“Fear makes people unpredictable,” she explains, as though unpredictability is the crime here.
Dread pools in Ronyn’s gut.
So he does what he always does: he reads her. Assesses her movements, behaviors, the way she breathes, thinks.
She still wears the helmet, but there is a lot one can tell about a person simply by the way their voice lifts at the wrong moment. The way their breath quickens when asked the wrong question. The way their movements shift when they’re avoiding truth.
So Ronyn questions her.
“And what do they have to fear from you, Calira?”
She doesn’t answer straight away—no rehearsed line prepared ahead of time.
“Fear doesn’t respond to reason,” she says evenly. “It responds to anticipation.”
The answer comes too cleanly.
“What are they anticipating?” he pushes.
But she ignores him.
The rustle of fabric stirs again, behind him now.
“Why are you here, Ronyn Holt?” Calira demands. “Who sent you? What do you want with the Melders?”
The Melders.
Shock floods Ronyn’s veins.
Tarrakai rumbles in recognition in his mind.My kin.
“The what?” Ronyn asks, needing clarification.
End her.Tarrakai growls.
There you go with the whole ‘eating people who annoy you’ thing again.Ronyn shoves him from his mind.
He drags his eyes around the room—the slumped bodies, the heavy-lidded haze, the lolling heads. These are not the Melders.
Calira doesn’t falter. At least, not outwardly. But she sucks in a breath, interrupts her usual rhythm, and Ronyn doesn’t miss it.
He raises his bow again, the motion beginning before conscious thought can intervene.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a deep, rich timber rumbles from behind him, the point of something sharp digging into the flesh between his shoulder blades.
“Lower the bow,” the voice instructs, clear and calm.
Ronyn lowers his bow, half-turning his face to take in a lean man with onyx hair pulled back into braided rows. His skin of rich brown glistens in the flickering firelight, but his brows are pinched together like he’s willing to release the string on his bow.
The tip of the arrow between his shoulders digs in harder—not enough to cut, just enough to warn.
Ronyn drops his bow, but his mind still reels.
The Melders.
“You have walked into something you do not understand,” Calira warns, voice lethal, fist clenched at her side.
“Sounds dangerous,” Ronyn quips, attempting to keep the tone light.
