Page 87 of Children of Fallen Gods

My pen hovered. I fought the overwhelming urge to strike out the previous words, to replace them with ones I knew my father would prefer to hear — the reassurance that the Sidnee traditions alone would protect us.

But instead, I signed my name, folded the letter, and sealed it up with my dissent carefully nestled inside.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Max

When I arrived back at the inn, the ground floor was oddly quiet. My eyes landed on a familiar set of blond curls. Moth was at a pub table, sagging over a mostly-empty glass of what looked to be piss-poor mead.

Ascended help us all.

I approached him. “You look like you’re having an incredibly good time.”

Moth lifted his head and gave me a grin that made me roll my eyes.

“You’re thirty years too young to be this drunk alone at a pub, Moth. Actually, you’re too young to be drunk at all.”

“I wasn’t alone! Not until…” He looked around, as if realizing for the first time that all his friends had gone.

“Ascended above. How many of those did you have?”

“Just two,” Moth said, taking another gulp out of his glass, which was roughly the size of his head.

“May the gods be with you in the morning.” I sighed and settled into the chair beside him. I was feeling my own wine. It had been quite some time since I’d drank that much.

In the back of the room, a maid stumbled down the stairs, causing a small stir as she hurried over to another barkeep, whispering frantically.

I watched them, blinking blearily, a wrinkle forming on my brow.

Even through the haze of drunkenness, I noticed that something seemed… off. The maid looked shaken, though she didn’t speak above a whisper, even from across the room I could sense the panic in her words.

Her eyes slipped to us, wide and frightened.

“Moth,” I said, quietly. “Where did the others go?”

He shrugged. “Upstairs. Bed.”

Just like that, I was very, very sober. I straightened.

The maid didn’t break my stare. She unfurled just one finger, pointing —up.

A decade-old memory surfaced, of another inn not unlike this one. An inn where my troops and enemy troops had found themselves in the same place, at the same time. I had lost two friends that night, all to what amounted to nothing more than bad luck. Wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong people.

Our next target was less than a hundred miles from here. And Meriata was a central hub for rest and pleasure seeking, the kind of place that soldiers — soldiers fromanyarmy — would find themselves drawn to.

I had been careless.

I’d been so desperate to come here for my own reasons that I hadn’t stopped to think of the risks. I had been so damned careful, until now.

I rose. “Get up, Moth.”

He looked up, confused. “Why?”

“Do you have your sword?”

A sudden stillness fell over Moth’s face. He nodded.

“We aren’t alone here.” Slowly, I lifted my chin towards the stairs. Moth followed. The maids’ eyes followed us silently. The most frightened looking maid was young, but the barkeep looked old enough to be unsurprised. Perhaps this was not the first time this had happened here. There had been many clashes like this in Meriata, after all, during the Ryvenai War.

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