delightful pulses up her thighs, a part of Mia—the part Mister Kindly would have filled, most likely—was still suspicious of this girl in her arms. She thought about what the shadowcat had told her in Whitekeep. Wondering if the thing he took—fear, and all the spectrum of emotions it gave birth to—were things she should cherish rather than give away.
“Where did you find it?” she asked.
“Mmm?” Ash murmured, raising her head.
“The map.” Mia traced the line of Ash’s tattoo with her fingertip. “Where was it?”
“Old temple,” Ash sighed, sinking back onto Mia’s breast. “Ashkah.” She squirmed closer as Mia continued to stroke her back. “S’nice. Keep doing that.”
Mia sucked on her cigarillo, breathed gray into the air. Thunder rolled outside.
“What kind of temple?”
“Ruined. Dedicated to Niah. Why?”
“Who made it? Worship of Niah has been outlawed for centuries.”
Ash lifted her head again, a note of caution in her voice. “I don’t know. It was old. Hidden, too. Carved out of red stone, in the northern mountains. Up near the coast.”
“And you were sent by Duomo to find it, aye? With others, you told me.”
Ashlinn looked at Mia a long moment before she spoke. The waves crashed against their hull, the storm swelling darker and fiercer outside.
“There were ten of us. A bishop of Aa’s ministry named Valens. A pack of thugs—a Liisian named Piero, and two Itreyans named Rufus and Quintus. Can’t remember the rest. I don’t think Duomo trusted the Luminatii, so they were sellswords all. There was a Vaanian cartographer named Astrid, too. And me.”
“What happened to them?”
“They died.”
Mia took a long drag on her cigarillo, eyes narrowed against the smoke. “How?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Did you kill them?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
Mia shrugged, looking into the girl’s sky-blue eyes.
“Rufus got killed by a rockadder. Valens and most of the others died in the temple.” Ash looked at Mia’s rising eyebrow and sighed. “There were … things in there, Mia. In the map chamber. Like the bookworms in the Red Church Athenaeum almost, but … smaller. Faster.” Ash shook her head, shuddering slightly. “They attacked while Astrid was scribing the map. Piero and his sellswords tried to save the priest, they all got cut to ribbons. It was … messy. Only Astrid and I made it out, and then, only just.”
“And what happened to Astrid?”
“I killed her,” Ash said, her voice flat. “She worked for Duomo and I didn’t trust her. So I cut her throat the turn I got the map scribed on my skin. Happy now?”
Lightning arced across the skies, thunder shaking the Maid in her bones.
“Why have you got your back up?” Mia asked. “Why so defensive?”
“Why ask me about all this now?”
“I never really had a chance before,” Mia shrugged. “I want to know how all these pieces fit. If we’re going to this Crown of the Moon—”
“You’re not seriously considering that?” Ash asked.
Mia dragged deep on her smoke. “I don’t know what I’m considering yet, Ash.”
Ashlinn scowled. “I don’t like it, Mia. All this talk of shattered moons and warring gods and whatnot. It stinks of rot to me. I don’t trust Tric as far as I could throw him.”
“You threw him all the way off a mountain, if I recall.”
Ash blinked. “O, now here’s a turn. Is the most infamous killer in the Itreyan Republic honestly about to lecture me on the morality of murder?”
Mia spoke slow, broaching the topic with as much care as she could muster.
“He was your friend, Ashlinn…”
“He wasn’t my friend,” Ash spat. “There are no friends in the Church of Our Lady of Blessed Murder. And he wasn’t some lost lamb I butchered, either. He was the servant of a death cult that I was trying to burn to the ground. He killed an innocent child to take his place among Niah’s Blades, Mia. And I’m not hypocritical enough to blame him for that. But just because he’s got some pretty dimples doesn’t mean he’s not a fucking killer. Just like me. And just like you.”
Mia looked into Ashlinn’s eyes. Her walls were back up now, the softness long banished, the fire she breathed every turn of her life coming quick to her lips. For all her adoration, Ash wasn’t shy about standing up to Mia when she felt the need. Pushing back where no one else dared, cutting right to the heart of it. And sure enough, she’d found her mark. The truth Mia couldn’t argue with.