The Hunter and the Mage (The Raven and the Dove #2) - Kaitlyn Davis Page 0,167

pleaded, taking the soft hands that had never known a day's work into her own callused ones, rough from a life of begging and stealing on the street. We can go to another city. We can go somewhere he'll never find us.

It’s not about him, she'd said, her face tilting to the side as an auburn wave fell over her eyes. Effie had brought their clasped hands to her lips, then kissed Brighty's fingers once before dropping them. It's about me. I want a family. I want children of my own, and I want them to live as comfortably as I do. I want stability. I don’t want to run.

It was the one thing Brighty never could have given her—a child. Oh, there were ways of course, men who could be hired, men who were willing to make arrangements, but that wasn't what Effie wanted. She'd wanted what she had right now, a mansion in the right part of town, a baby in her arms, a husband in her bed, a life with no surprises and no troubles. Brighty had been her brief stint of teenage rebellion, though it had taken her a long time to realize that when at the time Effie had been her whole world.

"I'm happy for you," Brighty said, surprised to find the words were true as she pushed the memories to the back of her mind.

Warmth entered Effie's dark eyes. "And I'm worried for you. What's going on, Thalyia? Who is this? Why are you here?"

"I don't want to get you involved. I just need a boat. You can say someone stole it, or that it somehow got loose, but I need to get this man to safety. If you ever trusted me at all, please trust me now when I tell you it's important."

Indecision played across Effie's features, but it was over faster than Brighty expected. Perhaps their time together had meant something to her after all. "Follow me."

Effie led her down the hall and toward the back door of the house, stopping only once along the way to toss her a blanket made of metal mesh. "It'll stifle the fire," was all she said, and then they were outside. The gardens were just as she remembered, every bush carefully trimmed, every flower carefully ordered, the patterns intricately designed to be viewed from the home above. She should have known all along Effie would never run wild and free, not when this was her oasis. Brighty used to spend hours in the dark shadows of these groves. She'd use a borrowed boat to sneak in by the dock, where the gate was left unlocked. Effie would spin her agro'kine magic—nothing very fancy, she was just a low-level mage—and Brighty would shine her light along the petals to help them bloom. Sometimes they'd lose themselves, crushing the flower beds just to grow them again.

Those nights had been rare moments of peace in a life that had been anything but calm, all but the final night. Effie's father had caught them rolling around beneath the roses and demanded Brighty be exiled from the city. She ran, of course, positive she'd be able to avoid the authorities the way she'd done most of her life already. And it had worked, too, until the day of Effie's wedding. Like any imbecile in the throes of heartbreak, Brighty had gotten piss drunk and decided to use her magic to blast apart whatever metal structures she came upon, hitting four water main lines and two fountains before the final fatal blow. A young boy had been playing on the other side of the third fountain, out of sight while he leaned low over his marbles. She hadn't seen him until it was too late and he was little more than a body among the wreckage. A situation like that sobers one quickly. After scooping up his frail body, she’d sprinted for the castle and begged to meet with the king. Photo'kines were valuable, the only reason she was granted an audience. He offered her a choice right there—her life in exchange for the boy's. A few days later, she was handed over to Captain Rokaro and given a new home on The Wanderer.

Sometimes, such as now while she hefted Rafe through the metal gate and down the wet wooden steps to the dock, nearly falling on her ass in the process, she thought about that little boy whose name she didn’t even know to remind herself the sacrifice had been