Page 13 of The Stolen Throne
6
Get Out
If I thought Cain was scowling a second ago, his expression now could take the hide off a bull. I expected that. Reven’s reaction is harder to take. He goes dead silent, dead still, but it’s his eyes that kill me. The turquoise dulls with a kind of resigned acceptance.
“Fuck. She’s fallen under the same spell as Tabra,” Cain says to Reven as though I’m not standing right here.
I roll my eyes. “I’m not spelled. Achlys—”
Reven cuts me off. “We’re not leaving you.”
“Listen to me—”
“Shadow her out of here,” Cain says to him. “We’ll figure the rest out later. It’s too dangerous to stick around.”
I hop back, hand up. “Don’t.”
Reven took me against my will once by shadow, the night he kidnapped me thinking I was Tabra. Helpless is my least favorite feeling, worse maybe even than fear. I really should make him promise never to do that again.
When the darkness doesn’t even twitch, I lower my hand slowly. “I’m not leaving Achlys. He has her.”
A tic sets off at the corner of Reven’s right eye. An echoing hardness expands in the scar holding my insides inside. A scar made of the shadows he knit my body back together with when I accidentally impaled myself on my own glass.
At least, I think that’s him I’m feeling.
Cain looks away from me, shoulders practically cut from granite he’s so tense. Achlys helped him before. She helped him find me when Reven—overtaken by the king’s Shadows—locked me in the room like this one in Tabra’s old chambers. Cain knows Achlys.
“She’s my friend,” I say to him.
He’ll know what that word means to me. I don’t have many, and Cain is one of the few.
Reven studies me, then nods once. “Then we go get her.”
Cain jerks back. “We can’t. You need to get Meren out of here.”
“I plan to. As soon as we get Meren’s friend.”
They glare at each other.
I throw my hands up. “Oh my goddess. We don’t have time for this—”
Reven holds up a hand. “I’ll go.”
“I said no,” Cain snaps.
The two face off. Cain fuming. Reven unmovable. I know when Cain gives in because he crosses his arms. “Fine. We go together.” His mutter is grudging. “But you get Meren away if we’re caught.”
I shake my head, and they both give me hard looks. I don’t care. “Eidolon set up some kind of shadow ward around my room. He’ll know if I leave.”
“Hells.” Reven runs a hand through his hair, glancing toward the panel in the wall. “What about when anyone else comes in or out?” Reven demands. “Does he know?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
Cringe. “No.”
Cain’s hands drop to his sides, and the two of them look at each other. I guess somewhere along the way they learned to do that guy-communication thing. Any second, they might start speaking in grunts.
