CAPTAIN JAYS ON 8 MILE SKINĮchoing the message from that Hearthless wraith with the gravebone blades who’d saved her skin in the Galante necropolis.Most players would have taken the rest of the night off. He taped it up and went on to have a phenomenal night. She’d never had a mentor to show her what it was to be darkin. Never found an answer to the riddle of what she was. But she knew this, sure as she knew her own name: since the moment Furian had died at her hands, a newfound strength was flowing in her veins. The world fell into muzzy blackness as she pulled on her shadowcloak, and she and her brother became faint smudges on the watercolors of the world. Jonnen squinted in the gloom beneath her mantle, watching her with suspicious eyes, but at least his struggles had ceased for now. Mia followed Mister Kindly’s and Eclipse’s whispered directions, slowly climbing a barnacle-encrusted ladder and up to the jetty proper with Jonnen under one arm. And there, in the shadow of a shallow-bottomed trawler, she curled down to wait, cross-legged, dripping wet, arms around her brother. Mister Kindly coalesced in the shadow at Jonnen’s feet, licking at a translucent paw. Eclipse melted from the boy’s shadow, outlined black against the trawler’s hull. “… I WILL RETURN …,” the not-wolf growled. “… WILL YOU MISS YOUR TONGUE AS MUCH, WHEN I TEAR IT FROM YOUR HEAD …?” “… you will be missed …,” the not-cat yawned. The shadowwolf shivered and was gone, flitting along the cracks in the jetty’s boards and off along the harbor wall. “… i hate that mongrel …,” Mister Kindly sighed. “About a thousand times now.”ĭespite her fatigue, Mia’s lips twisted in a smile. Mister Kindly continued with his pointless ablutions and Mia sat cradling her brother for long minutes, muscles aching, salt water stinging in her cuts as the suns blazed overhead. She was tired, beaten, bleeding from a dozen wounds after her ordeals in the arena. The adrenaline of her victory was wearing off, leaving a bone-deep fatigue in its wake. She’d fought two major battles earlier in the turn, helped her fellow gladiatii from the Remus Collegium escape their bondage, slaughtered dozens, including Duomo and Scaeva, won the greatest contest in the history of the Republic, seen all her plans come to fruition.Īn emptiness was slowly creeping in to replace her elation.
An exhaustion that left her hands shaking. She wanted a soft bed and a cigarillo and to savor the taste of some Albari goldwine on Ashlinn’s lips. But more, beneath it all, beneath the longing and the fatigue and the pain, looking down at her brother, she realized she felt … To feel their bones collide, then sleep for a thousand years. It was similar to what she’d felt in the presence of Lord Cassius. She’d felt it when she first saw the boy on his father’s shoulders at the victor’s plinth. She felt it as she glanced at him now-the longing of a puzzle, searching for a piece of itself. Mister Kindly’s whisper dragged her eyes from the back of her brother’s head.
“Spoken like someone who’s never owned a pair.” “… what difference does it make, the direction your breasts are pointing …?” And all things considered, nothing went too badly tits up.” The shadowcat had stopped pretending to clean his paw, instead staring out at the City of Bridges and Bones from within Jonnen’s shadow. “… we seem to have some unexpected luggage …” Mister Kindly glanced at the boy he was riding. Jonnen mumbled something unintelligible beneath his gag. “And whose fault is that? You’re the one who eats my fears.” Mia had no doubts his sentiments were less than flattering, but she kept her eyes on the shadowcat. The daemon tilted his head, but he gave no reply. Mia waited in silence, staring out at the city beyond her veil of shadows. The sounds of the capital were muted beneath her cloak, the colors naught but dull white and terra-cotta blurs. But she could still hear tolling bells, running feet, panicked shouts in the distance. Mia glanced down to Jonnen, saw he was staring at her with unveiled malice. She knew his thoughts then, as surely as if he’d spoken aloud.
“He imprisoned our mother, Jonnen,” Mia told the boy. “Left her to die in agony inside the Philosopher’s Stone. He killed my father, and hundreds more besides. Do you not remember him on the victor’s plinth, throwing you at me to save his own wretched skin?” She shook her head and sighed.
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