Perhaps this was real.
“How long until you return?” Draeven asked.
“Soon,” she answered, reaching out to stroke the head of the serpent on his shoulder. “I will communicate with you through Neiss and dreams where I can. You need to keep him hidden from Lazarus. If the king finds him . . . from what you’ve said, I have no doubts he will act irrationally.”
The dream began to fade. Quinn’s voice grew distorted. Draeven was waking up.
He reached out and grasped her hand. It was cold to the touch. Colder than it had ever been.
With time running out, Draeven told her the only thing he could and hoped—prayed that this wasn’t a nightmare.
“Hurry,” he said, stressing the urgency.
Quinn smiled, and her body disintegrated into smoke.
The black void vanished. Draeven sat up, his eyes flying wide open. He gasped.
The red walls of his quarters and sound of banging on his chamber doors bringing him back to awareness.
“The carriages are ready, my lord,” his head guard called through the door.
“Thank you,” Draeven called back. The banging ceased. “Please notify our stewardess. I’ll be out shortly.”
Footsteps sounded as the guard walked away. Draeven’s shoulders uncoiled. Tension easing until he realized there was a weight there that was very real.
And a letter between his fingers that he hadn’t fallen asleep holding.
His lips parted, equal parts shock, relief, and dread.
It was real.
Quinn was back. She was back . . . and Lazarus didn’t know.
Lazarus couldn’t know.
His mouth snapped shut, and his jaw tensed as he unfolded the parchment.
He wasn’t sure what she would write after all she said.
Perhaps an explanation or a plan . . . but her written words were neither.
You thought you could get rid of me, didn’t you?
Unfortunately for you, I am back, and I am coming home.
Prepare them for war, Lord Sunshine.
I’ve told Neiss he could sleep with you. He wanted to eat you. But I have no desire to be the hand that feeds.
His Right-Hand
Draeven sat back, and Neiss slithered down his shoulder to curl up at the end of the bed. His hand fell to his side, the letter sliding from his fingers.
A quiet knock came at the door.
“Draeven?” Lorraine asked once.
“Come in,” he replied just loud enough for her to hear.
The door opened softly, and the stewardess slipped in, closing it behind her. She turned to speak to him and stopped in her tracks.
Lorraine’s eyes went wide as she took in the mauve-colored serpent at his feet. Her thin lips parted, and he could see his own emotions play through her features.
“She’s back,” he whispered, lifting the note from his bedside for her to see.
She approached him slowly, her eyes flicking between him, the basilisk, and the letter.
Her frail fingers snatched it from him once she was in range. He watched her as she read it, and unlike him, Lorraine didn’t doubt. She didn’t ask how or why or what.
She smiled for the first time in two months.
“We can’t tell Lazarus,” he warned. Her smile didn’t dim.
She simply said, “Then we have a lot of work to do.”
Chapter 10
Unlikely Savior
“Loyalty may be the greatest gift, but it doesn’t matter who is loyal if you cannot protect yourself. Self-sufficiency is what survivors are made of.”
— Quinn Darkova, fear twister, walker of realms
Silence hung in the air like an omen.
In hindsight, perhaps the soldiers and the N’skari that survived would realize that it is when the day and night are quietest that you should listen the most.
Because some would. Quinn was neither vain enough nor idealistic to think she could kill all the rats. Just enough so that when she was done, N’skara would no longer be a country. The N’skari no longer a people. They would be myths and legends, and one day, nothing at all.
“It’s time,” she said softly. Her voice carried over the hundred or so men that had packed into the small makeshift tavern. As one they bowed their heads and filed out.
Quinn leaned against the bar, watching them go. Every soldier had a different location, but not a different order. They marched into the streets in their purple and gold uniforms. Most of them went to the docks. Some, however, went deeper into the city.
Night was not here, but it was upon them.
And when the sun sank below the horizon, it would begin.
A creak from a wooden step pulled at Quinn’s attention. She waited until the last of the soldiers were gone to speak.
“I told you to wait until they left,” she said without raising her voice. After a long pause, there was another squeak before a quiet voice answered.
“You sent them out,” Trissa said. Quinn turned toward the staircase as the girl came around the corner. “You sent them to kill.”
Quinn tilted her head. “Does that bother you?”
Trissa frowned. Her nose scrunched as she considered it. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
Quinn nodded. “They were bad men. I sent them to kill other bad men.”
And traitors, Quinn thought silently.
“My mother used to say that two bad things don’t make a good one,” Trissa said.
“She’s right.”
Trissa frowned again. “Then why did you do it?”
Quinn considered that. “Because I don’t care about good or bad. Those men were my enemies, and if I didn’t destroy them now, then I would pay for that decision when I had to face them again.”
“And the temples? The statues? Were those your enemies too?” the girl asked.
Quinn smiled. “Not in this life. Those were messages. Warnings.”
“What are you warning them against?”
“N’skara is a bad place, and it’s filled with bad people, but they’re not the worst people. I am. I’m showing them what happens when they anger the wrong people.”
“But I’m not bad,” Trissa said, completely overlooking most of the statement.
Quinn shrugged. “Nothing is all bad or all good, and even things that are bad can be good. Just as things that are supposedly good can also be very bad. Perhaps if the N’skari had learned that lesson, I wouldn’t need to teach them this one.”
The girl went silent, and Quinn wasn’t sure which part she was stuck on, only that something about it clearly bothered her. Another thump from upstairs made Quinn raise her eyebrows. Trissa looked at her sheepishly.
“Come down,” she sighed.
Quietly, seven other pairs of footsteps shuffled down the steps. It occurred to Quinn that Axe was louder than these eight kids by herself. More unruly. More . . . difficult. The last child she’d spent any amount of time with had been raised by pirates, this group would be a lovely break by comparison. At least she hoped.
They lined up in front of her. A mix of five girls and three boys. They ranged in height from her waist to her chin and all dressed in the same scraps of gray that signified their status as lowborn. Quinn shook her head.