Sereme’s office in seven rises. Blink if you understand.”
I do as he asks, the motion feeling too much like a bow.
Likeyielding.
But bad feelings and prickly instincts aside … maybe this isn’t the right time to make a stand. Put another target on my back when I can simply do the job, save The Flourish from damnation, then pick my bone when I deliver Sereme’s bloody package.
Is this fucker ever going to let up?
