Page 74 of Skyshade
The blacksmith didn’t falter. “Not for a moment.” He turned. “But I see that you did.”
Isla didn’t say a word as she held her wrists out in front of her. “I’m done pretending to be powerless,” she said. If she’d had her abilities, she would have been able to get away from the sect. She could have saved them.
“My dear,” he said, his gravelly voice like scraping rocks. “You’ve never been powerless a day in your life.”
With his touch, the bracelets fell onto the table.
“I’ll see you in a month,” he said. Then, he got back to work.
Isla thought to herself that he seemed remarkably busy for someone who was readying himself to die.
“Light reading?” She was thumbing through a tome that was as thick as her head and could be used as a solid shield, should she ever need it.
A tracking skyre wouldn’t help her find the ring, but perhaps another type would. She had hoped to find some trace of them in the library, so she wouldn’t have to trust Aurora. She had gotten nowhere. The blacksmith and augur were right. It was a lost art.
Astria was standing in front of her, wearing her typical armor. She never took it off, and Isla wondered aloud if she slept in it too.
The general asked in an even tone, “What do you mean, sleep?”
Isla blinked, immediately taking herself out of the imaginary consideration for applying to be Grim’s general, when Astria leaned back, and said, “A joke.” She pulled what looked like a handful of nuts from her pocket and began eating them. “And the answer is: Yes, sometimes, when I’m too tired to change out of it.” Her eyes slid from the nuts in her palm to Isla’s book, curious.
Isla slammed it closed, emitting a formidable cloud of dust that immediately provoked the biggest sneeze of her life.
To her horror, when she opened her eyes she found a small pile of peonies in front of her, as if her hold on her abilities had momentarily slipped.
Astria stopped mid-chew, staring, her mouth agape. “Did you just...did you just sneeze flowers?”
Isla felt a flush of red creeping across her cheeks. “No.”
“I saw you.”
The petals hadn’t come from her nose; that was ridiculous. Still, she knew what it looked like. Isla ran her tongue along the front of her teeth. “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you,” she informed the general. “I’ll go right for the gaps in your armor.”
Astria folded at the waist, laughing. She laughed and laughed, voice echoing up the tower, until a small man marched out from the stacks, hand in the air—already halfway to chastising—before seeing who he would be speaking to. Then he abruptly turned on his heel and left. Astria continued to laugh until she reached up and dabbed at her eyes with a piece of cloth she kept in a pant pocket.
“Are you...crying?” Isla asked, incredulous.
Astria turned to her, and, with the same steady tone said, “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”
Isla made a gesture signaling a truce.
Her cousin finally composed herself enough for Isla to break in. “So. Did he send you here to find me?” She hadn’t seen Grim in a couple of days. The skies were swirling with color again, and he was preparing his people for another potential storm.
Astria gave her a sharp look. “I’m his general, not his clerk. Your wedding was a special circumstance.”
“Then why are you here?” The rest of the library was relatively empty.
Astria narrowed her eyes at her. “I’m sorry, do I look like I don’t read?”
Isla raised a shoulder. “Do you?”
“I do, thank you.”
Isla stared at her expectantly. When Astria continued loudly chewing on her nuts, Isla asked, “What do you read?”
A nut cracked between her teeth, and she picked away a curl of skin. “A little of everything, I suppose. Some history, here and there, though those are usually horribly overwritten. Some mysteries. Romances too.”
“Romance?” Isla asked, her interest piqued. She and Aurora used to trade books, but their selection had been limited. “There’s romance in this library?”
