Page 22 of Ashes of Honor

“Actually.” Riley’s arm fell behind Elie and rested along the back of her chair. He quickly removed it as he caught her inching away once again. It wasn’t a movement of fear, but rather disgust. The way her small lips curled when she spoke to him. The daggers in her eyes. “Every place outside of Salem thinks that. Some more disdainfully than others.”

I considered that for a moment. The impact my involvement would have on the others. Everyone had bowed to Ronan. Some because they trusted my judgment, others because they considered themselves cornered and without options, either way, I’d owe them answers by the end of this. “Whatever. If I take them out, it turns their entire cause against Monterey and Salem. More specifically, me as a leader.”

“Still not seeing how that relates to them watching you,” Elie said, her voice tinged with teenage defiance.

I clenched my jaw, weighing the best way to explain this. “Their causeisour cause.” For a moment, I doubted myself. Doubted this was the right decision, to include them all. Alexiares caught my eye, tilting his head in encouragement to keep going. “They’re already on our side. They’re a threat because once our forces unite, that’s a wrap. Covert’s fucked. Butif I take them out—he won’t have to worry about killing me, the rebels will do it for him.”

The room fell to a tense silence as people filtered out. Dinner time now moving into the time night shift filtered in to fuel up before their day began.

“So what’s taking them thirty days and thirty nights to show themselves?” Reina whispered as low as she was capable of going, combing through the short ends of her hair.

“I’m not sure, but that’s what we need to find out,” I replied, doing my best to sound confident in what needed to be done. “Whatever the case, it’s why we can’t afford to do anything about any prisoners yet.”

Alexiares squeezed my thigh, his hand stopping the constant bouncing of my leg. “If we torture them, and they’re part of some secret militia thenwebecome the fucked. And frankly, I prefer to do the fucking.”

I jabbed him in the stomach as he sipped from his water. He spit it out and grimaced in pain. Elie’s nose scrunched as Emma scanned the table in confusion. The others fought off their humored reactions for the sake of the youngest around. Emma’s mouth was already filthy, no need to make things worse with Alexiares’s vocabulary.

“Scraps it is, Els,” I surmised as I maneuvered to peer past Riley and hold her gaze. “Can I trust you to take care of that?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Elie smirked, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

Abel cleared his throat, his voice steady. “I’ll help.”

“We’ve got this,” I muttered low and resolute. The weight of their stares didn’t crush me—it fueled me. “Hell won’t know what hit them.”

Tomoe

The dark circles under her eyes. Her dark, curly hair a complete juxtaposition to the dull complexion of her sepia skin. Amaia was the poster child for dark thoughts embodied.

We left the others behind at The Kitchens. I’d offered to walk her over to the school houses to share what my conversation with Hal had uncovered. She glanced to our left, the edge of The Garden’s a sad sight. We’d be okay—for now. I understood it was hard to believe when you couldn’tseethe options of the future yourself, but there was still hope.

“Okay, hit me with it.” Amaia commanded as she kept her eyes focused on the world around us, her head held high.

“We finally found something from the archives,” I said, tossing my braid back over my shoulder. “Lucky me, Hal was the source.”

Her eyes widened slightly, brows lifting as her lips pressed into a tight line. “Yikes. How did that go?”

“Exactly as you think it would. Short and to the point. He gave me permission to look into his past so I took the faster option.”

I could do whatever I wanted. I didn’t need his permission. But after Alexiares had confronted me about how violated he felt about me ‘watching’ his past when we had an established friendship, I suppose at least a heads-up was due. After Seth, it would be dumb to say I would never cross that line. There wasn’t a reason to not trust the people around me after all that we’d been through together. Unless they gave me a reason, I’d respect boundaries.

She choked on a laugh. “Would expect nothing more from you. So, the outcome?”

The stone gray stairs leading to the entrance of GLQ was a tight squeeze. I fucking hated it. When we’d been a proper compound, people kept their distance. Now it was impossible to pass through without brushing shoulders with the person next to you. The communal bathrooms had also become an issue. No one wanted to wait for over an hour to take a five-minute bath in dirty water. We couldn’t build out fast enough.

It was almost as if our walls crumbling had been a gift from the universe. An opportunity to rebuild stronger than before. We held our silence until the crowd thinned out. Amaia ran her fingers against the tan bricks under an arch connecting some of the old dorms. They were temporary housing. What Prescott, Jax, and Amaia had lived in when the place first started.

“Before I say what I’m about to say, you should know this is only the word of one source.”

“I’m aware of how ethnographic documentation works.” She kept her voice low but her impatience was clear. Every day, all day, she was on a schedule. If there was even a second she could spare to chat with one of us outside of work, she wanted to take it.

“A simple reminder not to get ahead of yourself.”

“Heard.” She gritted her teeth and kicked a pebble down a side street in between a few of the Tuscan-style homes. “So out with the words or let me have five minutes of peace before I have to move on to my next task.”

Wet concrete mingled with the pungent scent of dusty earth. The construction of the area moved as quickly as it could. We’d decided to build up in this section. The infrastructure supported it and it wouldn’t be an eye-sore in the future given the architecture. At some point, people would care about that shit again and there was no need to do the work twice. Inefficiencies had been a pet peeve of the big three from the beginning. That hadn’t changed now that it was just Amaia left.

“Hal came straight from Texas after Laurel got my note. When she died, he didn’t hesitate—just headed west. That means he has no clue what’s happening near Covert’s border. Only thing he could do is speculate from his time on the road.”

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