Threedays? He’d been unconscious that long?
Rolan felt a tremor go through him. Anaya had been to the riverbank. Where the Cryptic would have found her, if he hadn’t found it first.
“We thought you’d run away in the night,” Evaine went on. “We never guessed you’d run away to do the stupidest thing imaginable.”
“What do you mean?” he murmured, lying back on his pillow. “I tripped and fell.”
“Into a box of knives?” She twisted her lips. “Rolan, you broke about ten different laws,andmy trust as well as Luc’s, when he finds out. And he will find out.”
“I killed a Cryptic!” Rolan protested. “Actually, if you must know, I’ve killedeightCryptics over the past week. You’re probably just mad because you’ll have fewer victims to patch up now. I’m bad for business.”
Evaine pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes squeezing shut.
“You know,” Rolan added, “it used to be that Arcanists’ apprentices would take the oaths the minute they started training—not at the end. It says so in the Arcane Histories.”
“The Histories?”
“Yeah. They’re these massive books that could flatten a chicken if you dropped one. And I read them. Andtheysay that apprentices used to be tasked with hunting down low-level Cryptics, and that—”
“Used to? What changed?”
Rolan waved a hand dismissively. “A bunch of them died, maybe, butIknow what I’m doing.”
“Is that why we had to drag you home while you bled out within an inch of your life?”
“I’mfine. In the books it said Cryptic wounds sometimes look worse than they are, because of—”
“Rolan, don’t make me regret the fact you learned to read.” She studied him with bloodshot eyes. “You’re going to get yourselfkilled. At least tell me you haven’t used any Arcana?”
Rolan opened his mouth, fully prepared to lie—and also ask how in the goddess’s name Evaine knew about Arcana—but at that moment the door opened and Anaya walked in, her face grim.
“You’re awake,” she said flatly, but he saw the relief in her brown eyes. “Good. Now I can properly kill you!”
“You shouldn’t go down to the river,” Rolan rasped. “It gets too dark, and there are Cryptics—”
“You are thelastperson who can tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, Rolan Strider!” Anaya shouted. “Do you have any idea what it felt like, to find you lying in the mud, covered in blood and wounds? I thought you weredead!”
“Sorry to disappoint?” he offered with a weak smile.
“This is not the time for smart comments,” Evaine said. “We thought you’d changed, Rolan. That your reckless days were behind you.”
“I was trying to help! Ididhelp!” His temper prickled now. He’d done somethinggood. Why were they acting like he’d set a house on fire? “This is what Arcanists do!”
“You’re not an Arcanist yet,” Anaya pointed out.
“I don’t see why you care,” he muttered. “You’re leaving forever anyway.”
Her mouth fell open, and her skin darkened with anger from her neck to the tips of her ears.
Then she turned on her heel and stormed upstairs.
“Of course,” Rolan laughed bitterly. “There she goes! Leaving again, like she always—yowch!”
He looked down at his arm where Evaine had pinched him.
“Enough,” the apothecary said. “That girl’s heart is torn in two, don’t you see it? She has a life ahead of her, Rolan. A bright future. And she’s on the verge of throwing it all away because of you.”
Something wounded and savage squirmed in Rolan’s gut. “Oh, I’ll only drag her down, is that it? I’m the no-good trash who’ll ruin your plans to send her to Sylvet and beyond?”
