Page 50

Return To The Hovel

I’m measuring time by my single, familiar star. It creeps across the sky outside the tiny, glassless window in my room in the hovel where I lived with Omma most of my life. Why we’re in Enora, the others won’t tell me. Something about precautions and false trails.

It’s like nothing has changed since the last time I was here, and yet everything has.

What feels the same are the clothes I wear—I’m back in my disguise as the city waif who grew up on the streets of the white-walled city. What feels the same is the musty smell of the air and the fine layer of dust on the sheets on my bed, the sounds of carnal pleasure coming from the houses of ill repute our hovel is tucked between, the lingering taste of cinnamon bread and cured meat and wine we bought from street vendors as our dinner.

All of that makes me feel like I’m…home.

Ironic since I hated this place when I lived here. It felt like a prison. One I snuck out of over and over again to go to the desert and pretend I was a Wanderer with Cain. Now it feels like an escape.

But it isn’t either of those things—home or escape.

It’s just a stopping point on the road to possible death and dismemberment and a search for something that no longer exists.

I pull my knees to my chest. Tziah, Vos, Pella, and Hakan are all out in the city now, gathering Tyndran gear. Bene is in raven form, perched on top of the hovel as a watcher and guard. The others didn’t leave all that long ago, which means they’ll be a while. So, since I’m stuck waiting, I watch my star like I used to.

Which is when I see it. Or I think I do.

Tilting my head, I peer closer at my star. I spent eighteen years staring at that damn thing, so I know what it looks like as well as I used to know the crags of Omma’s face or the path out of the city through the western gate.

Does it look…dimmer?

I angle my head one way, then the other, then narrow my eyes to squint at it before jerking straighter.

I stick my hand through the window. It doesn’t feel like anything. Just open air, warm and dry, no different than in my room. A bit of a breeze even stirs against my fingertips. Withdrawing my hand, I turn away from the window, letting my gaze skate over every crevice, every corner of my room, inspecting each patch of darkness in turn. But nothing moves or twitches other than my own shadow cast by the moonlight.

Maybe I was wrong?

As I swing around to give the star another good long look, a knock sounds at my door. “Meren?” Reven’s velvet and iron voice rumbles on the other side.

Son of a bitch, I wasn’t wrong.

He put an invisible screen of darkness over my window, probably my door, too, to let him know if I try to leave this room. Was that his idea or someone else’s?

“I don’t know why you’re bothering to knock,” I call out. “But come in.”

The door swings slowly open on a creak of rusty hinges. He has to duck to get under the doorway. This place wasn’t built for tall men, just centuries of hidden princesses, all fairly petite.

I don’t miss the way he glances at the window. “Are you hungry?”

Terrible excuse.

My knees are still drawn up, so I prop my elbow on one and my chin in my hand. “I wasn’t trying to escape.”

If I wasn’t looking so hard, I would have missed the discomfort that tugs at the corners of his mouth. “That’s a funny answer to my wondering if you’re hungry.”

“I’m a funny girl, I guess.”

We both regard each other for a long, tense beat, waiting for the other to break and confess.

“You didn’t have to put shadows over my window,” I say. “You could have just asked me to let you know if I want to leave.”

He crosses his arms. “I may not remember my time with you, but I have at least figured out that you tend to do what you want without asking permission.”

I wince. “I’ve been getting better about that, actually.”

Lesson learned. A couple times, in fact.

“Sure.” He sounds skeptical. “It doesn’t matter either way. I put the shadows up at every entry point in case someone tries to get in. Not out.”

Oh. Now I feel like an ass. I glance away, then back to him. “When did you figure out how to do that better?” His attempt when we were invading Oaesys wasn’t invisible like this.

He shrugs.

“It feels like you’re learning your powers faster this time.”

“Yeah?” He thinks about that. “It probably helps that I’m not fighting the Shadow—”

He cuts off, watching my face warily.

I feel my cheek. “What? Did one of them cross my face without me feeling it?”

“No. I just…”

He just expected it to because Eidolon can get to me through our link and I don’t always know. Awesome. I’m like a terravore buried in the dunes and my friends and my—I’m still not sure what to call him—are all just waiting for me to upend their world any second.

“Why’d you bother knocking?” I sound pissy, even to my own ears. Goddess, I’m being such a brat. Clearing my throat, I cool it. “You could have just shadowed in here.”

“I didn’t want to set you off.”

Again with the evil in me. The thing is, I know they need to keep tabs on me like this. Even with the Shadows quiet since the moment we met Allusian, I’m well aware my anger has been building, my temper borderline out of control when it flares up. Eidolon has taken complete control of me multiple times and done a terrible thing through me, and I’m scared to death it’ll happen again. I keep seeing the sand nymph’s face when he used my hand to plunge that blade into her. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t say anything.

I make a face. “I already promised to keep you close.” It was either that or not come with them, and they need me.

Which is when one of the ladies in the brothel next door decides to let out a long, breathy moan of supposedly unfaked pleasure.

Hells swallow me whole.

“Have I been here before?” Reven asks behind me.

I scrunch up my nose, because I have a good idea what memory that sound is stirring. “No.”

“Then why—”

“We listened to a harpy eagle together once.”

There’s a pause. “I see.” Then another pause. “Old memories again,” he murmurs to himself more than me.

I shrug, still refusing to look at him.

Another louder moan floats across and through my window. It’s as bad experiencing this with him now as it was the last time, though in a different way. I shift, trying to relieve the warmth and tension starting to build. He regretted making love to me without his memories. I won’t do that again. To either of us.

“So good,” she groans across the way.

Heat flares in my cheeks. Why doesn’t he just leave?

“You know…I’d rather make new memories than keep having these old ones flash at me,” he says.

That gets me to turn my head and find him leaning in the doorway, arms still crossed and now one booted foot propped over the other, looking so much like my arrogant Reven, and yet the light in his eyes is…cautious.

I glance back at my star, because seeing him that way hurts. “I get it,” I say. “I was expected to do and be the same as all the hidden princesses before me, and when I didn’t conform, didn’t fit the mold, I was a disappointment. All I wanted was to go off and live a different life. My life.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs.

The heaviness in that single word sinks through me like a rock in quicksand. Right to the bottom to be buried forever.

“Oh yes, oh goddess!” Heady cries come from the brothel followed by the sounds of bodies coming together.

The suggestive noises, the eagerness in her voice, only tap into memories of shared moments with Reven, sending the tension inside me expanding and pushing outward with zero outlet. No way to find relief. Goddess, this sucks.

The thing is, this is the first time since our “morning after” that we’ve had a chance to breathe. I don’t want to go into danger with this…awkward distance…hanging between us.

When I turn this time, it’s with my whole body to face him, leaning back against the windowsill, my knees still drawn up. “So…what do you want?”