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“I don’t care if they’re innocent or not.”
Revni reared back, her faith in him shaken, but his expression contorted, even as he gave one final pull to the knot.
“I’m sick of killing anyone, no matter what they did or didn’t do.”
“So let’s not,” Revni breathed, relief and hope flowing through her. “Maybe the only thing two nothing people can do is refuse. I do not want to keep killing so someone else can take more power. I don’t want to be ruled by the god of death, or the god of revenge. I want to be my own person.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“We run. We go somewhere else. We have a farm, like my parents always wanted. Soil black as night. We make our own settlement. We don’t have to be Isfolj or Aleterian. We can be Revni and Eavus.”
“It’s a nice dream,” Eavus grunted. “But there’s one significant problem. We’re in here. The world is out there.”
Revni looked for escape, too. There was a window, but it was a three-story drop. The closet door was the obvious solution, but that hallway was so thin it was suicide to try it under the circumstances. There was a desk with papers, a fireplace, the bed, but the room itself was octagonal—not even a corner for them to hide in.
“So we fight our way out,” she said definitively. “One last time.”
She lunged for the discarded Isfolj ax and turned to face him. Eavus’ presence towered over her, but she didn’t feel small. She could see his eyes now, and they traveled over her like something hungry and filling itself all at once. An unexpected warmth honeyed through her veins. Inappropriate, for the moment, as someone else had arrived at the door and was attempting to batter it down. It shook with every ear-shattering blow.
“I don’t want the shield to be split. I want to be somewhere where we’re allowed to be different people. I want to see the person I could be. With you. I want to be with you.”
“Revni—” The gentleness of his voice—a flap of wings again, tentative and promising.
“We are shield siblings. You and me.”
Eavus blinked. “Siblings?” His face flashed something—confusion, disappointment, Revni couldn’t name it—but it was only because he didn’t know what it meant. Friendships broke. Sisters left. Marriages dissolved. Shield siblings were a bond forged in blood.
“Shield siblings stay together. One eye always on the other. We do what we must to survive.”
“And then?”
Another strike against the door. The wood splintered.
“We go from there.”
She wasn’t sure if her answer satisfied, but it satisfied her, to see his eyes look over her again. To see him, when he had the choice, choose Revni over Aleteria.
“No more violence?”
“Only this last once. But I think there is something wrong to glory in it. So just this. And then nothing but beautiful things from then on.” Him. She meant him.
His lip quirked, and she saw that he had heard it.
An ax head cracked through.
“Grab me some paper from the desk, would you?” Eavus murmured. “And the prefect’s wax seal.”
What a mess. It seemed to be the theme of the day, the month. Tireni Parlus ran a hand over his head, the carnage seared on his eyeballs. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The Selgi were one of the smallest tribes, weak and submissive. The prefect at Lordinius had specifically ordered them to be the first to be subdued precisely because they’d be easy. An example. Parlus had volunteered for the job, a chance to get out of the city and re-prove his worth in combat. And now here he was, having to report in three moaning, wounded, paralyzed, out-of-commission cohorts. How was he supposed to explain this to the prefect? I’m sorry sir, my men were universally slaughtered by children.
Parlus had been pacing in front of the prefect’s door for too long. He was going to have to face it. Just as he raised his hand to knock, however, a messenger jogged up, one of those lanky types the officers in the north favored.
“What do you want?” At least he’d get a moment’s delay before delivering his own news.
“I’ve got a message from Norbucum.”
“I’m the tireni-at-watch. You can give it to me.”
The messenger handed it over, waited. Parlus cursed under his breath but dug out an octavi. Wasn’t enough these locals wanted to be paid, but they wanted bonuses, too.
