Page 5 of The Sins of Silas (The Otacian Chronicles #2)

Chapter Five

MERRICK

T he camp was set up relatively quickly. Edmund and Hendry gathered the wood needed for our fire, and we all ate through the rations of food we had brought along with us. None of us were too eager to walk through the creepy pass, well, at least tonight. We would begin our journey in the morning.

After seeing to our needs, everyone began resting soon after. We were all exhausted, Viola especially. She passed out the second she hit her bedroll.

My eyes trailed over her beautiful face, and guilt overcame me. She was the only one who walked this entire way. You could best believe I would ensure she was one of the people riding a horse through this pass.

“She was pretty tired, huh?” Edmund asked from across the campfire. He and I were taking the first shift, watching over everyone in the event an enemy approached .

My brows scrunched together, and looking at his awkward smile made my fists clench. I was grateful for them taking our side in this war, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be friends with any of them. I didn’t want to read his emotions—I didn’t care about them one bit. So, I chose not to, visualizing a mental wall to cut him off.

I rested my elbow on my knee. “Shifting takes a lot out of her,” I grumbled.

His lips pulled to the side as he slowly nodded, eyes skimming those of our group. I followed suit, surveying all of our sleeping companions.

My eyes landed on Erabella, whose blonde hair was tucked behind her rounded ear. Silas was sleeping on his back, his right arm draped around her as she slept with her back against his side.

She stirred, and as her eyes slowly opened, mine darted away, looking up at the massive mountain before me. It was even more menacing to look at in the dark.

Do Vampires truly live inside?

I’d heard tales of them when I was a boy, as my cousin Torrin found them particularly fascinating. Not me. I’d be A-OK without ever seeing one in my life. I couldn’t fathom being lost to bloodlust, forced to live in darkness.

I missed him…he was always like the older brother I never had. His thirty-first birthday was last month, and I wondered what he did to celebrate. I couldn’t let myself dwell on it…dwell on the fear that something had happened to him.

He was gone for eight years before, after all, following Igon’s orders and moving to Otacia. I hoped it wasn’t another eight before I saw him again.

“Can’t sleep?” Edmund asked Era quietly .

I heard her soft moan as she stretched. “Can’t say the ground has grown more comfortable for me,” she complained in a sleepy voice.

When I dared another glance, she was staring at me, the flames casting a glow against her tanned skin.

Her lip tilted up. “What, no smart-ass comment about what a princess I am?”

Edmund let out a low whistle, covering his mouth to conceal a smile.

I narrowed my eyes at her and gave her a smirk. “You’re in good spirits,” I said, tuning into her emotions and watching her smile falter as I did so.

Despite the unpredictable environment we now found ourselves in, she felt safe. She felt comfortable, which was a surprise because the night of our escape, I had felt so much hesitancy from her. I had felt her fear. Her apprehension.

I continued reading her, and I could feel myself flush when I felt her arousal, probably due to the Prince lying beside her. I inhaled sharply, quickly turning my reading off as I held my hands together atop my groin as nonchalantly as I could.

One of the setbacks of being a man.

She gave me a curious expression, but I glanced away again. Perhaps I would tease her about that emotion, but not in front of Edmund. That didn’t feel right. Plus, it wasn’t the first time I had felt that emotion from someone else. It always felt like an invasion of privacy…though I supposed that’s exactly what it was.

“How does it work?” she asked gently.

My eyes slid to hers again.

“Reading emotions, how does it work?” she clarified .

Edmund shifted in his place on the ground. “Yeah, that’s gotta come in handy. It certainly did at the fort.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, then dragged my attention back to Erabella, clicking my tongue. “How does any of it work?” Once it was safe for me to do so, I lifted a knee again, resting my elbow atop it. “Before, it was something I couldn’t stop. When I first got this power, I felt everything from everyone. It was exhausting…and overwhelming.”

“You feel every emotion of the people you read?” she questioned with broadened eyes.

I nodded. “Happiness. Sadness. Anger. Jealousy.” I paused. “Desire.”

I could assume Erabella knew I had felt her arousal when I watched her cheeks turn pink. Edmund examined me with a raised brow.

“I can tell when people lie,” I continued grimly. “I feel when they are scared or embarrassed. I feel it all, and I feel it as if it’s my own.” I stared into the flames of the fire before me. “But emotions aren’t always easy to understand. Most people have trouble understanding their own emotions.”

Just because I could feel what someone felt, like sadness, for example, didn’t mean I automatically comprehended it. Someone could be sad about a multitude of things.

I shrugged. “Feeling the emotion is the simple part. Connecting those emotions to understand the why is what proves difficult at times.”

The firelight danced in Erabella’s brown eyes as she scanned me from head to toe. “That sounds awful.”

I scoffed. “ You’ve no idea.”

“So that’s how you knew to trust Silas?” Edmund asked, his face now resting on his carbonado fist, trying to stay awake. “Using that power?”

The feelings I felt from Silas were…strange. I didn’t wish to bring that up—especially near his wife.

“I was able to know he was telling the truth about not wishing to harm Lena, yes.”

“That power seems like it’ll be useful in this war,” Edmund replied sleepily.

I nodded, resting back on my palms. I was exhausted, too. But if there really were Vampires, or even just Otacians looking for us, we needed at least one of us alert—ideally a Mage.

I blinked slowly, and my eyes caught Era’s again, her own blinks suggesting she’d be back asleep soon. The warm, crackling fire, the pleasant nighttime breeze, and the stars in the sky made it hard for any of us to stay awake after such a long day of travel.

Her mouth parted as if to say something, and I cocked my head to the side, choosing to read her again.

Her words caught in her throat, presumably at the sight of my eye color turning dark, and she laughed softly. “Is it always necessary? To read someone?”

I shrugged nonchalantly. “Amongst those of an enemy kingdom, I’d say so.”

Her smile vanished, and after a few moments more of looking at me, she turned to lie on Silas’s chest, who, in his sleep, held on to her closer.

I felt a few emotions from her…annoyance and disappointment. But I was not expecting the last one.

Hurt .

I supposed what I said came out pretty bitter…but what did she expect? Her kind had hated mine for decades. A handful of my people were slaughtered by hers just a few weeks ago.

She felt hurt by my words.

I wasn’t expecting that fact to bother me, either. But it did.