Page 9 of Shadows and Flames (Twin Blades #2)

And I tried not to break. I fought like hell to keep the jagged pieces of me together. To not fall to the floor and demand that they burn me with the rest of the bodies. Or turn my own blade on myself.

Tana took a moment while they had theirs, and she ran her palm up and down my spine. Breathed with me. She hadn’t removed her hood, but I held onto her stare. The jade that reminded that I hadn’t lost everything . Everyone.

I blew a concentrated breath from puckered lips. Felt the weight of her touch and my feet beneath me again. I nodded at my cousin. A gesture she returned with a sad crinkle of skin beside her eyes.

Grounding myself into our last tasks was harder. Floating in and out now that the carnage was done. We stepped over bodies and directed the wife and child back to the bedroom. Instructed them to change and wash while we took their soiled clothing—evidence—with us to burn elsewhere.

Freshly bathed and in a clean tunic and trousers, the child stopped us before we could leave and thrust a coin purse into Tana’s hands.

When she and I both refused payment, they huffed, stomped their foot to remind us that though they’d known the horrors of life, they were still a child.

That they knew what they were about, which was honorable.

So, we sighed and took our payment for ridding this monster from their lives. We instructed them both to barricade furniture against the door once we left so that when reinforcements came, they had a story to tell.

And Tana and I went once again to the forest, taking to the shadows all the way to the inn where we stayed. Her first, then me, we slipped through the window, boots thumping on the dusty wood floor.

We were still working our way up, replenishing our pockets since we had no access to our accounts this far away from Nethras. Not like I was touching that coin, anyway.

That life… one of friends and fighting in rings for a laugh. It belonged to a person who died a while ago. All that connected me to the old Meline was standing in front of me, slowly removing her weapons and leathers.

The smirk I released was genuine as I watched her upend the coin purse and begin to count our haul.

It’d been quite a surprise to bid for the contract, only to meet an employer that was little older than a babe.

But as we’d argued in a back alley, going back and forth over the words they furiously scribbled, my cousin and I elected to take it.

In the room we now stood in, Tana and I had decided to reject payment.

But, the pile of gold coin was a pretty sight. One that kept this life going. And going.

“What do you think they’ll do with them?

” Tana began to pull clean sleeping clothes from her pack.

I headed to the small fire that was reduced to smoldering embers when we returned.

After prodding until it roared around fresh logs, I tossed our employer’s blood soaked clothes and their mother’s splattered nightgown into the flames.

Whipping around until the heat sighed at my back, I focused on her question. “Keep them in a jar? Make a necklace?”

Tana clucked, turning toward the door. We’d taken the risk and paid extra for the adjoining bathing room, since we knew we’d probably return in an incriminating state. Before she turned the knob, she mused, “Just hope they don’t get caught.”

“They won’t.”

She nodded, and with her face revealed, I saw the concern she wore every day. The heavy heart as the witness to my destruction, fatigued muscles as she shouldered her own ghosts.

I swallowed. “You did great. I…I’m glad to be adventuring with you.”

Her nose wrinkled as she smiled, true and cheerful even with flakes of blood caught in her golden brow. “I’m glad, too.”

She left the door cracked as she began drawing a bath. It would be a while before my turn, but I couldn’t bring myself to relax into this time alone.

My feet stayed planted in the middle of the room, refusing to look at the fire but letting it provide false warmth all the while.

Faint splashes came from the bathing room while Tana washed away the evening, our first contract of this magnitude as a duo.

I reflected on the wisps of pride I felt as I caught a glimpse of her cutting down guard after guard, using her staff and dagger with a poise and grace I couldn’t even take credit for.

Everything she did had a finesse, a delicate nature.

For me, it was just cold instinct. A dark tunnel I retreated into until bodies lined the path like cobblestones. Killing was easy. As simple as breathing to strike here, twist there. To sense a pulse and drain it dry until the beating is a sighing echo.

When that was gone? When Tana wasn’t filling my ears with pleasant chatter or questions or reassurance?

I started humming the notes, the melody that drowned out the silence that was wrong, wrong?—

A sob caught me off guard, choking my soothing until I hunched over, arms crossed over my middle, as I tried to keep it all in. The words I wanted so desperately to take back, the one I cursed Rhaea for snatching away from me.

I didn’t hear Tana jump out of her bath.

Didn’t remember falling to the floor in a heap of tears.

But I’d ended up there, somehow, whimpering and shaking, thinking about all that’d slipped through my fingers.

Her naked, wet limbs held me tight. She whispered assurances into my cropped curls.

Spouting fierce reminders that she knew.

She was there, and I didn’t have to shoulder all of this on my own. That we needed to share it.

That all was not lost.