Page 18 of Lies That Bleed
I peered over my shoulder, sizing Anika up. “Do you have any idea the type of training I’ve had? I will have that blade and three of your severed fingers on the floor in ten seconds if you don’t?—”
“Stand down,” Kohen ordered, and Anika dropped the blade, her face furious.
I peered back at Kohen to see that he was devoid of all emotion, as if the raging anger was never there. He’d caged it somehow, tucked it away for later most likely. No way was I sleeping tonight.
“Get some rest. Big day tomorrow,” he said to me and gave me his back, a disarming move that let me know he wasn’t scared of me.
I spun to Anika, narrowing my eyes at her. I was about to rip her a new one for coming at me like that when she shook her head, peering sadly at me. “Youshouldn’t have said that about his father. He was a great man.”
It was like a punch to the gut. It shouldn’t have been. King Ravi Badshah was an extremist. Brilliant in engineering but completely unrealistic with other things. He was obsessed with controlling ember distribution, saying that we should allow citizens to freely mine it from The Wilds. My father rightly didn’t agree—they would strip it of ember in a day! Imbria had three times the population we did. No, the ember harvesting needed to be controlled, you couldn’t collect it faster than it fell or you ran out. We were in peace talks one day and the next King Badshah just blacked out our whole city. His army bombed six of our busiest train stations. Killed thousands.
“He was a terrorist,” I stated again.
She gritted her teeth. “Yeah, and you’re brainwashed.”
I frowned at that, about to retort, when Kian screamed like a girl.
We rushed back over to our camp and then Anika burst into laughter.
A small mouse creature had broken into his pack and was eating some dried fruit. Purple glowing ember swirls ran the length of its back.
Kian looked up at us, clearing his throat in embarrassment. “It scared me.”
I grinned. “Quick, you better bond with it. You might not find anything morepowerful.”
He flipped me off and I glanced at Anika to see she was smiling again. It seemed our fragile truce was back.
I took a long swig of my coffee and Alek strode over to me and pulled me aside. Alek was cool, one of the most popular guys at our school. He had top grades and was on every sports team imaginable. We didn’t run in the same clique but I respected him. Alek’s family were all imperial soldiers. If they didn’t get in the Lottery, they joined the human forces. He was loyal to the emperor through and through.
“You staying up?” He eyed the steaming mug in my hands.
I nodded. “Can’t risk it.”
I hoped it went without saying that as the emperor’s daughter I couldn’t allow my throat to be slit in the night.
“You wanna sleep in shifts? I can watch your back.”
My heart pinched. I hadn’t expected that, and I didn’t want him to think I didn’t trust him, but… I didn’t trust anyone to look out for Tetra.
“Maybe the second night when I’m really dragging. I gotta look out for T.” I inclined my head to her.
He dipped his head in understanding. “I’ll get a couple hours, then. Yell if you hear so much as a twig snap. I’ll be out of my sleeping bag with a knife in under five seconds.”
I grinned. I’d never really spent much time talking to Alek. He was cooler and sweeter than I expected.
“You got it.”
He slipped into his bag and zipped it up as I went to sit by the fireplace where Anika was drawing something in a notebook.
Everyone else was asleep. “Not gonna sleep?” I asked her.
She flicked her gaze at me. “Gotta look out for my people,” was all she said.
I understood that. She didn’t trust me fully. She would be stupid if she did.
She eyed the hot coffee in my hands. “Wish I had been able to afford that though.”
A pang of pity went through me. Afford coffee? I mean, sure it was a luxury, but how poor was she that she couldn’t afford three cups of coffee? I looked closer at her boots; they were scuffed and worn with seams popping. I hadn’t noticed before. Her clothes were issued by the Imperial Fleet and looked freshly dyed black without a stitch out of place. I would readily admit I lived a life that only one percent of our population enjoyed, but I thought with all the travel I had done that I knew what it was like for the other ninety-nine percent of people. Though hearing Anika, who had a job in the ember mines, could not even afford coffee, I guessed not.
