Page 73 of Realm of Thieves

I come to a stop.

“What’s wrong?” Andor asks.

Unease prickles my scalp. “It’s too dark. This passage is usually lit.”

“I can see well enough,” he says.

I shake my head. “I don’t like this. We should go back and try another route.”

But when I turn around to face him, he’s gone.

Chapter 20

Andor

I watch as Brynla stopsin the darkness, voicing her concerns about taking another route. But before she can turn around to face me, there’s a blade at my throat.

Every instinct tells me to twist backward, away from the sharp edge, and flip over the attacker behind me, but then another blade is poised at my spine, the point hard enough to break the skin.

Then the attacker moves sideways, using their legs to trip up mine, spinning me around all while keeping both blades in the exact same position, showcasing a skill in motion that I’ve rarely seen, and then I’m thrown against the wall. The blade now moves to the side of my throat, right under the jaw, a piercing pain.

“Andor!” Brynla cries out, and I find it curious that Lemi hasn’t tried to jump to my defense. Perhaps the hound isn’t as loyal to me as I thought.

“I’ve got him,” says a woman’s voice at my ear, cool and confident.

“Ellestra?” Brynla croaks. Of course this is her fucking aunt. I suppose I was expecting our meet to start violently. “Stop! Let him go. He’s with me.”

“I know he’s with you,” Ellestra says, still not taking her knivesaway. “That’s why he’s not dead yet. After that bloody magicked raven came to deliver the message, I wasn’t about to take my chances. Figured this was a trap of some sort.”

“It’s not a trap,” I tell her, speaking my words carefully so that she doesn’t puncture my throat.

She grunts at my ear. “Now is the time to tell me the truth, Bryn. Say the word and I’ll put him down easy.”

Brynla sighs and I hear her stomp over to us, and then suddenly the knives are gone.

“I said stop it,” Brynla says. “He’s with me.”

“And you’re with him,” her aunt says bitterly. But she steps away from me, leaving me to properly exhale and turn around, facing both women.

Brynla’s aunt looks nothing like I expected. From the way she handled me I assumed she’d be a tall woman with as much muscle as I have, but instead she’s thin and wiry, not much taller than Brynla, and looks much older than I thought. Her eyes are sharp and light, though their exact color is hard to tell in the dark, and her hair is dark and cut short to her ears. Her clothes are black and tight, making her look like a shadow, and her knives are swiftly put back in secret compartments.

Her face is a scowl as she looks me up and down, but when she looks at Brynla her expression doesn’t change. I can already see where Brynla gets her demeanor from.

“Not exactly the welcome I was hoping for,” Brynla says, giving me a brief, vaguely apologetic look.

“What did you expect?” Ellestra says. “For the red carpet to be rolled out and trumpeters to descend from the heavens?” But there’s a wryness to her tone and just a fleeting glimpse of a smile.

Then the tension seems to break as Ellestra pulls Brynla into a tight embrace. I’m watching Brynla’s face closely. The wariness and anxiety seem to disappear, melting into something like security andcomfort. Love. Her brows soften, her face becoming innocent and younger somehow, causing a pang between my ribs.

All at once I feel both envious and deeply ashamed. I’m the one who blackmailed Brynla into leaving her one remaining family member, her friend, her blood. I pulled her away from this city and this life. I never once thought that Brynla might have missed her aunt, or yearned for this life, a life I now see I knew nothing about. I never considered her own feelings in what I was doing—I was too focused on what she could do for me. At most I thought I was taking her away from something awful, as if I were doing her a favor. I needed to think that in order to justify what I was doing.

I was wrong, plain and simple. And though I’ve already given Brynla a way out of this mess—which she declined—part of me hopes she takes me up on it.

And part of me dreads the idea of her staying here for good.

Finally, they pull apart, Brynla’s eyes meeting mine for a moment. In the darkness of the tunnel I’m not sure that she can see me but I can clearly see her, the way her eyes glisten with tears, the furrows in her brow. She looks away, squaring her shoulders as she steps back, that firm set to her jaw coming back again. I know she has to be tough, how it’s been demanded of her, probably since she was born. But seeing those glimpses of softness inside her—whether it be in her aunt’s embrace, in a cave while I healed her pain, or when she leaned against my shoulder last night and gazed at me with larger, adoring brown eyes, asking if I wanted her—makes me want her more. Like she’s letting me in on a secret, a part of her no one else sees.

“Come on,” Ellestra says, giving Lemi a thorough pat and a scratch behind the ears. “We better get going before we attract attention. I imagine you’ve had quite the journey.”

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