This wasn’t off-putting to me. In fact, I found his fascination with deathly things attractive, because it was a part of him.
A particularly fearsome bolt spanned the sky. “I could almost swear the Tower called this down upon us,” Aric mused. “In past games, he was this powerful.”
“I can barely imagine that.”
Aric’s noble face was relaxed. A hint of blond stubble had regrown over the day. Bolts reflected in his amber eyes until his irises appeared on the verge of starlit.
As I gazed up at him, I realized my feelings for him continued to deepen. I might be . . . falling for him.
Really falling.
“The Tower could throw javelins from both hands, with lightning combusting between them,” Aric continued. “The first time I encountered him, I was awestruck by the spectacle. To my detriment. I was new to the game, just sixteen.”
Right after he’d left his home. After his parents . . . I shivered.
He straightened at once. “You’re freezing. Come back to the fire.” He led me inside.
The church’s roof had a couple of burnout holes; Jack and Aric had made our fire beneath one. At times today the two had almost appeared to get along.
Without a word between them, they’d dismantled a pew for firewood and secured the horses in an adjoining alcove. Sword and bow raised, they’d cased the immediate area for Bagmen. As if by unspoken agreement, they’d disguised their animosity, presenting a unified front to Milo.
Their dynamic was changing. It had started when they’d stormed the slaver boss’s house together. It’d continued evolving with our victory at Azey North. Their mutual scorn of Milo had seemed to blunt their hatred of one another.
Were they still enemies who would murder each other?
Absolutely.
But they might not savor the kill as much as they would’ve before.
“I didn’t mean to take you from the show,” I told Aric.
“I’m keen to get to my translating.” He ushered me to the fire across from Jack.
I sat cross-legged, raising my waterlogged hands to the flames. I could feel Milo’s hateful gaze—two pale eyes surrounded by bruises. He twisted his bound hands, as if he longed to strangle me. Good luck with all those broken fingers.
“Obviously, you don’t know this, Empress”—his swollen lips and missing teeth distorted his speech—“but you ride with the very one who killed you in the last game! He’s played you false!”
“Nope, I knew. He decapitated me. Blah.” I sounded blasé. I was anything but about our history.
“Then you’re even stupider than I thought.”
Like a blur, Aric was in front of him. “Now, Milo, we talked about this. Remember? You do not speak to her unless you’d like to be castrated by horse hoof.”
“She’s about to know agony as never . . .”
Death slowly shook his head with such menace that the man swallowed. That got Milo to shut up—at least to me. The moment Aric left him, the man turned to Jack. “It doesn’t matter how many explosives you stole from me, you’ll never breach the Shrine.”
“Non? You sure sound confident for a man who spent the day hog-tied over a saddle.”
Back at the encampment, the Azey had been delighted to see their former leader trussed up in such a humiliating position. Well, except for the bound loyalists who’d been on their way out to endure their own set of difficulties.
The horse Jack had chosen for Milo was one of the finest the army had to offer. He planned for Selena to use it on the way back.
How confident Jack was that we could rescue her—that she’d be able to ride. Whenever my mind turned to what the twins might be doing to her, I had to shut those thoughts down. . . .
Aric took the chronicles from that waterproof sleeve. He sat near me, leaning against a wall. With a look of anticipation, he cracked open the pages.
“Thief!” Milo’s beaten face grew an alarming shade of red. “You’ve stolen what doesn’t belong to you! You have no right!”
Milo truly believed he was the innocent party. Aric was a thief; I was a treacherous bitch who’d wronged generations; Jack was an insurrectionist.
When the man got zero response from Aric, he said, “Save yourself the trouble—you’ll never read them.”
Aric flipped a page without looking up. “Won’t I?”
“It’s written in ancient Romanian.” Somehow Milo’s expression was both frenzied and smug.
“I speak ancient Hungarian, which shares roots with that language.” Another turned page.
Milo’s smugness faltered. “You want to know the contents? It’s a revenge contract from one generation to the next. We’ve renewed our hatred of the Empress over and over.”
“I look forward to a little light reading, then,” Aric said. “Know that I’ll translate every word of this scrawl eventually.”
“Eventually? You won’t live past tomorrow. My children will reclaim our chronicles off your corpse.”
Jack smirked. “So we are headed in the right direction then?”
“It doesn’t matter that I told you the Lovers’ location. You can’t breach it.”
“Popping open a bunker woan be as easy as, say, stealing your entire army from you. But we’ll figure it out. Tomorrow, we’re goan to eat good off your stores, and drink too. I already stole the whiskey from your desk.” He pulled a bottle from his bug-out bag, keeping it at the ready. “Twenty-five years old? Um, um, um.”
“Enjoy it, hunter! Tonight’s your last one on this earth.” Veins stuck out in the man’s forehead as he grew more frustrated. He was used to terrifying people; I think I’d yawned at him a couple of times in the last hour. “Tomorrow you die.”
“I’ve never heard that before,” Aric drawled. “And yet . . .”
Jack returned to his explosives inspection, eyeing a serious-looking detonator. “Seems you like to bluster, Milo. The weak ones always do.”
Aric glanced up. “I’ve seen that trait over and over throughout the years. I remember Philip the Second once wrote to the Spartans, saying, ‘If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta.’ Do you know what they wrote back? One word: If.”
Jack paused at that, cocking his head. I’d bet he was committing that story to memory.