Page 19 of The Fury She Holds
He hesitated. “I was trying to help.”
“Yes, well, running into danger alone like that is the best way to end up floating down the river.”
A head popped up by Tal’s feet. “Yeah, Tal. Maybe you should heed your own advice.” Her young friend turned to Faron. “The name’s Egan.” He smirked and hoisted himself up onto the roof, followed by Carrick who placed a pitcher of water on the eave before pulling himself up too.
Tal grabbed for Egan’s feet, and he danced out of the way. “Ale is making you brave, little devil. I think I like you better sober and content to worship the ground I stand on.” She accepted the pitcher from Carrick and gulped greedily, avoiding Egan as he tried to nudge her shoulder.
“My new friends.” Faron nodded. Egan mirrored the greeting, but Carrick, who had likely been the one to pull Tal’s unconscious form from Faron’s arms, merely pursed his lips. “How lovely to find you here.” He grabbed Talwyn’s pint of ale from earlier and sipped greedily, earning a cold stare from Tal. “Now that I see you’re all well, I’d like to chat.”
Talwyn’s drunken snort was the trio’s only response.
He continued, “I’d like to know about these apparitions you mentioned, and the mages.”
“What of them?” Carrick asked, still standing. He didn’t seem too pleased to be talking to the swordsman.
“What do you know about them?” he asked.
“Why do you want to know?” Carrick retorted
“Usually when someone asks a question, the other person answers it. I believe you are instead asking another question.” Faron raised his brow, the picture of nonchalance and unbothered by their thin layer of hostility. He finished the pint and set it down. “I would hope that my attempt at rescuing the child is evidence enough that I have only the best intentions.”
Egan spoke up this time, “Usually an answer to a question is expected to be direct rather than skirting around the issue. And you being there doesn’t prove you were trying to rescue the child.”
“I brought the sleeping goddess back unharmed,” he countered.
Talwyn ran through the facts. The mages hunted her. If he’d been in league with them, he would have had the perfect opportunity to take her after they jumped in the river. Her gut told her to trust this man even if she didn’t have all the information yet.
“The apparitions were human copies created by magic. A mage, a powerful one, can create an apparition that is essentially human, except that it can only exist as long as the mage does. If you kill the mage, the apparition ceases to exist. Otherwise, it fights and bleeds like any man.”
“How have I never heard of these?”
“Do you live in a cave?” Carrick offered.
“Apparently.” He scratched his head. “And what did the mage want with the child?”
“Mages,” Talwyn corrected him. “There were two.”
“Were. Because you killed one of them,” he said it as a statement to which Talwyn nodded.
She felt Carrick tense behind her. By the twins’ admission, mages could be the most powerful magic wielders of their age. She somehow managed to kill one without her fury.A fluke, she thought to herself.I just got lucky.Earlier, Carrick tried touse this to prove they could handle the mages themselves. She wouldn’t hear any of it.
“Okay, so what did themageswant with the child?” Faron repeated.
Talwyn hesitated. Revealing the mages were after her would lead to too many questions. And that still didn’t explain what triggered the mages to take Evania in the first place. She settled for a half-truth. “She said they were searching for something. They thought she had it, but that’s all we know.”
“Have you noticed any disturbance in the industrial district?” Carrick asked out of the blue, referring to Pochette’s businesses.
Talwyn whipped her head around to scowl. She hadn’t planned on telling Faron about that detail.
Faron hesitated. “I’ve seen the smoke. Are these mages involved?”
“They burned a thug’s empire to the ground in a single night. You didn’t think anything of it?”
“I was on my way to investigate but happened upon the girl and her captors first. I take it you weren’t expecting this attack? Have the mages been here long?”
“Our first sighting happened the night everything burned.” She didn’t feel the need to mention the weeks and months of missing persons. “Why am I getting the impression this is all new to you?” Talwyn asked, suspicious.
“Where I come from, conversations stick to superficial things—clothing, sex, scandal. Dangerous groups, powerful magic, and violence are taboo.” He tried to grab the last piece of bread, but Talwyn snatched it first.
