The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2) - Veronica Roth Page 0,128

was a lantern that glowed faint pink, the result of faded hushflower powder. He turned right there, guiding them away from the Hall of Prophecy. He thought it was safe, leading them through the dormitories of the oblates who lived at the temple, but he had miscalculated—at the end of the row of doors was a young woman with her hair piled high on her head, yawning as she tugged her sweater back over her shoulder.

Their eyes met. Akos shook his head, but he was too late—Lazmet had already seen her.

“Don’t let her run,” he said, sounding bored.

The yellow-haired soldier streaked past Akos with her blade outstretched, black strings of current wrapped around her clenched fist. She thrust with one arm and caught the girl with the other. A sick gurgling sound came out of her mouth, a scream aborted before it could even take shape.

Akos shuddered.

Tell me your mission, he repeated to himself as he tasted bile.

To kill Lazmet Noavek.

“Stay here,” Lazmet said to the soldier in a quiet voice. “Make sure she doesn’t make noise. And that no one else interferes.”

Swallowing hard, Akos kept going, past the girl, wheezing now with what was left of her life, and the soldier, wiping her bloody blade on the seat of her pants.

It was a clear night, so the moon, still rising to its full height, glowed through the narrow windows they passed. There were still scars in the stone walls from the Shotet siege that happened before Akos was born. He remembered running his fingers over them when he was a kid, stretching high over his head to touch the violence he hadn’t yet seen.

That violence lived in his blood, not because he was a Shotet, but because he was a Noavek. The great-grandfather who had been a mediocre blacksmith and a vicious killer. The grandmother who had murdered her own siblings. The father who put a vise around the city of Voa. The brother who twisted and warped Eijeh.

It would end here. Now.

Akos reached the door he was looking for, had been looking for since they first landed. It didn’t lead to a backup generator. There was no backup generator for the temple, a fact that had caused trouble during more than one snowstorm, forcing them to host a small pack of oblates in their house until the wind died down.

No, this door led to the courtyard where the hushflowers grew. A small field of deadly poison, right there in the temple.

Akos opened it, gesturing Lazmet inside.

“After you,” he said.

Akos stepped in front of the soldier before he could follow Lazmet into the courtyard, bringing the door swinging behind him. The move had surprised the man; he didn’t even object as Akos slammed the door between them, and turned the bolt so he couldn’t get in.

“If your intention was to trick me into poisoning myself, your timing is off,” Lazmet said.

Akos turned. The hushflowers—the ones he had been counting on to make this easier, their poison blooms capable of felling Lazmet even if he, Akos, couldn’t—weren’t there. Their stalks were empty. The flowers had already been harvested.

The knife was still cool against Akos’s back. If Vakrez hadn’t given it to him, he would be as good as dead right now.

Lazmet spread his hands, gesturing to all the dying leaves that surrounded him. He stood in the middle of the narrow path of stone that ran through the courtyard, to keep the caretakers away from the death-giving blossoms. Hushflower leaves died off in the peak of the Awakening, when the weather was warmest, though the roots stayed viable for a lifetime, if cared for properly. So all the greenery around Akos’s father was limp and smelled like rot and dirt, ready to lie fallow until the next Blooming. There was no poison left to kill Lazmet with.

“That’s inconvenient,” Akos said. “But I do have a backup plan.”

He lifted his shirt, and drew Vakrez’s currentblade.

“Vakrez. Now, that’s a surprise. I didn’t think his heart had gone that soft in my absence,” Lazmet said.

His voice had lost the unctuous quality it usually had when he spoke to Akos, like he was resorting to singsong with a stubborn kid. This was not the Lazmet who found him amusing. It was the one who forced people to cut out their own eyes.

“I will have to punish him as soon as I am finished with you.” He was folding the cuffs of his sleeves over, one turn after another, so they stayed up by his