Page 60 of Guardian of Exile

“How many do you have?” Tristen asked.

“Enough.” She hoped. “If I can prove to you that doing this won’t be an irreparable failure of infrastructure, will you do it?”

“I don’t know.” He tossed back the rest of his whiskey, then said, “One. I’ll do one for you, as a trial run. But I want something from you first, and it isn’t to talk to the Congregation.”

“Okay.” She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like whatever it was he wanted. “And what is that?”

“I want you to find my mother, and I want you to take me to her.”

Nyx had been right. She didn’t like it. Normally, reuniting someone with their lost parent would be something she was only too happy to do, if it was within her power. But she hadn’t forgotten the look in Tristen’s eyes when he’d talked about his mother.

“And what are you going to do once you find her?”

His eyes narrowed. “I’d say that’s for me to decide, wouldn’t you?”

“Look, I know all about terrible mothers,” Nyx said. “Believe me, I do. I also know what it’s like to contemplate doing what I suspect you’re contemplating doing. But I don’t think you want to follow through.”

“What are you talking about?” Evra asked.

Tristen ignored her, leaning across the island toward Nyx. “You want me to ride the edges of morality because it’s something you want done? Because it’s something you think is right? Then you’d better be willing to do the same for me.”

The words struck a nerve in her. He wasn’t wrong. But there was something he’d said earlier, when he’d told her the story about his mother. That her last words to him had been to tell him to be brave. Maybe Nyx was reading into it something that wasn’t there, simply because she didn’t want to believe his mother had sold him.

She knew it was possible. Some people had no conscience or compassion. Some people made appalling decisions because those decisions were easy. Others made those decisions because they thought they had no other options. But Tristen had been a child when he’d been taken, and things weren’t always what they had seemed to a child. “Okay. I’ll find your mother. I’ll take you to her.”

“Why do I sense a condition coming?”

Nyx smiled. “On the condition that when you go to speak to her, I go with you.”

“You think you can change my mind?”

“I think that when confronting problems, it’s often helpful to have a neutral third party.”

“Fine.” He settled back in his chair. “Just you, though.”

“Fine,” she echoed. “So to clarify the terms, I find your mother, you talk to her, then you free one Station, Avatar, and Guardian of my choosing. Anything more than that is up to you.”

“Agreed,” he said.

If Nyx hadn’t been sitting down, she would have fallen down. Griff was going to be free. She was afraid to believe it too much, afraid that this—that Tristen—would be snatched out from under her when she wasn’t looking.

She shook it off and focused. If she wanted Griff freed, she had a job to do. “What planet are you from?”

A long pause followed the question. Finally, Tristen said, “I don’t know. Maybe I did when I was a kid, but I don’t remember the name now.”

Nyx’s earlier fear coalesced into the sudden realization that she didn’t even know if Tristen’s mother was still alive. And now, she didn’t know where to find her. She’d expected Tristen to know what planet and city he was from, had thought finding his mother would be no more difficult than portaling them there and letting Kaden find the nearest trail that bore a similarity to Tristen’s.

She shoved the fear down. She’d found planets before. “What was it like?”

“Bright.”

“Bright,” Evra echoed, in the sort of tone that begged for a glare, which Tristen supplied.

“Really bright. All the time. And hot. And sandy.”

“Wonderful,” Evra said. “Morgen, how many ley line planets have bright, hot, sandy cities?”

“I’m sure I can’t recall them all off the top of my head.”