Page 152 of Unrivaled
Mage by the name of Dawn looks to have been selling Glow, which powers their spells.They’re super smart, these mages, but no common sense.Thing is, I still don’t know how the Glow is produced.This woman couldn’t hide a chipped toenail, yet even after all this time of intensive surveillance, I’m still in the dark.The upper ranks have a lot of distance between them and this Glow stuff.It feels...worrying.Don’t you dare tell S I admitted that.—Rubes to the Man in the Mountain
23rdDay of Autumn’s Son Moon,
Age of the Locways, Year 272
La’Angi Keep
The leather wasn’t the buttery soft sort, but stiff, reinforced with bands of steel against the widest part and softened with thick padding.It was a functional war-belt, but it was also breathtaking, with the three horses that galloped around the circumference done in the highest level of detail.The two smaller darker grey belts that ran atop it were embroidered painstakingly with silver thread in a pattern reminiscent of mist, running over the horses to create a sense of movement.
It would fit her perfectly.
“Tell me that didn’t cost more’n three moons of your wages,” Kadan drawled, from where he was lying on the bed, hands behind his head and limbs going every which way.
I shrugged.The coin was just sitting about.She’d lookedeverywherefor the right belt.
I didn’t know the dress she was wearing, but there was no way this wouldn’t be the right belt.
“What’s going on?”Kadan asked me, uncharacteristically serious.“Come on, Chay.It’s just you and me.”
He sat up a little, patting the crisply made bed beside him.The belt weighed heavily in my hands.She was getting ready now, but it would take her some time.I had a moment, didn’t I?
“I think I hate Luca,” I said, and I wished I hadn’t.
Once the words were out, the last resistance to the black, hot feelings in my gut were gone.I started pacing, trying to find the words for everything I’d seen, everything he’d done.Thewhywas so foolish.
“Dislike, sure, buthate?” Kadan asked.
“He promises her everything,” I said, the words tumbling over themselves.“Not only does he not deliver those promises, but to evenget closeto the bullshit he’s offering her, he’s payingwith her own coin.”
Kadan frowned.“He’s using La’Angi funds?”
“Metaphor,” I snapped, slapping the leather against my hands as I paced up and down the short bedroom.
“Ah.Sorry.I’m on some excellent oils for pain, friend.”And as he talked, Luca’s smiling face, Luca’s promises, the disappointment in Audrey, the sighs, the disbelief ran through my head.The way she’d looked atmewith no expectations.He’d taught her that.“Metaphor, smart stuff, it all rolls off me.”He sighed and lay back.“Luca’s doing his job, Chay.Obviously that doesn’t match with yours.”
The woman who’d cut a man’s throat rather than ask me to do my sworn duty had been heated by other people’s failures, and tempered only through her own willpower.
What could she have been without so many barriers?
“I love her.”
He sat bolt upright.
I looked away, feeling naked.
The silence within the room was suffocating.The sounds of the city filtered in around the edges, the bark of a dog and call of a soldier showing the cracks where noise belonged.
Before he could speak, I shook my head.“It doesn’t matter.Thanking you, Dan.”I held up the belt and ignored the empathy in his eyes as I retreated.
CHAPTERFIFTY-FIVE
AUDREY
The danger of growing up feeling unwanted is that you fill that gap by being needed.Need and want are not the same.—Matri’sion lesson
23rdDay of Autumn’s Son Moon,
Age of the Locways, Year 272
