Page 90 of Oathborn
“When do I not?” Tivre said with a smirk. “Now, off we go, merrily on our ways, yes?”
She’d just agreed to at least a two-day journey with only the mad fae for company. This long quest was only growing longer by the minute.
Chapter thirty-five
Tobias
When Tobias woke, he first thought he was back home. But no, it was too quiet. If this were his mom’s apartment, then at least one, if not several, siblings would have busted down the door. This rustic room, with timber walls and a plank wood floor, was silent. His nose itched. When he tried to rub it, he couldn’t, because everything hurt too much.
Fuzzy memories flickered. Zari had been there at Lochna with another woman, a stranger with golden hair… she’d tended to him, held him in her arms. Had cried. For Tobias? No, surely not.
Closing his eyes returned her face to his mind. He’d never seen another as beautiful as she. Her eyes, warm and bright. Her golden hair like a tumble of sunlight. And her ears were pointed like leaves. She was a fae. No other explanation remained. Yet, fae were monsters, demons who destroyed humans as easily as breathing. Their beauty only served as bait to trap foolish mortals. But that woman… she’d cared for his wounds and sung to him.
Swinging his feet onto the floor, he stretched, feeling stitches pull against his skin. He didn’t remember Zari doing that. His uniform was folded at the foot of his bed, and a pair of boots lay nearby. Light came only from a small oil lamp and the bottom of the closed door. Faint voices echoed toward him.
“Perhaps you’re right,” a voice, accented with an aristocratic poshness, said.
“I usually am.” Javen replied.
The captain had survived the night? Tobias’s first reaction was to rush outside the room to see Javen and demand answers.
As a third, less familiar voice added, “And modest too.” Tobias paused.
Better to listen for a few minutes and get a sense of what was going on, where he was, and who the people were. Tobias twisted the brass doorknob enough for the latch to release and coaxed it open enough to spy a thin landing, edged by a staircase.
Below, the first floor held a kitchenette, fireplace, and three chairs: two old wingback chairs and one made of wood, where Javen lounged, feet up on a box. Whoever sat to the right of him had a bald head and a wrinkled hand holding a smoldering cigar. The man on the left side wore a Crimson’s uniform. He looked to be around fifty, with short curly hair and a beard that was more gray than blond. He, too, smoked a cigar.
Aristocrats, both of them. Tobias, born in a town where even having a job made someone wealthier than most, could spot money as easily as a con man could pick a mark. These two strangers held themselves with the effortless grace that came from never once cowering to greater powers. Neither of them, Tobias was sure, had ever been told to bite his tongue, or apologize for simply existing.
In contrast, Tobias’s Karsic accent was mocked by classmates, as were his secondhand bed linens. He’d fought, both with fists and with words, to belong among those sons of generals and gentry. For all of Captain Javen’s other flaws, he’d never once made Tobias feel the way any of those classmates or teachers had. Then again, Tobias had never been quite able to figure out if the captain came from money or not. Now, knowing he had fae blood, Tobias doubted it.
Downstairs, Javen seemed shockingly relaxed. His uniform jacket lay draped over his chair, his white shirt partially unbuttoned. “What other option is there?”
The bald man cleared his throat. “I’d still rather have a morediplomaticsolution. Perhaps an assisted regime change? They’ve served us well in the past with unruly colonies.”
Regime change? The bald man was suggesting a war crime.
“Did those provinces have Queens guarded by loyal soldiers who can take fifty-to-one odds?” Javen drawled.
“With the right leverage applied…”
“There is no leverage where the Oathborn are concerned.” Javen tapped his cigarette into a nearby ashtray. He spoke with easy confidence, making Tobias second-guess his assumption that Javen hadn’t come from money. “Do not be so foolish as to think so.”
Tobias had to agree. How would someone get close enough to kill the Queen? Didn’t Blood Ember and the Oathborn guard her?
“Everyone has a price,” the Crimson officer spoke up. “No one can be completely loyal.”
Javen’s smile turned wolfish. “Samuel, don’t be a fool.”
Tobias’s jaw dropped. So that was the Crimson soldier. Not just a soldier, no. That was Lord Samuel Rew Lockwood himself. Tobias must have recognized his voice from the commencement address at his military academy graduation.
“I remain perturbed,” the bald man replied, “that we’ve been unable to study a living Oathborn creature. Their magic would be very useful if we could harness it.”
“You can’t,” Javen snapped in his irritated tone usually reserved for discovering incorrectly filed papers. “The magic is in their very blood.”
“Many human diseases are contained within the blood and we’ve made considerable progress with studying those.”
“It is not thesame,” Javen growled.
