Page 51 of The Stolen Throne
“No.” I shake my head. “Stay. Please.”
I move to sit cross-legged as I sift through the options of good and bad things. It’s a lot of bad. The thing is, Reven was the good thing. Now that’s not true.
I clear my throat. “The good thing is we’re back together and we have friends who will help us.” I hope.
“What friends?”
It comes out more then. I tell her about Cain’s zariphate and the Vanished. I tell her about Vos and Horus and Tziah and Vida. I can’t bring myself to tell her about Reven beyond a mention of how he formed the Vanished. “And Achlys is with us, of course.” I shoot her a smile.
“That was a lot of good,” Tabra says when I stop talking.
I huff a laugh. That was a smidgeon of what she doesn’t know.
“And the bad?” she asks, but falls into a fit of coughing.
Achlys gets up and goes to a bucket, drawing a ladle out and bringing it to Tabra. I help lift my sister so she can drink, but the angle is bad, and she chokes on the water, spluttering. Achlys pats her back until it’s over. Then uses her own sleeve to wipe spittle away from my sister’s chin.
The look they exchange, I might as well not be here. I drop my gaze to give them a moment. Then peek back up because even if I’m not getting a happily ever after, my sister is. There’s some comfort in that.
Then Achlys seems to remember I’m there, getting up to put back the ladle before returning to sit with us. “So,” she’s the one to prompt. “The bad thing?”
“The bad thing is we are now fighting Eidolon, and we don’t know how to defeat him.” I pause and stare at the ground, the moment with the ghost suddenly striking a different chord.
“What?” Achlys asks.
I glance up at her, Tabra looking between us. “I may not know how to defeat him, but I might know something he wants.” If his ghost was telling the truth, at least. The question is, what do I do with that? I need to tell Reven—
No. I need to tell the others.
“I can see the cranks turning,” Tabra says. “You should go.”
She’s always been able to read me that way. I reach for her hand, careful to be gentle. “It can wait. I’ll talk to them once we’re on the move.”
No way is Cainis keeping the zariphate here after I just arrived. Not when someone—a certain king in particular—might follow. With the sun coming up, we’ll be packing up soon.
“You look exhausted.” Tabra makes a sound at the back of her throat. “Sorry. I don’t mean that harshly.”
That soft heart of hers is still there. Seeing even a small peek of it eases the worry of her going feral on me. She’s still her. Still my sweet sister.
“I’m sure I do. I’ll go to bed early when we get to the next place.” Maybe. After talking this out with the others. We need a plan, and my marriage definitely isn’t it.
“Good.” I think Tabra means to squeeze my hand, but it’s barely a brush of a touch.
Boom.
All three of us jump, and I twist in the direction the sound came from, even as it ricochets across the skies. “What was that?”
A beat of silence is followed by a battle scream from the Wanderers that thunders all the way to our edge of the camp. “Scourge!”
23
A Monster in
Our Midst
Fear spikes my blood so hard it makes my skin crawl.
Another boom rattles the tent, followed by shouting.
