wondered if Xander had spoken the same words to Halcyon, weeks ago. How could one truly be ready for something they had never encountered?
Evadne followed Damon through the doors, into the afternoon sunlight, to where their horses waited.
She carried only three things with her as they departed Mithra:
The sword sheathed at her back.
Kirkos’s relic around her neck, hidden beneath her tunic.
And Halcyon’s kopis at her belt.
Lyra rode along the path to the quarry outpost, two guards trailing her. Of course, her mother would not allow her to come to the common quarry without an escort, and Lyra tried not to let it irk her. But deep in her heart, she knew her father believed her fragile, and her mother never let her stray anywhere unwatched. It would only worsen now, with Xander gone. Damon was the only one in the family she felt like she could speak freely to, but he had been heavily preoccupied for weeks. And even then, he could never understand. Their parents treated them differently.
Lyra thought of Xander, and her chest ached.
She had been a child when he had left for the Bronze Legion. But hardly a morning passed when she didn’t wish that she had known him more.
She cast thoughts of her oldest brother aside, or else she might approach Halcyon in hatred, and her mother had been adamant about Lyra being pleasant to the murderer. To treat her as she would any of her other patients.
She passed no one on the road but a farmer and his wife, cantering to the south in a rush, and Lyra sighed as she finally arrived at the quarry gates.
She had never been here. And she could not stifle the shiver that moved through her as she entered the outpost with her bag of supplies, her mother’s appointed escorts trailing her. She followed one of the quarry guards as he led her down the serpentine prison corridor, and she listened to the echoes that haunted the air: the chisels and the cracks and the shouts.
It reeked in the prison. Stale air, refuse, vomit, unwashed male.
She began to breathe through her mouth, preparing herself. Her mother had warned her that Halcyon was in terrible shape and that Lyra should guard her emotions, her face. To give the murderer only hope, not disgust or despair.
The guard unexpectedly stopped. Lyra almost plowed into him.
“What is it?” she asked, annoyed.
But he was silent, staring at a cell. Lyra moved around him to see the iron door was wide open. She drew closer, her heart beginning to pound . . .
“Lyra,” one of her escorts reached out, trying to grasp her arm, to hold her back. “It is not safe. Wait.”
She slipped through his fingers and entered what she knew to be Halcyon’s prison cell.
A blanket was torn on the floor. The bucket of refuse spilled. A stool overturned.
And Halcyon . . . was not there. Lyra knelt and reached for the one thing she recognized, her hand shaking.
Her father’s kopis lay abandoned on the floor.
And the blade was stained with blood.
XXII
Evadne
We should make good time,” Damon said, kneeling in the moonlight to set out their meal. “The wind is blowing in our favor.”
Evadne nodded, wrapping her shawl closer around her. They had ridden hard that day, their horses kicking up clouds of golden dust, the southern road bending like a sickle toward the mountains. It was now midnight, and Damon’s charena charm had worn off, and the horses needed water and rest.
They had taken pains to find a flat ridge among the Dacian foothills, hidden from sight of the road. But Damon did not want to take any chances. They would burn no fires on their journey, and the night was cold.
Evadne shivered; she felt battered from the hours of hard riding, and she was too weary to speak. She ate her bread and smoked fish by starlight and then lay down, struggling to keep warm. She listened to the wind, to the horses as they munched on the mountain grass, to Damon as he moved around nearby, trying to settle.
She knew she would not be able to sleep with her bones rattling from the cold.
“Damon? Are you cold?”
He was quiet for a moment. And then he drawled, “I am freezing, Evadne.”
“Should we share a blanket? I could keep you warm.”
Within an instant, he was crawling to her, dragging his shawl and blanket. “I will set my back to yours,” he suggested. “If you think that will keep me warm the best.”
Evadne