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Thea glanced at Cal and Kipp, noting with a pang of jealousy that they looked happier in the company of this stranger than they had in the last year with her.
‘Thea!’ Kipp rushed forward, sweeping her up in a drunken embrace. ‘You made it!’
‘She almost didn’t,’ Hawthorne muttered from behind her, but the others didn’t hear.
She pierced him with a stare. ‘Friend of yours, then?’ she asked, nodding in greeting to the newcomer, noting the fine make of her leathers and weapons, a calibre she hadn’t seen in some time.
Hawthorne cleared his throat. ‘Something like that…’
The woman grinned, offering her hand, and Thea took it without thinking, shaking it firmly.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ the newcomer told her. ‘The name’s Adrienne Ashford. Ranger and general to the guerrilla forces of Naarva.’
Thea was still shaking her hand when the thread of recognition drew taut.
Adrienne.The name echoed in her mind for a moment before she realised. This wastheAdrienne. Hawthorne’s former lover.
The pained expression on Hawthorne’s face confirmed it.
CHAPTER TEN
THEA
Abitter taste spread across Thea’s tongue. For the past year, she had been hunting the traitor Wilder Hawthorne, and he’d been… What? Shacking up with an old flame?
‘I cared about her a lot. She was good to me.’Hawthorne had told her of the Naarvian ranger over a year ago amid the ruins of Delmira. And Thea had replied that he deserved someone to be good to him. She had truly believed that, once.
‘Glad to meet you at last, Thea,’ Adrienne said warmly.
She was beautiful. Her blonde hair framed her pretty face and hung loose past her shoulders. Her features were feminine, not even close to marred by the smudges of dirt across her flawless skin. She smiled with full lips, luscious lips that Thea couldn’t help but picture brushing against Hawthorne’s mouth. Her mind conjured up the image of them together, a tangle of perfect, naked limbs —
Releasing the woman’s hand, Thea chastised herself. None of it mattered. Not a single thing.
‘Thea —’ There was a pleading note in Hawthorne’s voice as it interrupted her thoughts, but he was cut off by a snort of amusement.
Adrienne was surveying the heavy manacles around his wrists. ‘Things are going well then, I take it?’
‘I’ve got it under control,’ Hawthorne grunted, approaching the fire.
For another second, Thea could see them together, so easily. The Naarvian rebel and the fallen Warsword… The way they spoke to one another was with such familiarity as well. She could imagine the blonde in his arms, beneath his body, in his bed.It doesn’t matter, Thea chanted to herself.
Adrienne gave another chuckle at Hawthorne’s expense. ‘Sure looks that way,’ she quipped, before she turned her gaze on Thea. ‘You look like her, you know…’
The Naarvian didn’t need to specify to whom she referred. The prickling on Thea’s nape told her all she needed to know. Hawthorne’s former lover was telling her that she looked like her long-lost shadow-wielding sister, Anya. The true heir of Delmira.
A flurry of memories came back to her then, shown to her once by a reaper in Delmira.A field of flowers.Two pairs of small hands braiding them together to form a necklace. The smell of heather. The darkness of being hidden in a wagon, hurtling over uneven terrain, a small body either side of her.
Thea clenched her fists at her sides. ‘If you’re in league with the Daughter of Darkness, and you’re in league with the traitor here, then you’re a traitor too.’
To her surprise, Adrienne grinned, tapping the longsword strapped to her back. ‘Oh, I was a traitor long before I met Anya, or Hawthorne’s moody arse.’
Hawthorne made a noise of agreement from afar. ‘You’ve never been one for the rules, I’ll give you that.’
‘Nor has Thea, from what I hear,’ Adrienne offered, giving Malik’s dagger at her belt a meaningful look.
Fair point,Thea thought, but there was no way she’d admit it aloud. Instead, she sought Cal and Kipp, striding to their side of the fire, noting their rosy cheeks and red-tipped noses.
‘Why aren’t you detaining her?’ she hissed, with a glance across at their unwelcome guest.
