Page 195 of Brimstone
BREAK
SAERIS
THE WAR CAMPwas bustling. Fae warriors milled around fires, eating from tin pots. They wrestled in the mud. Satyrs wove through the mud-spattered tents, hawking grilled meat on skewers and roasted corn. The smell of the food—and all the blood—was maddening, but I didn’t have any time for that. I’d searched half the camp by the time I’d found what, or ratherwho, I was looking for. She stood in the middle of a group of males, poring over a rumpled piece of paper. When she looked up from whatever it was that busied her, she didnotlook happy.
“Saeris,” she said, folding the piece of paper and handing it off to one of her friends. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“I need your help, Danya.”
The hair she’d lost during the attack on Irrín would grow back, but it would take time. The shorn side of her scalp was marked with stubble now, a darker blond than the rest of her hair. The warrior crooked an eyebrow at me, her surprise at war with her annoyance. “Help? Fromme?” She snorted. “Impossible. Not our precious Alchemist, admitting that something’s beyond her. My ears must be deceiving me.”
I did not have time for this. “Danya, ever since I got here, I’ve done nothing but tell anyone who will listen that I amnotequipped to deal with the tasks that have been sent my way. I’ve never pretended otherwise.”
She spat on the ground, her face impassive.
“I need a word with you.” I eyed her friends.Alone.
“If this is about Carrion Swift, you can relax,Little Osha. I don’t have designs on your friend. Not long-term ones, anyway.” She used Fisher’s name for me in a cold way. Made it sound small and pathetic. Her friends bit their lips, snickering under their breath.
So this was how she wanted to play it?
Fine.
She was fucking with the wrong person if she thought I wouldn’t humiliate her in front of her friends. I drew Erromar and Selanir and spun the blades in my hand, rushing her. She reached for her blade. And she was a seasoned warrior. She’d slain more feeders than I could count, butIwasn’t a feeder. I wasn’t a Fae warrior, either. I had beenhumanfirst, and now there was a good dose of vampire blood in my veins. I was faster than I had any right to be, and I was stronger than Danya to boot. With the edges of my short swords grazing her jaw, Danya had no other option but to surrender—
But she was stupid.
So fuckingarrogant.
She raised her hands, but the action was a ruse. She tried to grab my right wrist, to punch my own sword back into my face, but trains of thought kindled and died in my head in the time it took her to curl her fingers around my wrist.
My right foot slipped behind her left. My leg hooked inside her leg, and I slammed my left palm into her chest, right between her breasts. She left the ground and sailed through the air, and a part of me crowed with satisfaction when shelanded on her ass in the mud ten feet away. I kept that part of me hidden. A good leader never demonstrated pleasure at the embarrassment of an ally. Not that I was Danya’s leader . . . and not that I was one hundred percent sure I could call her anally, but it was still poor form to gloat.
Her friends weren’t laughing anymore. They averted their eyes, looking anywhere and everywhere but at Danya, as I trudged through the mud and held out my hand to the female. I kept my expression blank and my voice even as I repeated, “I need your help.”
She glowered at me, all venom and suspicion. “And why would Ihelpyou, Alchemist? You’ve been nothing but a thorn in my side since you arrived in this realm.” She sneered at my hand as if it were a dune asp, reared back and ready to strike.
“You’ll help me because we’re on the same team,” I told her. “Because, despite how many fights you pick with him and how angry you are with him, Fisher is still your commander, and you still love him.”
Her objection was instantaneous. “I don’t love hi—”
I cut her off. “Yes. Youdo. I don’t mean romantically, and you know it. You love Fisher because of all that he’s done for this realm. Because he’s always been there for you—”
“Until hewasn’t,” she snapped. I knew the anger that burned in her eyes too well. She was furious with Fisher, but not for the reasons that she pretended.
“Yes, until he wasn’t,” I said, agreeing. “But you’re not angry withhimfor leaving you, are you, Danya? You’re angry with yourself for not believing in him enough to start with. You knew he’d never abandon his warriors, and yet you chose to hide behind the lie Belikon told. That was easier than losing your friend, wasn’t it? Easier than not knowing where he was and not being able to find him, not being able to help him. He doesn’tblameyou, Danya.”
“Shut the fuck up,” she hissed.
“He knows you would have come for him if you could have.”
“You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about!”
“I know Kingfisher,” I said slowly. “But I haven’t known him anywhere near as long as you. He was your brother—yourblood—for centuries before I was born. And I know there’s no way you fought alongside him all those years without forming an unshakable bond with him. This rage inside of you is a shield. It protects you from the emotions you can’t face. From the guilt and the knowledge that you left him in Gillethrye. You were with him on the battlements, weren’t you? You helped him defend that city. When it fell, you helped him burn it. And then you listened to the vicious lies of a male you knew to be evil, and you left your friend there, to suffer in that eternal maze—”
“Stop.”
Her tone lacked its previous acid. The word was small, a hiccup of a thing, jarring the air between us. Danya stared at me, propping herself up on her elbows in the mud, her eyes reflective as drowning pools. She was as stubborn as they came. She wouldn’t admit that I was right. But shecouldn’tdeny that I was wrong, either. “What do youwantfrom me, Alchemist?” she muttered.
