Page 33 of The Truth-Teller's Bargain
He let her go gently, and she felt the loss of him like a held breath released too soon. His hand flexed once at his side before he stilled it, jaw tightening just enough to give him away before he wordlessly held open the tent’s entrance for her.
Alethea followed him into the dark tent without another word. She slipped under the covers fully clothed and lay there as silence stretched and filled the tent, while he blew out the lantern and settled into his own cot.
Had she just made a fool of herself? Could he see her flushed cheeks now from across the room, even in the total darkness? She had her back to him, her eyes wide open as she wondered what in the world had come over her.
It could have been hours that ticked by as she lay there, heart racing in her ears. She couldn’t stop thinking about how the kiss hadsearedher, or the way his fingers had held her own, bolstering her against him. Something like that probably meantnothing to him—he’d had lovers, he’d told her. She didn’t imagine he had any shortage of people who threw themselves at his feet, and here she was, doing more of the same. Alethea wanted to groan in frustration as she spiraled into her own thoughts, night threatening to slip into morning before she could finally stop chiding herself for her foolishness and convince herself to sleep.
“Power borrowed must be returned. Power stolen must be surrendered. Thus is the fate of those who burn out.”
—THE HYMNS OF NEX
CHAPTER SEVEN
Age of Upheaval, Y 208. Harvest Moon, Day 14.
Ten years ago.
Nakir had imagined death many times.
He had suspected it would be painful, agonizing, slow, and final.
He knew the price of drawing too much from the Weave, and he’d been ready to pay it in the hopes of sparing his parents.
So when he opened his eyes again and discovered he wasalive, looking up at his mentor’s stoic expression, reality slammed against him with crushing weight.
He could still taste the ash in his mouth.
With great effort, the Aeshlien sat up. Dawn light filtered gold across the desert villa, palm fronds rustling in the salt breeze. A scene so serene it felt like a cruelty.
They were as far from Lenorea as they could get—and yet they’d still been found. Sand gritted under Nakir’s hands as heturned, blinking the crust out of his eyes as he tried to remember what had happened.
That same sun also rose on the twenty shells of corpses strewn about the courtyard. They were all that remained of the assassins sent in the middle of the night to dispatch the last of the exiled Hasan family. They all bore the mark of Nakir’s dark power. Each of their bodies was nothing more than a rotted husk.
But they weren’t the only bodies.
His parents, Lazaros Galanis and Evanthia Hasan, lay twenty paces from them. His mother’s auburn hair had fallen from its signature half updo, her usually glowing beige skin pale even in the warm light of the rising sun. His own amber eyes reflected back at him, lifeless and cold.
He had never seen his father’s black hair so messy, the ends caked in blood. Lazaros’s final act had been to reach for his wife where she lay feet away—their fingers brushed even as they lay motionless. Not even death could part them. Their throats were opened, and they’d been left to bleed out into the sand.
But not before they’d watched Nakir burn out and die.
“No.” Nakir tried to sit up further, but his body rebelled, and he nearly passed out, back into the dirt. Steady hands caught him and held him upright.
“I came as soon as I could,” his mentor told him. This man, who had taught him everything he knew about magic, had guided Nakir in many other ways as well. His dark blue eyes were ice-cold as usual, stern face tightly drawn.
Nakir turned back to his parents, the pit in his stomach growing.
They were dead. A cry tore through him as he reached toward them, but his body was too depleted to allow him to even crawl to them.
“What happened, Nakir?”
How could he even explain? He stared into the morning sky,devastation written across his face. “They came in the middle of the night... Zenobia’s assassins,” he rasped, words almost detached from the man speaking them.
“How many?”
“Too many.”
“What happened toyou, Nakir?”
