The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,191

horror over her.

He knew her gender, her voice. Could guess she was on the Jaspers. And who else was close enough to Kip that he would entrust with such a treasure?

Abaddon was gone. For the moment. But he hunted, and where could she go that he would not find her?

But where had he gone?

A sense of peace came over her. A fathomless well of quiet, somehow qualitatively different from the silence that had come before. Peace.

And Teia slept once more.

But this she heard, first, before the soporific waves closed over her consciousness.

“Can we not save her?” a man asked mournfully, but his voice was layered as with his own echo. It was like no human voice.

“Too close. She might hear,” a woman said, her quietly resounding voice soothing as a summer rain, warm as blankets by the fire.

“She’ll think she dreams,” he protested.

“Even dreams may move a mortal.”

“I have time left there. I could protect her myself—” he started.

“Not while she has the cloak,” the woman insisted. “If he knew we’d already found it, you know what that would mean for this world. He could rally many to his cause. Our only hope is in her stealth.”

“And she has no hope at all? We demand that of her, without even asking?”

“She holds the most precious possession of—and willfully insulted—the former angel of death himself. We’re not demanding anything of her she hasn’t chosen already.”

“This is our war. We owe it to—”

“And it is war! Or have you forgotten whose skins Abaddon used to make that abomination?!” The woman’s voice had risen to thunder and lightning looking for a place to strike. “And now I’ve stirred her, and she will remember.” She sighed. “Nor was that an accident, was it? Sometimes I wonder how I was assigned to the Guile and you to this woman.”

“I think it was your love of spectacle, wasn’t it?” the man answered, amused.

“You win this round, Nuri, but don’t forget, we are on the same side.”

There was a sudden rush as of something departing at great speed.

But Teia wasn’t alone. The man spoke once more. “I am a watcher and a messenger, not a warrior, and the farthest thing from a rebel, no matter how that just sounded. I cannot fight for you except in words. Cannot stand for you except in prayer, Adrasteia, though that is stronger than you know. But this I promise you: If you fall and Abaddon seizes you, before he can take you away to his realms to do all he has promised, I will do everything in my power to kill you. That much I promise. But no more.”

And then the immortal was gone.

“Wow. Thanks,” Teia said. She meant it to come out as sarcasm. But she’d believed every threat Abaddon had uttered, and she found, to her horror, that her gratitude was sincere.

She woke fully into the darkness of her little closet, and slept no more.

Chapter 54

~Andross the Red~

25 years ago. (Age 41.)

“You know why it must be done,” I say.

“No, we can’t. We can’t.”

“Do you think I want to do this?” I ask. This is not what I need from my bride now. I need her to be the strong one. She won’t even have to be there when it’s done. She won’t be the one who has to speak to Gavin and convince him to do the deed.

“What if we’re wrong?” Felia breathes.

She is a fierce intellect, my Felia, though she hides it under soft smiles and a warm demeanor. Others see her as always just smart enough to understand their troubles, and they see not her perceptive questions. She is patient where I have never been, and when fools explain things to her that are not, she doesn’t correct them. She plays a different game than I. Always has. It was part of my calculus when marrying her. Her strengths, plus mine, would make us unstoppable.

But only if our strengths are added, because our weaknesses subtract, too. We are both deep feelers.

Curse you, Ulbear Rathcore, for laying this trap at my feet. Curse you, Orea Pullawr, for all your pretenses at piety, while you go along with this. I will have my revenge. On both of you.

“Felia, how many languages do you know?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“How many?”

“Nine, depending how one counts. Four of those more or less fluently, albeit with muddled accents. Three dexterously enough to pass as a native, given a bit of time to brush up.”

“Did you get the translations wrong?”

She sighed.