Page 21 of Artemysia
Clever bastard.
Perhaps, after all these years, he knows me too well and suspects my ulterior motives.
I can’t show him he’s found a pressure point. He’ll exploit it.
“This is elkshit and you know it. I refuse to go.”
They look the other way when I say such things. They allow me to be vulgar because it works out better in their minds to believe I’m a different kind of creature, so they don’t feel bad using me.
Delphine muffles a faint growl of her own. She’s entirely offended, judging by how tightly she purses her lips. Her fists are balled up next to her thighs. Captivatingly fierce.
I’m sure this isn’t how her war room meetings usually go.
“Throg and I will go. No one else is better at what we do,” she insists to the king, defying me. Such delightful enthusiasm, as if she hadn’t just eloquently pointed out their plan was shit. But she wants to try anyway. So brave and yet so foolish to trust that the higher-ups value her life.
Her brown eyes meet mine, shining with the intensity of her conviction. “I can succeed,” she says.
It both exasperates and arouses me, the monster that I am.
It can’t be easy to have that kind of optimism in a world like ours.
No one should suffer like that.
The king nods. “Riev, please provide the maps of the forest you’ve rendered. Captain Julian will put together another team and attempt the crossing.”
Fuck. What an asshole. He knows he has me by the balls, and now he’s twisting. He is willing to send Delphine to her death just to force my hand. He knows no one’s made it in and out of Artemysia withoutme. Delphine doesn’t know this, and they conveniently don’t mention it.
“They wouldn’t last half a day.” Realistically, I give them three hours, with a slow bleeding-out-death being one of the hours.
Delphine throws me a filthy look. “I can do this. I have a couple members of my team in mind. It sounds like Riev has risked enough, perhaps too much already, to get us this far. I can read maps. I’ll get to the other side.”
Something squeezes the shriveled pit where my soul might be. Something I haven’t felt in a long time. She actually thinks I should sit this one out because I’ve done enough. Is it because she saw me at my worst yesterday? Injured, dirty, sad. Does she feel bad for me? She’s basically telling them she’ll take my place.
No one ever cares about me.
Why does she?
Because she cares about the people around her, even a surly stranger she just met.
No, I can’t let this happen. They’ll both die, and I’ll never see her lopsided smile again.
I slam the etched table with both palms so hard that it hurts, forcing me to second-guess my dramatic gestures.
Graying heads turn to me.
I stare glumly at the map of our lands and the base of the fish-shaped peninsula surrounded by rough ocean east and west. Our kingdom never had a successful naval program, because we don’t make it far offshore. The history books say other countries have visited us in the past, but it was so dangerous traversing the seas around our lands that they gave up. We are isolated. While this means we have been safe from invasion from outside lands, we are subject to the attacks of the Syf without aid.
The mountain range that connects us to the mainland to the south is impassable, its height and labyrinth of passes thwarting any attempt to cross. But it provides us with endless minerals and metals, and our valley is fertile, so we’ve had no real need to leave or expand.
My dagger’s mark struck the middle of the landmass, a long line of thick forest. Artemysia. The colonel’s blood seeps into the East River, which flows from north to south across the entire peninsula.
Delphine’s wide brown eyes search my face, but I refuse to meet her gaze.
I don’t want her to see my defeat, my fury, bleeding out of me.
The large blonde monstrosity beside her cocks his head at me, his nostrils flaring as if he can smell that I’m about to capitulate.
“If I go,” I begin. “If…” I emphasize, “I will need Ivy Morrigan.”
