Page 21 of The Goddess’s Thief

Alexios held up four fingers. I nodded, listening again to the sounds they made as they approached. I lifted my eyebrows. He rolled his eyes, but nodded. In the next breath, we separated, Alexios silently climbing a tree and leaving me alone. I spied the men through the trees. One of them wore a cream robe and held a torch, which struck me as odd for a hunting party in daylight.

Maybe it wasn’t a torch. Maybe it was an eye. It burned with a malevolent red flare, and the smoke it gave off was far darker than it should be. I picked up a rock by my feet and threw it past the torchbearer into the jungle beyond him.

A stroke of luck had a rabbit jumping away. The torch bearer and one of the other Betas gave chase, their knives in hand.

The other two spat out what had to be curses and continued on. They wore robes like priests, but carried fishing poles.

Not for long, though. Another larger rock to the temple had one falling into the brush, and the last one’s neck gave a very satisfying crunch as I twisted his head. I peered up for Alexios, but he’d vanished, climbing from one tree to the next perhaps. Chasing down the others.

After a minute or two, he appeared again, glancing at me and then at the two dead Betas on the ground. “Did you have to kill them?”

“What did you do with yours?” I whispered back. “Sing them a lullaby? Make them a cup of tea?”

He snorted. “Tea is a good idea. This island is absolutely covered with toxic plants. I’ve seen dozens so far that are poisonous, even to the touch.”

I smiled. “She’ll be having fun, then.”

He stared like I’d lost my mind, then shook his head. “To answer your question, I had to extinguish the torch first, so I guided them to the stream. I made sure the torch bearer slipped on a rock and dropped the flame into the water. Then I knocked out the others and let the stream take them away.”

“So you killed yours as well. Not with a rock, maybe. But it’s all the same.”

His lips pursed. “I left their fates to the Goddess. When I saw them last, they were both unconscious, but alive.”

“Before you drowned them, you mean.” His brow furrowed when I let out a soft laugh. “This is the kind of splitting hairs that got you in trouble before, Alexios. Be truthful with yourself, at least.” He turned away without speaking.

We stripped the robes from my two, though neither of us touched the knives they wore. If they were made by Edan, then they might still have some of his power. Then we dragged their corpses down the beach and sent them out on the waves, arms draped over a smaller piece of driftwood. I was sure in these waters, a predator would find them, and when a shark’s fin flashed only a few moments later, I grinned.

“Let’s go pretend to be priests and learn what we can about this shithole island,” I suggested.

“You’ll pretend,” he shot back, trying to trip me as he walked past. “I am a priest.”

“Not for long, I’d wager,” I mumbled, following him away from the sea as night fell.

RADA

The next few days in the compound went much the same as the first, although the two feral-smelling Alphas sniffed around the fence, like dogs trying to find a way inside. Frol was nowhere to be seen, though I occasionally noted movement in the jungle and had a feeling it was him.

Serak came to the gate each day to deliver something small. One day, he brought a string of pearls that I promptly gave to Mirrim. The next, it was a melon with sweet, tangy orange flesh that I took a sliver of. When Adiah asked why I was licking the rind, and I realized I was tasting the fingerprints Serak had left on it, I threw it as far out to sea as I could.

He was hard to resist. The guard named Sandyl would not open the gate for him, and watched with an odd expression as I accepted each gift, though. I knew there was a deeper purpose to the daily visits.

The next day, he brought a pillow that made me whine slightly when I felt the soft fabric. I forced myself to give it to Rielle, since she was the one who was struggling with her instincts to nest in a place with no materials to build one.

Serak knew I was giving the things away. When I told him, he murmured, “Good. They’re yours, Ratter. Everything I have is yours.”

We spoke each day about the time we’d spent in Turino, him asking questions about all my old crew, the boys and girls who’d run the streets with me as their leader. I wanted to think he was truly interested, but I wasn’t sure. Was he still under Edan’s influence? I couldn’t tell. Edan had only ever been an arserag.

I threw my nervous energy into teaching the children when to run, when to fight, and when to pretend they were wounded and afraid, so their attackers would get close enough for them to take out their eyes or even slit their throats.

I worked with them in the mornings and the Omegas in the afternoons, and so far, none of the guards had caught me out of the longhouse when I wasn’t supposed to be. They hadn’t even noticed me systematically checking every inch of the fence line for weak spots.

I’d realized the halibut swimming into my cloak had been too large to slip through the submerged iron fence, and I swam underwater at high tide as well, finding something that gave me hope: the seawater had pitted most of the bars. One had corroded entirely at the bottom, leaving a gap too small for me to swim through. But the children might be able to make it. If I could somehow saw through one of the bars to the side, I thought even the smaller Omegas could slip out.

I caught more fish each day, and Mirrim made more of her “clean fires” to cook them. The older girl, Godla, asked for one of the shards to keep for deboning fish, but I caught her staring at one of the guards with a particular sort of venom and decided to teach her the best places to gut a man as well.

The other older women shared their meager comforts with me, though I stayed out of the pungent longhouse as much as possible. Rielle had responded well to the boiled yam root, though, and her scent dissipated, along with some of the tension in our quarters.

It was soon replaced by anger. “You, new Omega,” Sandyl shouted through the fence when he brought the jugs of fresh water and a crate of limp vegetables to the fence. Sandyl held a torch, even though it was a sunny day. “What are you doing with those sticks?”