Page 248 of A Dagger of Ice and Intrigue
“Whenever you need someone to talk to, I’m here. I know it might not seem like it now, but you and I are much alike.”
He scoffed. “You’re The Huntress. I’ll never see the day when someone would call me something similar.”
“Maybe you’ll see the day when people will know your full name and revere it.” I winked at him. “Adriana Vegheara is known in all of Malhaven, centuries later. She wasn’t a warrior, either.”
Until Geryll didn’t give me a full smile, I didn’t leave his room, recounting endless stories of Dria Vegheara.
I understood his ache.
The questions of not belonging.
The want for something more.
But greatness needed time.
Patience.
A lesson I still struggled with myself.
His half-smile stayed with me as I rushed down the empty hallway, which smelled of tinctures and ointments and herbs, but couldn’t completely smother the frantic worry.
I needed to let this energy out before I exploded.
My bow still waited by the entrance, discarded last night in my haste. If I’d been more rested, I would have felt ashamed. No fighter worth their daggers ever left their weapons unattended. At least I still had the dagger on me.
With some borrowed arrows in tow, I rushed out of the fortress, nodding at the guards. This time, they didn’t look at me with that same standoffish stare.
I missed a step as they bowed their heads my way as they did for Ryker.
Word about the passage light must have gotten out.
But I couldn’t relish the moment, worry suffocating me.
Even as my steps pummeled the frozen ground on the way to the archery range, once I’d breached the shade of the pines, away from prying eyes, I couldn't help myself and reopened the palaver book.
It was a compulsion at this point, one which left me barren each time, like these stubborn pages that refused to show me Dax.
Until Ryker came back, I couldn’t leave the crater. The passage had been sealed for anyone else.
But once he returned, I had to find a way to get hold of Dax.
March onto Aquila if I had to.
“Please,” I whispered in the wind, fingers tracing the blank pages. “Just answer me.”
The book remained silent.
I closed it with a violent thud, as if it was to blame.
The truth was that the fault was mine alone to carry.
If I hadn’t asked Dax to infiltrate the castle, then–
A glimmer caught my eye in the distance.
Apurpleglimmer.
My heart hammered with the memory of the light refusing to let my power go. Of the suffocating passage which had almost claimed so many lives. The echo of the masks hitting the ground.
