“Erm . . . all right,” he mutters. “I’m going to find Sephania.”
I clear my throat, watching him turn to walk away. “I was just heading that way as well,” I say, though I don’t move to join him.
He stops slowly, turns to regard me over his shoulder. It’s getting awkward between us.
“You are correct, you know. About Palacia,” I admit. “If we want our little temptress to forgive us, we need to make it right.” I massage my jaw. “My chin still smarts from where she punched me.”
His serious face cracks a tiny smirk. “The woman can land a fist on a man’s face with the best of them.” He massages his cheek in agreement. “Can’t say we didn’t deserve it.”
Then he turns to leave. He gets two steps away. Four. To the hallway entrance—
Something bubbles up inside me. Almost like . . . anxiety? I’m not sure if I remember how that feels, it’s been so many decades. But there’s a very human thing going on inside me, and I don’t like it.
I enjoy feeling impervious. Like a monster. Like an asshole. Because I know that anyone who wants to step to me will be defeated. Squashed like an insect under my heel.
And nowthis? Butterflies in my stomach—
“Wait,” I call out before I can stop myself.
He’s ten feet away now, half-hidden by the lip of the entrance. He fully faces me, a deep, pervasive knot between his eyebrows. “What is it?”
A heavy, resigned sigh leaves my lips. “I need to tell you something, brother . . .”
Chapter 25
Sephania
“I still want to know where in all the Four Corners of the afterworld you learned to fight like that,” I sputter at Keffa, who sits across from me with a pair of legs between us.
I’m helping the Iron Sister bandage one of the girls wounded on the Floorboards, wrapping a strip of cloth around a deep arrow wound in her thigh. Luckily it didn’t strike any arteries, and the girl is a thick lass with plenty of meat on her bones to absorb the worst of it.
“Ask your mother,” Keffa says with a small smirk. “She might be able to tell you more.”
Part of me wants the mystery to remain. The thought of a rough-and-tough elderly lady with a cane-sword, fending off vampires, is too delicious of a story to have ruined by the truth.
The young woman lying between us whimpers as I finish off the knot behind her thigh. We’ve only just managed to get the arrowhead out, and my fingers are still slick and bloody from the effort.
Tears roll down her cheeks.
“You’re being very brave,” I tell her in my gentlest voice. “You all are,” I say to the room of nearly two dozen.Was two dozen before, anyway . . .
She sniffles and nods wordlessly, looking down at her leg. I know she’s not crying because of the pain, and I can’t bring myself to mention the true cause of her grief: She lost a sister upthere. A blood-sibling. One of the five casualties we faced in the ambush.
I’m just about to apologize profusely, for no other reason than not knowing what to say to keepmyselffrom getting teary-eyed, when loud boots pound on the dirt behind us.
A young boy maybe twelve winters old skids into the room, kicking up dirt, stumbling. He stands there comically, wide-eyed at all the half-clothed girls and women who are standing and lounging around in the middle of this makeshift infirmary.
“Pick your jaw up off the ground, boy!” Jinneth yells at him. “What is it?”
“Y-You’re Sephania, aye?!” He points directly at me.
I stand, and my stomach plummets to my boots. “Yes.”
Then I hear the roar. It reverberates through the stone walls, hitting every crevice of the Firehold all at once. It’s pained, guttural, and I know exactly who it is.
Well.“Fuck.”Looks like the time has finally come.
“You must come quick, ma’am! Someone named, er, Valley sent me to ya. Big oak-tree motherfu—”