Mercurial Naomi Hughes (suggested reading txt) 📖

She cut him off, hope and impatience leaping within her. “Yes, yes, if this ends up being a trick I’m sure you’ll kill me with your very impressive sword work, or perhaps you will just stand and glare at me stoically until I wither up and die. Now can we get moving? We are in a bit of a rush, as I’m sure you must understand.”

He made a soft sound that she realized after a moment was a laugh. He sighed afterwards and tried to run a hand through his hair, but stopped short when his manacles clanked, reminding him of their presence. He ducked down to rummage through his sister’s pocket and extracted a key. “I wish you weren’t so different now,” he muttered as he unlocked the manacles from his wrists.

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Why is that?”

“Because it shouldn’t be this hard to hate you,” he said, and without another word, he pushed past her to begin harnessing the dogs.

NYX JERKED AWAKE ALL AT ONCE, and had counted six nearby blunt objects with which to bludgeon her brother—or whoever was currently threatening her brother—before she registered where she was.

Cool grass and leaves beneath her. Her torso and head propped up on a log, its stiff bark digging into her bare scalp. Tall mote trees edging her view of the silver-blue sky, their falling seeds more leaden now, coated with a lacy dew that labored their usual drifting movements.

Feeling drunken and half-paralyzed still, Nyx turned her head and squinted. The sun was rising, hovering just over the roof of the temple. It was then that she remembered why she wanted to bludgeon her brother, and why she feared he was being threatened.

She filled her lungs as deeply as she could and then bellowed a string of inventively foul curses into the sky. She could also have yelled something like help, what happened, or somebody had better produce my little brother unharmed immediately before I enact violence that everyone involved—except probably me—will regret, but curses worked just as well, and if Helenia were nearby she’d be able to translate what Nyx really meant in any case.

Nobody answered. Nyx’s heart rate kicked up a notch, and she gathered her strength to roll onto her side and lift her head.

She was surrounded by bodies.

Before she had even finished processing the fact, she was stumbling to her feet, gaze scanning the bodies wildly for the lean shape of Tal, the familiar curves of Helenia. Her heart pounded a frantic drumbeat: no, no, no.

It wasn’t until she tripped and fell onto the body of one of the mushers, wringing a sleepy groan from him, that she realized the bodies weren’t dead at all but only sleeping.

She felt dizzy with relief. Her body was shaking. Without bothering to check if her fall had done any damage to the musher, she pushed off him—eliciting another groan—and continued her search for her brother and girlfriend, only slightly calmer now that she had more reason to believe they were still alive. She made an entire circuit of the campfire area, accidentally stepping on two dozing dogs in the process, before she finally found Helenia sleeping peacefully on the other side of the log where Nyx had woken up. Nyx sagged down to sit next to her, not bothering to check that she was still breathing; she could hear Hel’s snores from here. A bit of drool spotted her cheek and Nyx reached out to wipe it off with her sleeve, laughing shakily when she thought of how horrified Helenia would be to see the state she was in.

She had found her girlfriend. She could breathe now, and her heart was a bit calmer. But where, where, was her brother?

She was angry at him—no, she was downright furious—but she couldn’t quite remember all the details of why. She dug through her hazy memories until she managed to recall him explaining his visions and then saying, you do not need to hold me back.

Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. He was free of his oath, had been for days now, and he hadn’t so much as hinted at it to her. Worse than that, he’d brought his own enemy back to life. When she thought of him saying I breathed for her, thought of the Destroyer’s lips touching his in a mockery of intimacy, she wanted to be sick and she wanted to pummel them both until her fists bled. Why would he do such a thing? What could possibly compel him? Had his time with the Destroyer truly been enough to change him so? She’d heard of captives falling in love with their captors, and love or some twisted version of it seemed like the only thing that could even begin to explain his actions. She remembered seeing his new scars and thinking that his soul had always been so much more fragile than his body. Could the Destroyer have broken it entirely, warped it into something that could feel sympathy for a murderess?

Nyx hadn’t found the Destroyer’s body when she had done her circuit of camp. There were also, she saw now, a sled and five dogs—including Maluk—missing. She pressed a kiss to Helenia’s forehead and then stood up to investigate further.

There were footprints all over camp, and it was impossible to tell which had belonged to whom, but there were also droplets of dried red-brown blood splattered near where the missing sled had been. Nyx’s razor was nearby too, driven blade first into the earth. She yanked it out to examine it; its edge was crusted with red blood. So at least her brother had tried to carry through on his promise to kill the Destroyer himself…but then what? Something had gone wrong, obviously, something that had managed to put everyone except Tal and the Destroyer to sleep. Gold magic could do that.