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Asker’s gaze lingered on me for several beats too long, each passing second layering the air with an almost palpable density, like the weight of something unsaid. For a moment, he looked as though he was about to speak, his lips parting slightly above his beard.
But then, just as quickly, his expression shuttered closed. “Thank you for helping Marla with the chimney.”
As if helping people I’d once considered my family would ever require a ‘thank you’. “Of course.”
His balance shifted from one plated leg to the other, where I’d only ever seen him standing stiff and still. “Marla wants you to—no, I am saying that wrong.” He clenched his lips, letting the bristles of his beard noisily scrape against each other. “We would like you to come and visit us one of these evenings. For supper. Like it used to be.”
Like it used to be.
Every muscle in my body strung tight, turning me into the one who couldn’t quit staring at him. He’d spoken more with me in these last few weeks than he had in those last five years combined—and not one degrading remark uttered. Why? To make peace? To reconnect? Why bother now?
I crossed my arms in front of my chest, not knowing what to make of this. “I’ll think about it.”
“Very well,” he said and turned his attention back to the squabbling couple before us.
“I am not a thief,” Malyr said. “All I can do is offer up my shadows for you to practice, but harnessing your gift is on you.” He stretched out his hand, casting tendrils of shadow that slithered down the stairs, blackening the red carpet beneath. “Absorb, then wield.”
“Focus.” Galantia’s whisper was likely too quiet for anybody but me to hear as she raised her absorbing hand, her eyes intently fixed on the tendrils. She lifted her other hand toward the wall to avoid accidentally killing someone. “Absorb and mirror. Absorb and mirror. Absorb and—”
Shadows oozed from her fingertips like molasses in winter—sluggish, heavy, and so fucking uninspired. They dripped onto the ground, forming a black pool there that wouldn’t kill any enemy… unless he happened to step on it, slip, and conveniently break his neck.
Not fucking likely.
Galantia sighed, the way frustration carved itself onto her forehead in deep frowns looking more adorable than it should. “Isn’t there a single thief out there who can help me?”
“I am afraid not, my lady,” Asker said and hinted a bow. “You are the only recorded one. If there are other thieves, then they chose to remain hidden.”
Malyr slouched deeper into his throne, thumbing his temple as if warding off a headache. “Perhaps you should visit my mother’s old chamber. Look through her personal writings and see if we can find something,anything, on voids that went unrecorded. Since she revealed late, she kept journals about how she found her power. See if you find them.”
Five ravens soared in through a flight hole along the wall of stained windows. They landed at the bottom of the stairs to the throne, morphing into one of our younger scouts—a pathfinder boy, barely older than a fledgling, with sparse wisps of hair sprouting on his chin, his black hair cropped short. He acknowledged Asker with a nod, then shifted his focus to Malyr.
Dropping to one knee, he said, “My prince, the human farmers near the western fields and meadows didn’t vacate their homes. They report that their—”
Malyr slammed his hands down on the armrests of his throne, shadows surging through the sparkling black metal until the wings behind him seemed to shift and move. “I could have driven those humans off our lands the way they have done with us. Instead, I have given them notice and time… and this is how they repay me?!”
“Without spring seeding, Valtaris will face a grain shortage with the next winter to be certain.” Asker folded his arms behind his back and straightened. “My prince, I will personally fly down there and see to the issue.”
“Take fifty deathweavers and ten pathfinders with you,” Malyr commanded. “If they will not leave on their own, then you shallmake them.”
“You cannot seriously contemplate to drive them off the land by force.” Galantia gaped up at him, those furrows between her brows deepening further. “You told me you would give them time.”
“Ihavegiven them time.”
“How much was that? Six days? Seven?” Galantia scoffed. “Malyr, you can’t expect those people to uproot their lives within a week. With snow still on the ground, no less. These farms are their homes!”
“No, they areourhome,” Malyr snapped with a bump of his fist against his chest. “For ten years, they have paid no tenancy. I want them gone by the morrow, or they will repay with their lives.”
Galantia lifted her chin in that stubborn, proud way of hers. “They are innocent farmers.”
“They… are…humans,” Malyr ground out.
Something in Galantia’s expression shifted. The anger receded like a tide pulling back from the shore, leaving only… disappointment.
“Like I was once,” she said softly, her words a lingering echo in this massive room before she turned away, her dress billowing as she left the with purpose in her stride.
Malyr immediately rose, reaching out his hand as if he could physically grab hold of her despite the distance. All he caught was empty air. He threw his hands up, letting them drop to his sides with the sound of his exhale.
Damn his fucking temper…
