Page 40

Andor

I watch as Brynla stops in the darkness, voicing her concerns about taking another route. But before she can turn around to face me, there’s a blade at my throat.

Every instinct tells me to twist backward, away from the sharp edge, and flip over the attacker behind me, but then another blade is poised at my spine, the point hard enough to break the skin.

Then the attacker moves sideways, using their legs to trip up mine, spinning me around all while keeping both blades in the exact same position, showcasing a skill in motion that I’ve rarely seen, and then I’m thrown against the wall.

The blade now moves to the side of my throat, right under the jaw, a piercing pain.

“Andor!” Brynla cries out, and I find it curious that Lemi hasn’t tried to jump to my defense. Perhaps the hound isn’t as loyal to me as I thought.

“I’ve got him,” says a woman’s voice at my ear, cool and confident.

“Ellestra?” Brynla croaks. Of course this is her fucking aunt. I suppose I was expecting our meet to start violently. “Stop! Let him go. He’s with me.”

“I know he’s with you,” Ellestra says, still not taking her knives away. “That’s why he’s not dead yet. After that bloody magicked raven came to deliver the message, I wasn’t about to take my chances. Figured this was a trap of some sort.”

“It’s not a trap,” I tell her, speaking my words carefully so that she doesn’t puncture my throat.

She grunts at my ear. “Now is the time to tell me the truth, Bryn. Say the word and I’ll put him down easy.”

Brynla sighs and I hear her stomp over to us, and then suddenly the knives are gone.

“I said stop it,” Brynla says. “He’s with me.”

“And you’re with him,” her aunt says bitterly. But she steps away from me, leaving me to properly exhale and turn around, facing both women.

Brynla’s aunt looks nothing like I expected.

From the way she handled me I assumed she’d be a tall woman with as much muscle as I have, but instead she’s thin and wiry, not much taller than Brynla, and looks much older than I thought.

Her eyes are sharp and light, though their exact color is hard to tell in the dark, and her hair is dark and cut short to her ears.

Her clothes are black and tight, making her look like a shadow, and her knives are swiftly put back in secret compartments.

Her face is a scowl as she looks me up and down, but when she looks at Brynla her expression doesn’t change. I can already see where Brynla gets her demeanor from.

“Not exactly the welcome I was hoping for,” Brynla says, giving me a brief, vaguely apologetic look.

“What did you expect?” Ellestra says. “For the red carpet to be rolled out and trumpeters to descend from the heavens?” But there’s a wryness to her tone and just a fleeting glimpse of a smile.

Then the tension seems to break as Ellestra pulls Brynla into a tight embrace.

I’m watching Brynla’s face closely. The wariness and anxiety seem to disappear, melting into something like security and comfort.

Love. Her brows soften, her face becoming innocent and younger somehow, causing a pang between my ribs.

All at once I feel both envious and deeply ashamed.

I’m the one who blackmailed Brynla into leaving her one remaining family member, her friend, her blood.

I pulled her away from this city and this life.

I never once thought that Brynla might have missed her aunt, or yearned for this life, a life I now see I knew nothing about.

I never considered her own feelings in what I was doing—I was too focused on what she could do for me.

At most I thought I was taking her away from something awful, as if I were doing her a favor.

I needed to think that in order to justify what I was doing.

I was wrong, plain and simple. And though I’ve already given Brynla a way out of this mess—which she declined—part of me hopes she takes me up on it.

And part of me dreads the idea of her staying here for good.

Finally, they pull apart, Brynla’s eyes meeting mine for a moment.

In the darkness of the tunnel I’m not sure that she can see me but I can clearly see her, the way her eyes glisten with tears, the furrows in her brow.

She looks away, squaring her shoulders as she steps back, that firm set to her jaw coming back again.

I know she has to be tough, how it’s been demanded of her, probably since she was born.

But seeing those glimpses of softness inside her—whether it be in her aunt’s embrace, in a cave while I healed her pain, or when she leaned against my shoulder last night and gazed at me with larger, adoring brown eyes, asking if I wanted her—makes me want her more.

Like she’s letting me in on a secret, a part of her no one else sees.

“Come on,” Ellestra says, giving Lemi a thorough pat and a scratch behind the ears. “We better get going before we attract attention. I imagine you’ve had quite the journey.”

She’s addressing Brynla more than me, so I let her do the talking.

“We’ve fared well so far,” Brynla says to her as they start walking down the tunnel in the direction we were originally going, with Lemi behind them and then me.

“The guards were touch and go, but other than that we had a smooth journey over the Burning Sands.”

I hold back a laugh. As if our crossing could have been described as anything but arduous.

I might have enhanced physical prowess, but I struggled to keep up with Brynla in the dunes.

I’m unused to the sensation of wayward sand burning my legs, and even now I wonder how long it will take for my eyesight to go back to normal after being exposed to all that glare.

I follow them down the tunnel, lit again by intermittent torches, and listen to their conversation while taking in what I can.

The Dark City is nothing like I imagined.

I envisioned a pit of the uncivilized filled with miserable cretins, those who were deemed too unsavory for Esland—a place that already had a bad reputation.

But I had been wrong, at least from what I can see with my own eyes.

Walking down the grand staircase that descends into the city is like stepping into another world, one with color and light and life inside all the darkness.

There were patches of farmed greenery beneath the beating sun that shone from the cavernous hole in the ceiling, butterflies and hummingbirds in the air, people who were more refined than I imagined.

Sure, they cast a wary eye toward me and their clothes were by no means new, but they were cleanly attired, wrapped in layers of linen, and their faces didn’t harbor any malevolence.

There were smells that wouldn’t seem out of place in the markets of Menheimr: spices, fried meats, sweet wine, and the sounds of laughter and chatter in beguiling accents.

I wouldn’t trade my life at Stormglen for one underground, but I can see why Brynla wasn’t jumping at the chance to escape. And no matter what, a life of relative freedom here in the Dark City offers more than one under the fanatical tyrants of Esland.

Ellestra and Brynla’s conversation stays light, talking about their neighbors and whatever else Brynla has missed while she’s been away. I have a feeling the deeper questions will be brought to me later.

We walk for another fifteen minutes or so, through winding tunnels and down narrow clay stairs, occasionally passing by other people. Most of them nod politely at us, me included, though the ones who seem to know Brynla and her aunt personally are more apt to give me a disparaging look.

Finally we come to a wide passageway that’s lit by torches with a few makeshift doors on either side.

Outside each door is something to sit on, like a dilapidated chair or a tree-stump stool or a rock affixed with a sheepskin rug on top.

One even has an orange cat sleeping in a wooden box, which takes a lazy look at Lemi before going back to sleep.

“Here we are,” Ellestra says, stopping outside a door with two tree stumps outside it, a chipped cup and saucer on one of them. The door is flimsy and seems to be made from some combination of frayed wood and dried palm fronds. She pushes it open and we step inside into a dark cavern.

“Give me a moment to light things,” she says, taking a torch off the wall outside and walking around the room, lighting sconces and lamps at different intervals. In glowing orange flame, their house reveals itself.

It’s larger than I thought, the furnishings nice enough if not sparse—faded rugs overlapping on the cave floor, a low dresser along the wall with candles and a small stack of books, a small couch and a rocking chair piled with blankets facing a hearth that Ellestra is currently lighting with her torch.

At the other end is a round table with a couple of chairs and a stool; a small nook for a kitchen with a cistern and woodstove, the pipes leading somewhere out of the cave ceiling; and what looks to be a mound of hay covered with a blanket on the ground.

I’m curious about it for a moment until Lemi goes straight to it and flops down—his dog bed.

“I’m sure we live like peasants compared to you,” Ellestra says to me as she replaces her torch outside and shuts the door. “But it’s home.”

“It looks lovely,” I say to her, trying to come across as genuine as possible. I have a feeling she’ll be quick to hold a dagger to my throat if given the slightest provocation.

Ellestra rolls her eyes and looks over at Brynla. “I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not. That Norlander slang.”