Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (read me like a book txt) 📕

the others dying, Ephraim among them, yet when I finally crawled out of there and tried to reach my men, there was Ephraim.”

Trotsky shivered then, gooseflesh spreading over his body.

“I looked into his eyes, but he wasn’t the man I knew,” he muttered, his knuckles going white as he clenched his knees. “It was like something had crawled in and now lived behind those eyes. That thing denounced me as a traitor, and to my horror, I saw everything unraveling.”

Trotsky hung his head and coughed and gave something like a sob that turned into a defeated laugh.

“All the petty rivalries and perceived slights, all of it came up like vomit,” he cried in a wrenching croak. “And just like that, I was running for my life with only a few loyal soldiers beside me.”

Izac and Fedor, their eyes dry now, squared their shoulders and thrust out their chests. They might have once been impressive specimens, but in their dilapidated state, their poses only made them seem more tragic.

“This gangster,” Milo asked, feeling an impossible premonition nibbling at the back of his mind. “The tattooed one. Who is he?”

Trotsky shrugged and shook his head, refusing to look up.

“I don’t know,” he said. “He’s Russian, I could tell that from how he spoke, but he had a strange accent.”

The ousted general looked out from under his brows at Milo.

“Sounded a bit like yours.” He smirked, a sour, humorless expression.

Milo felt tightness in his chest, and a place in his mind and heart hardened with refusal. He was being silly; it simply wasn’t possible. It was stupid to keep asking.

Despite this condemnation, his eyes darted to Izac and Fedor, his mouth working in defiance of his rational mind.

“What about you two?” he asked. “Did you hear anything?”

Fedor shook his head, but Izac considered the question for a moment, then sighed and shrugged.

“I heard a name once. Roland,” he said uncertainly. “Does that mean anything?”

11

These Ghosts

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Rihyani said as she held Milo’s hand. He knew it was a lie, though one she believed.

She’d returned from reconnoitering the area, giving the report that indeed there were signs of Hiisi only a few miles from the encampment and the village. She’d begun to describe the nature of those signs, something Milo had asked about, but stopped when she looked into his eyes.

Ambrose had promised to join them after seeing to Trotsky and his men. They would soon need to decide how much to share with Lokkemand.

Now they both sat at a rough-hewn table in a hovel afforded them by the village. Milo hadn’t noticed it the night before when he’d crashed on a cot to sleep, but now he was certain the place had served the needs of animals more than humans. The floor was packed earth layered with fresh straw, but the musky smell of beasts was everywhere. It was not oppressive as much as one more indignity among what felt like a pile heaped on him.

He not only had to face demons he thought he’d finally escaped, but now he was going to tell of his relationship with them inside a pile of stones that smelled of dung and donkey hide.

“I might as well be honest with you,” Milo said, angry at how weak and watery his voice sounded. “Ambrose has bits and pieces of the story, I think, but I’ve never told anyone all of it. It never seemed like it would matter to anyone else.”

Rihyani’s fingers tightened on his hand, and he realized his gaze had wandered to the crumbling seams between some stones in the far wall. In the back of his mind, he imagined Roland tunneling rodent-like through the joints until he burst into the room.

Milo shook off the image and looked at Rihyani, who watched him with concern bending her face into a deep frown.

“Roland was there at the beginning of what I can remember,” Milo said, swallowing hard as he tried to keep his voice steady. “I was young, five or six maybe, and alone on a street when men on horseback nearly ran me down. Roland saved me, though he was probably only a few years older. After that, we were together.”

Rihyani nodded in gentle, wordless encouragement, but Milo felt himself swallowing a rush of bile. She pitied him, he could feel it, and that galled him to his soul, but he knew he couldn’t expect anything different. He couldn’t even hold it against her. The reasons he’d not told this tale were many.

Milo gritted his teeth and forced himself to bear the pitying gaze that tore at his heart and needled his pride.

“We survived in the city until one of the German reconnaissance patrols found us, starving and hours from death in the cold,” he continued, remembering the rough laughs of the men who’d pinched and prodded them while trying to squeeze some useful intelligence out of them. “I was scared of the soldiers, but Roland was there, arm around my shoulder, telling me to be brave.”

“He was like your big brother, then?” Rihyani asked. “Why?”

“I asked him that more than once,” Milo said, shrugging as he shook his head. “I hoped that it was because he knew me and thus my past, but he claimed he’d just met me that night. He said he saw me in trouble and didn’t want me to get hurt, and that was it.”

Rihyani nodded and massaged the top of his hand with one thumb.

“I’m sorry, go ahead,” she said softly.

“It’s all right.” Milo sighed, forcing a smile. “The fact is, there’s so much I barely understand.”

The door to the hovel creaked open and Ambrose walked inside, eyes downcast and sheepish.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he muttered as he shuffled over to the table. “Trotsky and his boys are sorted, and I picked this up.”

A green glass bottle appeared on the table, and a second later, Ambrose had tugged a cork out. Milo didn’t have to pick up the