Mercurial by Naomi Hughes (ebook reader with built in dictionary .txt) 📕

at Nyx. “Just promise me you won’t do anything until after the trial, at least,” he said. “Please.”

She thawed, but only slightly. That sad, stoic look might have worked on her a little. “Very well. As long as you promise not to die in the meantime.”

His smile was a small, rare thing, and it filled her up like light after a long winter’s evening. “I do so swear,” he pledged, nudging her with a shoulder.

Nyx rolled her eyes and looked to Helenia. “How are we planning to transport the Destroyer without her discovering the location of the base? She ought to be drugged before we bundle her into a sled.”

“Already taken care of,” Helenia said serenely as she swept the hair into a pile. “I dosed her bread with laudanum powder.”

Both Tal and Nyx turned fully to stare at her. “You did what?” Tal said.

“Not to worry, it was a safe dose. She’ll fall asleep within a few minutes and then we’ll be able to keep her dosed and unconscious as we travel, until we get to the base. Although Maluk will have to ride on a sled for the first leg of the run. I’m afraid I had to feed him a bit of the bread to ease the Destroyer’s suspicions. He’s likely snoring away next to her as we speak.”

Nyx laughed out loud and stood up to sling her arms around her beautiful, devious girlfriend’s neck, planting a kiss on her cheek. “Hel, I admire you more every day.” Then she frowned and stepped back. “Wait, why was Maluk in the room with you?”

Tal stirred, looking uneasy. “I…I told him to stay with her. When you were putting us on the sled to bring us here, before I passed out.”

Helenia swept the hair into an empty night pot and set the broom aside. “She had a ferocious grip on his fur and wouldn’t let go, even when she was unconscious herself. I didn’t want to pull out Maluk’s fur in getting him away, and he seemed happy enough to stay with her anyway, so I left him.”

Nyx shook her head. “She could have hurt him, or threatened him to try to get something from us. You should have taken more care. Tal raised him from a pup, he’s part of the family.”

Helenia took the polished-tin mirror off its stand and handed it to Nyx. “I felt she wouldn’t hurt him. The girl is many things, but I don’t think she’s cruel.” Nyx inhaled sharply at that outrageous statement and started to respond, but Helenia raised a hand to forestall her. “I apologize, I misspoke. What she did to both of you was unspeakably cruel. I only meant…I’m not sure. I feel as though something is disjointed, or perhaps new, in her. She doesn’t quite match what I expected, given the descriptions of her that I’ve heard. In any case, I’m sure it’ll all come out in the trial, but first we have to get her there.”

Nyx held up the mirror to examine herself. Helenia had done an excellent job. Her head was smooth now, her face sharper and more angular without the softening effect of her braids. Her eyes looked darker than she remembered, her mouth less kind—though it had never been overly kind to begin with—and slanted with a new hardness. She felt, suddenly and unexpectedly, like herself.

She set down the mirror and stood up. “I’m ready,” she told her girlfriend. “Let’s go.”

TAL DID NOT WATCH WHEN THEY RETRIEVED ELODIE FROM HER CELL. When the huddle of silent, on-edge rebels carried her prone body past his room, they kept her head wrapped up in a wolf skin. He didn’t see her face.

One of her hands fell, though. The rebels jostled her as they maneuvered down the tiny hallway and nearly dropped her. They caught her in time, shifted their grip and eyed each other with an apprehension so loud it was nearly audible, but none of them folded her arm back where it had been. It slid along the floorboards, her evenly-trimmed fingernails whispering against the doorframe, her slender pianist’s fingers curled slightly toward her palms.

Nyx rose from the bed and kicked the door shut.

Tal exhaled. Nyx slung an arm around him, a gesture that seemed comforting and sisterly, but the lean muscles in her shoulder were tight. She was ready to restrain him in case he leapt up to defend Elodie. He could tell her she wouldn’t need to, but then he would have to tell her why, and he would have to give the reasoning behind what he had done—and that he couldn’t do, because so much of it remained unfathomable even to himself. There were too many things he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t tell them that it was his fault Elodie was alive again. He couldn’t tell them why the thought of her death at the hands of the Saints jury made him feel both desperately afraid and darkly, ravenously hopeful. He couldn’t tell them that in his head, she was no longer the Destroyer, but Elodie.

He couldn’t tell them what he’d dreamt about while he was asleep: Elodie’s hands light on his chest, and him shivering beneath her touch. He couldn’t tell them that he’d asked her to stop not because he couldn’t stand the feel of her skin against his, but because he had liked it, because it had made all of him lean in to her like she was the sun he orbited around—and that, he couldn’t stand.

He was finally free of her, and yet more of him belonged to her now than ever before.

They waited in silence while the sleds were readied and Elodie’s limp form secured upon one. Then Nyx produced the key to his manacle and walked with him to the outside of the small building. There were four sleds all in a row, nearly two dozen dogs barking and tugging, excited for what they sensed would be a long run. Their anticipation