“The overliege knows the halfkeepers are not the problem. They didn’t make the decisions.”
“Hasn’t stopped you bloodsuckers from killing them in cold blood in the past!” I snipe.
Eyes look over from the eating room. I’m making a scene, inadvertently, and I’m not even sure why I’m arguing with my men. Maybe I’m just frustrated things aren’t moving faster—that this war isn’t already won.
I cringe with embarrassment, pulling back out of the room, bringing my mates with me.
“Liolen knows the true masterminds behind this attack,” Skartovius says. “Which means we aren’t safe for long. All we can hope is they don’t enlist the aid of Aramastun Wyvox. Otherwise we’ll be doubly fucked.”
“Haven’t heard you complaining about getting doubly fucked before, Skartovius,” Garroway replies with bobbing brows.
Hearing Garro again speak Skar’s full name, and without any inflection of subservience, shocks me. It surprises Skar into quietude also.
I catch a face leaving the group in the eating room, shuffling away, and my face lights up. “Ah! Finally!” Charging past my mates into the room, I yell, “Imis!”
She turns at the sound of my sloppy voice. Her reaction is frightened, at first, because I’m twice her size and barreling toward her with a slobbery grin. Then when I wrap her in a hug, she loosens.
“I thought you were running away from me,” I say.
She lets out an incredulous sound. “I thought you were avoidingme.”
I look around and drag the bespectacled Grimdaughter away. One of my first friends here. The girl who kissed me when she thought she was going to lose me in my first shadowgala, as a fare-thee-well.
I still remember how soft her lips were, and how she looked up to me with such admiration for taking the fight to the men, trying to speak with my sword on behalf of all theGrimdaughters, women, mothers, and wayward waifs in this city.
I wonder if I’ve lost all good will with Imis in the years we’ve been apart. I’m certainly not giving a good impression at the moment, in my tipsy state. “Sounds like a mutual misunderstanding,” I tell her, trying on a demure smile. “Come. If you’re ready to talk to me, I’m ready to listen. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy.”
We go into a side room, away from anyone else, and my mates keep watch at the door.
Once we’re alone with only a table and lit candle between us, I lean forward. “Talk to me. Where have you been, Im? Why have you come back?”
She sucks in her plump bottom lip, stares at me with those giant eyes through her lenses, and drums the table’s edge with her fingertips. “I landed in a city called Delmarn,” she begins. “Have you heard of it, Sephy?”
I shake my head.
“It’s a glorious cityscape. Smells of bird shit and salt and labor.Knowledge.” She smiles dreamily, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply.
“Sounds, erm . . . glorious. Right.”
Imis’ eyes open and she tilts her head, scrutinizing me. “Have you heard of the ocean, Sister?”
“I’ve heard rumors.”
Her smile returns, so quaint and kind and eager. “A body of water so vast, you can’t see the other side of it.” Her voice grows animated. “When ships sail into the hazy horizon, they disappear behind it. I often wonder where they go. Delmarn runs on shipping exports, dreams, and knowledge we can hardly fathom here.”
My elbow falls on the table. I take her in, growing rapidly soberer as the minutes pass. “That’s the second time you’ve said ‘knowledge.’ What do you mean?”
“Well, I was inducted as an apprentice librarian deep in the city. I was also a researcher for an alchemist there. Saw a few desiccated bodies and corpses.”
My head lurches, nose wrinkling. “Sounds disgusting.”
“It was enlightening, Sephania.” Her smile glitters with hope. I feel like it’s going to make me sick. “We studied a vampire carcass. Cut him open and everything, going over the vein network and musculature. The brain studies. My teacher told us something fascinating—a theory, more than anything.”
My head cocks the other direction. “You came all the way back to Nuhav based on . . . a theory?”
Imis’ small face ducks away. “I may have also been getting lonely, being away from everything I knew.”
Reaching out, I take Imis’ smaller hands in mine, rubbing her knuckles. A genuine smile comes to my face. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore. Now tell me, what did this vampire corpse tellyou?”