Page 27 of Guardian of Exile
“I’m sorry.”
Evra shrugged. Nyx was starting to have a very good idea of why Evra was the way she was. It wasn’t that Nyx hadn’t had an inkling before—this wasn’t the first time Evra had said something offhand about Moriana al’Daemon that most people would be shocked by—it was that Evra rarely talked about personal matters. In fact, she pretty much never talked about them unless asked.
“Hey, you know you can talk to me about stuff like this whenever you want, right? Like, you don’t need an invitation, I’m always here.”
Evra side-eyed her. “What? I am supposed to come to you and say ‘Nyx, I am feeling maudlin, please listen to my sad familial complaints?’”
“Yes. I mean, you don’t have to open with ‘Nyx, I am feeling maudlin’, but I’m happy to listen to the sad complaints of all parts of your life whenever you want. That’s kind of what friends are for.”
“You have had enough to deal with of late.”
“Evra, I love you, so please don’t take this the wrong way, but stop tiptoeing around me, okay? You guys keep handling me delicately, like you’re afraid I’m about to break, and honestly? I liked the bitchy you that showed up in Calista telling me I was being selfish better.
“I would be happy to listen to your problems. I want to listen to your problems. Okay?”
“As you sa—” Evra cut off mid-word and mid-stride, halting before a boutique shop purporting to sell vintage accessories and antiques. Her gaze had snagged on a necklace, a choker of black velvet with what looked like an oval moonstone set in the center.
“What?” Nyx asked.
“You do not feel it?”
Nyx started to ask Feel what? when suddenly she did. A soft wave of magic, something she hadn’t noticed because she was now accustomed to feeling it in Earth Between, and hadn’t clocked that here, in Dead Earth, it was quite unusual indeed.
Evra pushed open the door, striding in with determination. Nyx followed, realizing as she did that the choker wasn’t the only thing magical in this shop—everything was. It also all gave her the creeps. Now that she was on this side of the glass door, when she looked at the choker she got the feeling it might actually choke her if worn. Evra strode directly to the empty sales counter, where she rang the old-fashioned desk bell with repetitive abandon.
Nyx slipped behind a Hiding, cloaking herself just as an older white woman, thick gray hair bound in a braid that trailed over her left shoulder, came out looking cross. She was dressed in severe black, and reminded Nyx of nothing so much as the type of witch from fairy tales who would eat small children. The woman clapped her hand over the bell and slid it out of Evra’s reach, then looked the Amazon over skeptically.
“May I help you?”
Evra smiled a wolf’s smile. “For your sake, I hope so. There are so many things in here that directly violate All Council law.”
The woman’s lips twisted into a moue of distaste. “I don’t know who you are, but I’ll tell you the same thing I told the last two who came in here spouting that nonsense: I don’t answer to any council.”
Slipping Veritas from its sheath at her thigh, Nyx slipped around the counter.
“And I’ll make you the same offer I made them—get out of my shop now, and I’ll let you leave it intact.”
The woman was reaching under the counter, and Nyx didn’t want to find out what for. She darted around behind the woman, wrapped her arm around her neck, and dropped her Hiding just as she pressed the tip of Veritas to her throat. “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
The shopkeeper made an irritated sound but dropped her hand back to her side. Nyx pressed Veritas’s blade a little deeper against the woman’s throat, enough to break the skin and trail blood down the blade.
“I was wondering where you went,” Evra said.
“Do me a favor and bind her with Gleipnir,” Nyx said. “I don’t really trust her to behave.”
Evra came around the counter, unwinding Gleipnir from its usual place on Nyx’s body impersonating a bracelet, and used it to bind the shopkeeper’s wrists before tethering the other end to the metal counter leg bolted to the floor. Nyx eased Veritas off the woman’s throat and came around to stand beside Evra.
“Who are you and where are you from?” Evra demanded.
The woman gave the Amazon a disdainful look, but apparently decided, given her current circumstances, that it was a question that didn’t cost her much to answer.
“Mary Turner. Brooklyn.”
Evra’s brow furrowed. “Before that.”
“Brooklyn born and raised, girl.”
“That is not—”
