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

very moment, though, the fire leapt a little higher as a burnt log collapsed, sending sparks wheeling into the stars and making the other logs crackle and shift. The sound covered the clanking of the bottle, and it sank slowly into the soup, bleeding a trail of brown medicine that quickly diluted and became invisible in the broth.

Elodie closed her eyes in relief. Fire had, once again, protected her.

Someone was shuffling toward the campfire. Elodie quickly went limp, closing her eyes to slits, peering out through her lashes as a figure—the girl called Helenia, who had fed her the drugged bread—bent to pick up a ladle from the ground. She washed it off with a dribble of water from a canteen and then set about filling the bowl in her other hand with soup from the pot. Tal continued talking, his voice cracking from overuse and emotion, as the moon crept higher in the sky and Helenia handed out bowls of soup. Tal took his but set it down on a rock next to him so he could keep talking. Everyone else shoveled spoonfuls in their mouths, obviously hungry from their long journey even as their attention remained fixed on Tal.

They finished eating. A few of the Saints yawned. Elodie wondered how long it would be before the drug took effect. She had no idea how much laudanum it even took to put people to sleep; perhaps it had been too diluted, and would only make them a little sleepy. Or maybe, she thought wildly, it had been too much, and they would not fall asleep but perish. Would she be sorry? The Destroyer wouldn’t be.

But even the Destroyer would mourn if Tal died.

Her eyes flicked open at the thought. Her gaze leapt between the empty bowls lying on the ground and the Saints they belonged to, until she found the still-full bowl that had been Tal’s. He had not eaten. She released a slow breath that shuddered with a relief she refused to examine.

A motion caught her eye. Tal was standing before Nyx, holding out his hand. His fingers closed around the straight razor that his sister laid in his palm. “I will kill her myself,” he said, and began to turn toward the campfire.

Elodie’s breathing stalled. She closed her eyes before he had turned all the way around. Her head was lying on the ground and she could hear the familiar rhythm of his footsteps as he approached her. They should be set to music, she had once thought, and now the trill of her own heartbeat in her ears provided it.

She inhaled. It smelled like dead leaves: rot and mulch and earth, pulling her into itself. She felt the cool of his shadow fall over her as he stepped between her and the flames. He knelt. Something thin and cold set itself against the side of her throat, resting on the soft skin just under her ear, where her pulse beat a frantic rhythm. Tal laid a hand on her forehead to hold her still. His fingers slipped through the strands of her hair as he settled his grip.

Even as the razor began to bite toward her vein, a part of her refused to believe it was happening. I swear to protect you, whispered his voice in her memory.

The blade slipped through the top layer of her skin. Her breath caught; she couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to open her eyes. She wanted to plead with him. She wanted to know why he had saved her before, if he was only going to kill her now. She wanted to deny the pain of the razor, the thin trickle of blood already curving down her neck, the way it confirmed the inescapable truth that he was no longer bound to his oath.

And to not allow harm to come to you, whispered the voice of memory. She remembered the mist of that day, the way it drifted softly through the starlight, the way it caught in his hair like beads of glass. She remembered the cold and desperate trail of her own thoughts. The glorious hope when his oath had forced him to defend her for the first time. She had an ally, she had thought then. A refuge. Someone that none of her enemies could use to hurt her.

And to never harm you myself.

Anger rose then. It was hot and desperate and pure. Would she lie here and allow herself to be killed by a boy as she whimpered beneath his blade, unable to accept the truth of his betrayal? The fact was, they had both betrayed each other, and his god had betrayed him, and he had betrayed his sister. They were all wrapped up in it like flies in a spider’s web, unable to find a way free of their pasts and their failures and the things they owed to each other. She knew, all at once, that Tal didn’t want to kill her. If he had he would have thrust the blade into her throat in one swift, inevitable movement. Instead he was hesitating, his hand almost gentle on her forehead, holding the blade still at the mere nick he had made in her skin. He didn’t want to kill her, but he would eventually do it anyway, because he thought he should want to. And suddenly, Elodie was sick beyond belief of people doing what they thought they should be doing.

She opened her eyes, grabbed the razor, and thrust it away from her, at the same time pushing her other hand against the ground to shove herself to standing. In her mind, the movements were quick and graceful, as all her movements usually were, but in real life she was still drug-addled and unused to relying on her hands rather than her fire for defense. As she thrust the razor away, it sliced deep across her palm, right along the scabbed-over spot where her hand had already been injured. She hissed and yelped as