Page 77 of The Incendiary

“The cadets are in danger⁠—”

“What do you suggest, Val?” Elias snapped. “That we interrogate everyone in this fortress until someone admits to slitting the throat of our messenger?”

“Yes!”

I blanched. The dead man had been one of our people.

“And what kind of precedent does that set?” Elias challenged. “The moment something is amiss, we just start baselessly pointing fingers?”

“He was murdered in cold blood, Eli! You spent two days alone in the forest dragging his body home so his brother could bury him.” Her voice trembled with emotion. “The Brinnean needs to pay.”

Elias gave a heavy sigh. “Val, it wasn’t Fera.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know.”

I couldn’t risk looking through the window without being seen, but I imagined Valda’s sharp, judgmental eyes on her commander. She criticized him in a way he tolerated from very few others.

“You know she’s innocent, or you just want to believe she is so you can have her warm your bed at night guilt-free?” Valda countered.

I scoffed to myself. He wasn’t getting me anywhere near his bed, but I’d have paid a handsome sum to peek in the window and see his reaction to that.

“She didn’t kill Isaiah Cross,” was all Elias answered. “I’ll form a team. We’ll find who did it.”

“You don’t deny my other point,” she grumbled back.

“What do you want me to say?” he snapped, his patience thin. “That she’s not fucking gorgeous?”

My eyebrows shot up and insides burned with heat. His attraction to me was obvious, but I assumed he was attracted to most women. Like toys or playthings.

Elias Winterton is a smarmy little shit who sticks his cock inside anything that moves, Gavin had said. So far, that seemed to be true.

“We don’t mix with our cadets, Eli,” Valda warned. “You’ve always followed your own rule.”

“Well, she’s not exactly one of ours,” he retorted. My stomach dropped so violently I thought it might land at my feet. “Though I don’t think we can afford to think that way. In fact, we never should have. This sense of ‘other’ that Simeon holds on to, as if the people in the unprotected northern villages mean less than any of us because they don’t live with us. I can’t pretend like I’m not guilty of it myself, but it’s not right.”

I slumped against the wall, not expecting to hear that sentiment from him.

“We spent a long time hoping our queen’s magic would win this war for us,” he continued. “We’ve been lying low and waiting for hundreds of years. We’ve prepared to support her while praying she would defeat Molochai herself so fewer people would have to die. But that’s not the reality now, is it? We’re going to need others. We’ll need to recruit from every region, from every town. I still don’t fully trust Fera, but we’re going to need her, and we’re going to need many more like her.”

A long bout of silence followed. I didn’t want to admit that I respected his reasoning, but I did. We needed reason.

“The queen wanted to welcome and save as many as possible.” Elias’s voice was tinged with sadness. “I feel inclined to try to carry on her generosity in spirit.”

My chest warmed. I didn’t want my chest warming in regard to him or his words, but I wasn’t so cruel not to allow a man I disliked to have a good trait. Gavin, with his death grip on my heart, was wildly flawed. And weren’t we all? It would be hypocritical to think Elias Winterton was all bad or all good. Humans didn’t really work that way.

“I agree. We need to help where we can. But Eli.” Valda’s voice grew gentle. Intimate in the way a good friend might say something difficult to hear. I started to back away, feeling like I was intruding. “I know you’re mourning the queen⁠—”

“Mourning a girl I never met,” Elias grumbled.

“Yes. Which is why you can’t hold on to her like this. You’ll just be stuck longing for a dream for whatever life we all have left.”

“I’m not holding on to her.”

“You are.”

“I’m fucking whoever I want, just as I always do.”