Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,24

her brain finally register the room's final surprise.

Robin leaned on a thick cane, her fingers going bloodless, so tightly were they pressed into the wooden grip.

Shins was not, quite clearly, the only one overwhelmed. That near-deathgrip suddenly trembling, Robin stumbled. Her old friend gasped, moved to catch her, but the stranger reached her first. She wrapped an arm around Robin's waist, steadying her, and even when the younger woman stood upright once more, the other kept a gentle, supporting hand on her shoulder.

Finally, it appeared Robin had pulled herself together, at least enough for words. “Widdershins?”

Shins almost broke, then and there. The thick concoction of doubt and fear, delight and hope, hurt and yearning and, yes, anger…it was a toxin, leeching into her heart, her lungs, her soul. Crying openly, she all but threw herself into her friend's arms, slowing only at the last second as she remembered Robin's unsteadiness and her cane. The stranger, once she was certain that Robin was not, in fact, to be knocked from her feet, glided a few steps backward, her own expression a blank mask.

And for a few intense, glorious moments, the two old friends held tight to one another and wept together.

Only for a few moments. Robin pulled back without warning, so quickly that it was Shins's turn to stagger. She caught herself, looked into her friend's face, jaw already moving to ask a question…

She saw, though Robin's face was wet with tears, that her lips had gone flat, her eyes flinty.

“I'm glad to see you're not hurt,” the younger woman said in a near monotone. “We've been worried for a long time.”

“Robin? I—”

“Did you just get in, Shins? You smell like a used saddle.”

It was just the sort of comment Robin would have made in good humor, but there was nothing behind it here. These were the motions, and she was determined to go through them.

“Robin?” Shins tried again. “Are you…not happy to see me? Did I do someth—”

The other woman, standing back and silently seething this whole time, erupted. “Did you do something?!” Shins actually jumped at her voice, found herself backpedaling as the stranger advanced. “How can you even ask her that?! How dare you ask her that?!”

“What are you talking about, you crazy—?”

“Faustine,” Robin said at the same time, but the woman didn't hear her.

“You abandoned her!” Faustine accused, her finger an angry dagger jutting at Shins's chest. “You were her best friend, her only family! The only one that made her feel safe! And you just walked out, leaving her to wonder if you were ever coming back, how she was going to make it, if you were even alive or dead! You selfish, heartless—!”

Shins saw nothing but fire, heard nothing in the pounding of her ears except the roar and crackle of that flame. Not since Aubier, where she learned her self-loathing anger and Olgun's own fury had enflamed one another, had she felt anything close to such rage. She hadn't thought herself capable of it, anymore, but here it was, sucking her in, wrapping its ugly tendrils tight about her.

She lashed out, fast and brutal, a blow that might well have caused this Faustine severe or lasting injury. Even as she attacked, however, Olgun was there; Olgun was always there, ready to save her from any danger. Even herself.

Flowing as if through a burst dam, a torrent of emotion crashed through her burning anger. Dredged from the depths of her mind, the nesting place of dreams, they flooded through her, summoned and guided by her own personal god.

And Shins knew—she remembered—with whom she was truly furious. Why Faustine's words had so viciously stung.

Because Widdershins had long accused herself of precisely the same thing.

No way, in that fraction of a second, for her to halt the strike she'd begun. Between her own reflexes and Olgun's aid, however, she was able to slow it, flatten her palm, transform what would have been a bruising, possibly bone-breaking blow into a vicious shove. The woman staggered back almost to the wall, nearly toppled, gasped in pain as she clutched her chest, but nothing more. Nothing worse.

“You have no idea!” Shins screamed, her fists tight and shaking. Even in her tirade, though, she couldn't miss Robin limping clumsily, awkwardly to Faustine's side. “You have no hopping idea what I'd been through! What I'd seen! What I'd lost! I had to get out for a while! I had to—”

This time, when Faustine interrupted, her voice was calm, almost soft, yet wrapped