I looked at her sideways. She had the look of someone who had said something more personal than they'd intended and had decided to let it stand rather than take it back. I respected that.
“Larana.” I turned the cup in my hands. “When Vorn's people were going to take you?—”
“They didn’t,” she said sharply, before I could finish. Her eyes held a stern glint. “Because you traded for me.”
I licked my bottom lip, knowing I needed to tread carefully. “I know. I just—” I stopped. “I'm sorry. I’m sorry, it was Baxley who let her go.” I looked away from her then. “I’m sorry that she probably died alone.”
She was quiet for a moment. “She died free,” she murmured.
I blew out a low breath. “Yeah, she did.”
Silence lapsed between us. Long enough that I thought she was done talking. “How did you know it reminded me of something?”
I thought about that night when Vorn’s men emerged from the snow and darkness to seize me. The image that flashed in my mind was of her, trapped, standing there. The intensity of her anger, not the panic-driven fury of someone facing immediate danger, but the burning rage of someone who had been in this place before and was enraged to be back in the same circumstances.
“I didn't,” I told her honestly. “I guessed.”
She looked at me for a long moment with those cool, assessing eyes. Then she looked back at her cup. “You're perceptive,” she said. “For someone who claims not to notice things.”
“I never claimed that.”
“Didn’t you?” A memory tightened her expression. “It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter now.”
“It matters,” I said quietly.
She looked at me sharply. I held her gaze and didn't look away. After a moment, her expression settled — not softened exactly, just — settled.
“Yes,” she said, her words heavy with tiredness. “I suppose it does.”
We sat together in the warm common room and didn't say anything else. It was the most honest conversation I'd had with her since the night she'd stood across from me in the snow and knew I was going to bargain to save her.
I finished my now-cool drink. Larana said she would stay down for one more, so I said good night.
I passed Nicco and Baxley’s room, the sound of voices loud in the inn’s quiet. They didn’t sound like they were in a heated discussion, which made me linger even though I knew I should move on.
His voice was very low, and knowing I shouldn’t, I stopped at their door, my ears straining to hear, wondering if he was telling Baxley what he suspected I carried within me.
A small glyph against the wall to hear better, a trickle of magic, nothing more.
“We need to move,” Nicco said. “Tomorrow.”
A pause, then Baxley's voice sounded, lower than Nicco’s. “The job's set up?—”
“Tomorrow,” Nicco said. “Early.”
Another pause, then a louder sigh. “Does she know?”
“Not yet.”
“She's going to ask why.”
A silence. The silence of a man choosing his words. “I'll tell her it's part of the job. She won’t question it.”
“And then?”
“We’ll have another job, farther south.”
“Is that true?”
