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

handed it out before we started celebrating. That was why we were celebrating after all, right?”

Milo tried to laugh, but it caught in his throat. To dislodge the trapped laugh, he drained the last of the bottle, but there was hardly anything left, and it only frustrated him. Memories, long kept under lock and key, were bubbling up, and he’d been fool enough to not only let them see daylight but now the warden was drunk at his post.

The bottle came down with an angry thunk as his words started to flow out hot and slurred.

“He’d stolen all the money, he had, swiping it while we drank and bragged about how we were going to spend our money. He calls me in and says, ‘Milo,’ and I says, ‘Roland, why’s all the money here?’ and he smiles and tells me, ‘we’re running away, Milo, running away like we always wanted.’ ‘What about Rush-sh-shia and the gun selling’ I says, and he says, ‘no trust me, trust me, Milo, we’s, uh we’re better than that, we’re going west not east.’ I shakes my head and says ‘why?’ and he says ‘we can be together’ and I just looks, just stares at ‘im, an’ you know what he does?”

Milo swung an exaggerated stare across the room in an inebriated attempt at a dramatic pause.

“He puts his arms around my sh-shoulders and tells me to be brave, like always.”

Ambrose and Rihyani frowned, vague disappointment in their expression, which spread a twisted, hard smile across Milo’s face.

“Then he kisses me,” Milo said as he slouched back into his chair. “Not like always.”

Rihyani shook her head slowly, and Ambrose muttered a curse under his breath. Milo nodded, a heavy, aggressive slamming of his head up and down.

“That’s right, and I yell, and he’s telling me to be quiet, but I’m drunk and confused, and he’s grabbing me and I’m scared, and then the others come in and see him grabbing me and all the money on the bed.”

Milo shivered as ice crept up from the bottom of the molten lake in his belly as he remembered all those red-rimmed eyes shifting from confusion to anger. Suddenly the vodka was like a cold, jellied weight in his stomach, the liberating buzz gone with a splash of frigid water on the inside.

“I was too drunk, too scared, and too stupid to explain and then Roland tells them I stole the money and came to him with the plan to run away. I can see they believe him, so I try to pull away, and he holds tight since he’s always been bigger and stronger, and desperately I grab a bottle and hit Roland. He lets go, and I start rushing out of the room. The others are drunk as I am, maybe more, so I somehow rush through them and start running.”

Milo raised a hand to his mouth and began to curl in on himself, the sudden weight of the hastily drunk vodka dragging him to the edge of his seat. He’d let go of Rihyani’s hand and was now wrapping his arm around his stomach.

“Dear God,” he gasped and swore as the smell of the room mixed with the vodka vapors in his nostrils. “Uh, so I was suddenly on the run, not even eighteen, no papers, no money, and with my best friend—hell, my big brother—having turned my only other friends against me. It was only a matter of time before I was cau—oh, God, before I—”

Milo lurched to his feet and stumbled to the rickety door of the hovel, knocking his chair over as he did. He clapped one hand over his mouth as his gorge rose to the back of his throat, yanked the door open, and managed a couple of strides before pitching forward on hands and knees. His body bowed, and his stomach emptied its contents in spattering heaves.

He managed a groan and sometimes a curse between each body-arching expulsion until he had nothing left, either in words or further fluids to evacuate. Mouth dripping, he hung there, crouched over his vomit, wanting to recoil from the rank smell but lacking the strength. Every muscle ached, and his bones felt as though they were grinding against each other as his body temperature plummeted. He shivered and then managed to sink back onto his haunches, arms limp at his sides.

It was in that broken and vulnerable state that he looked up and saw Trotsky, Fedor, and Izac standing against the palisade wall.

“Who let you out?” Milo wheezed as he sank onto his backside, clutching his knees as he continued to shiver.

As he watched, he saw all three men were shaking but not from cold since each wore the clothes that the guard had managed to find. They seemed agitated, talking to each other and maybe to others, trying to speak emphatically and gesture even though their hands were behind their backs. Milo stared, trying to understand their strange behavior.

Then he heard a voice—Lokkemand’s voice.

“FIRE!” he bellowed, loud enough that it could still be heard as a chorus of rifles answered the call.

Trotsky, Fedor, and Izac twisted, jerked, and crumpled.

“What’s going on?” Milo heard Ambrose roar as he emerged from the hovel.

Milo’s vision had cleared enough that he could see Lokkemand at the head of a column of soldiers, all with their rifles out. They were turning toward the hovel now, faces set, eyes hard.

“That didn’t take long,” Milo grumbled as he sat beside his effluvium, watching the soldiers level their guns his way.

“Get him out of here,” Ambrose bellowed as he drew a trench knife from his belt. Without a backward glance, he began stalking toward the oncoming soldiers.

Rihyani had her hand on Milo’s shoulder, but she shouted after the big man as she tried to pull him to his feet.

“Ambrose, don’t!” she cried, as Milo forced himself to clumsily stand up.

Some of the soldiers were already leveling their rifles at Ambrose, who kept walking forward, knife in hand. Milo