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“It took me weeks to come around,” I argue. “Months if you count from the time I left Madame. Aika has only known she had a choice for a handful of days.”
He pulls away enough to look down at me, his glacial gaze meeting my own.
“Every day we’re here increases the danger of someone discovering you, and I’m running out of excuses to give Jean.”
I scowl at him. It’s a fragile rationale, and we both know it.
“Then tell him you can’t bear to go back because you’re grieving. Tell him you’re too decrepit to travel, Einar. Better yet, ask Remy to help you lie.” Impatience laces my tone. “I don’t care what you tell him, but I am not ready to give up on her yet. I will not abandon her again if I have another choice.”
“You didn’t—”
“I did,” I say. “You said yourself I didn’t explore all the options at the time. I made a choice not to trust her, and Remy, arse that he can be, wasn’t wrong when he said it’s my fault she’s in danger now for the stunts she pulled as the vigilante.”
He lets out a small sigh. “I understand that you feel that way, but we can’t just sit here for months and risk Ulla finding you.”
He isn’t entirely wrong, but it still rankles to hear him say it.
“We’re at a standstill until we have more information anyway,” I counter. “So give it time. You can research more about dragons, since we at least suspect that’s one thing she wants. And I’ll use the time to go out into Bondé.”
The dragons are only a piece of the puzzle so far, but from her reaction when Einar brought it up to her, we know she wants something with the one in Jokith. Maybe finding out more about them will give us the answers we need to take her down.
His arms tense around me, and I silently dare him to bar me from doing my part in this. But he only pulls me in even tighter against him.
“Like you did tonight?” The question rumbles from his chest into mine and I sigh, knowing he’s referring to the fire.
“If I have to, then yes.”
I feel his resigned nod.
“And then?” he asks quietly.
“And then I’ll do whatever else needs to be done. I told you I would see this through.” I wonder if he hears the fatigue in my voice, from so much more than losing a couple nights of sleep.
Does he understand what it will do to me to move forward without my sister? What it will cost me to leave her behind again?
CHAPTERNINETEEN
REMY
Aika is barely out of her dress and in the massive bed before the sounds of her gentle, even breaths fill the room.
Neither of us has said a word since we left the guest suites.
Somehow, it feels like there is both too much to say and too little. So many issues, and not one of them that can be addressed right now.
On that note, I climb into the other side of the bed, as far as I can possibly get from her sleeping form.
She twitches but doesn’t wake. I sigh, settling into my pillow.
Asleep, she looks deceptively innocent. Not at all like the woman who declared less than an hour ago that she was never going to stop working for someone who assassinates and poisons and tortures without remorse.
Not at all like someone who does those things herself.
I throw an arm over my face to block out the morning light brightening the room, wishing I could block my thoughts out half as easily.
She said that Madame was her mother. The only person who never abandoned her.
Like I did, when I walked away from her in the room above the tavern.
