Page 13 of A Legacy of Storms and Starlight

“One that I’ll have to be getting back to. I’m on my way to Virian. I’ve connections there I can introduce you to. They’ll help you get set up, get on your way.”

Zylah felt a flicker of something at his words. Disappointment?You barely know him. No, not disappointment; it just felt as if she were trouble and he was trying to get rid of her.It’s the truth. But she could look after herself. Could find work with the local apothecary, perhaps, just enough to save for onward travel. “Connections. Are they Fae?”

Holt was quiet as he drained his cup.

“Can they teach me about the evanescing?” Zylah asked, handing him the empty cup and scooping up her clothes.

“I’m starting to understand why you stabbed someone for asking too many questions.” Holt was on his feet, tidying away their cups. He was far too big for the tiny cabin, but he moved with the grace of a wildcat and the silent footsteps to match.

He turned his back to her and Zylah considered throwing the dagger at the spot on the wall just in front of his head. Maybe later. She took her clothes to the bathroom instead, changing out of his and into the ones he’d washed for her.Gods above.But it felt good to have something familiar, something of home. Even if it was just the clothes on her back.Half Fae. And what did being Fae mean so far? They didn’t seem to stick together, that much she could tell.

She studied her face in the mirror. Her wounds were entirely healed: no black eye, no split lip. No rope marks at her neck. She still looked half-starved, though.A week in a rotting prison cell will do that for you.

She’d need to change her appearance, she thought, working strands of her blonde hair into a braid. Perhaps some erti root to dye it brown; she could change the style too. Her eyes would be harder to disguise, but she’d once seen a traveller in the Andells’ bakery with a pair of eyeglasses; she could look for a pair of those wherever Holt was taking her.

A new life. It was what she’d always wanted, wasn’t it? But it felt meaningless without being able to see her father and brother, or Kara. Like this, there was no one to share it with. She trampled the seed of doubt before it could whisper at her further and pushed the door open to the rest of the cabin. Her freedom was all that mattered.

Holt was waiting for her, arms folded across his chest—surprise, surprise—and waved a hand at her boots. “It’s another day’s journey to Virian. We should be there by nightfall.” He wore a dark leather coat that reached to his knees, a sword strapped across his back, the same shirt and trousers from the day before.

“Tell me,” Zylah said as she knelt to slip on her boots. “Why don’t you evanesce us all the way there? Is it too far for you?” Her fingers brushed against a sheath down the inside of one boot she’d noticed the day before, and she tucked her dagger securely inside it.

Holt straightened one of the benches beside the table with one hand. “No, it isn’t too far. Different types of magic leave a different type of trace. We’re trying to lose anyone who might be tracking us. Unless of course, you’d like me to lead the king’s guards right to you?”

It was a question that needed no response. But she tucked the snippet about the magic away for another time. “What’s the furthest you’ve ever evanesced?” Zylah asked, pushing herself to her feet, tilting her head back to meet his gaze.

An expression she couldn’t name danced across his face for a moment, and he tugged gently at her braid. “You’ll be too cold like this, and we need to cover your hair.” He waved a hand and a cloak wrapped around her shoulders.

“How do you do that?” she asked, examining the fine black fabric between her fingers. “Are you just pulling this stuff from nowhere?”

He laughed, and gently hooked a fastening at her throat, those green eyes of his fixed on hers as his fingers adeptly took to their task. “Of course not. A thing has to exist for me to summon it. It helps if I know where it is too.”

Zylah pictured her favourite dagger tucked under her bed back in her father’s house and clicked her fingers. Nothing happened. She rolled her eyes.Typical.

Holt huffed another laugh again as he fastened something else on the cloak. How many godsdamned fastenings did this thing have?

“So this is yours?” she asked, sniffing at the fabric and trying to focus on anything but the warmth that radiated from him and the way the muscles in his arms flexed as he did whatever the seven gods he was doing with her new cloak.

He pulled up the hood and held a hand across his heart. “You wound me. I do bathe, you know.”

“Do you?”

“Of course. What do you think I was doing at the springs when I found you?” That smirk was back, and a dangerous glint sparkled in Holt’s eyes.

Zylah felt heat rise in her chest as she realised hewaswet when he’d found her, as if he’d just got out of the water, and that he might have seen her bathing. “So this is yours?” she repeated, the only thing she could think of to change the subject.

“It’s my sister’s.”

He stepped back, and Zylah knew at once that she’d asked the wrong thing. Holt waved a hand at the fire and it snuffed out immediately.

She made a mental note not to mention his family again, running her fingers along the hem of the cloak. “You healed me, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

And she’d hit him in the face.Gods.He’d deserved it though.Who just runs off with someone like that, without a word? The nerve.“Sorry for elbowing you in the face,” she offered.

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.” She wished he’d look at her, but he was busying himself with straightening the cabin, and she was just watching the way he moved through the world, the speed and precision in each movement. “But thank you for healing me, you didn’t have to do that. Although I really would love it if you’d explain some of this Fae stuff to me. Starting with the evanescing.”

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