I barely restrained the eye roll. “It’s waited a couple of decades. I’m sure it can wait a little bit longer.”
“For?”
I shook my head. “I don’t trust you.”
“So you’ve said. But no matter how you feel on the matter, you are still my blood.”
“Well, we all can’t be perfect.”
“Your tone,” she said. “I have no use for it.”
“Of that I don’t give two shits. I’m going to tell you how this is going to go.”
“Oh? Please. Enlighten me.”
I ignored that. “You will take Ruv and leave tomorrow to travel back to the desert. We will follow by the end of the week.”
“I don’t see why we wouldn’t just travel together when—”
“You’ll be on horseback, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Gary will kill you, because that’s racist.”
“How is that racist—”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll be on foot.”
“That’ll take weeks,” she said.
“Probably,” I said. “But that’s the way it’s going to be. Think of it this way. It’ll give you time to get to the desert before us, and you can plan further ways to try and use me.”
&nb
sp; “This is not about being used,” she said.
“Isn’t it?” I asked, daring her to be contrary. “Because that’s exactly what it sounds like to me. You’re here to use me.”
She watched me for a moment, her dark eyes assessing. “I knew not of the dark man in shadows, aside from what was shown to me. His identity has always been a mystery. The secret kept from you about him was not my doing. Do not direct your anger at me for something I did not do. And if you let it fester, if you let it boil, it will spill over until it consumes you, chava. Anger in your heart will lead only to misfortune and misery.”
I snorted. “Fortune-telling again?”
“Personal experience,” she said, and that shut me up right quick. “I agree to your terms, as long as you do not dally. It may have taken this long for us to arrive at the point we have, but there are many parts in motion right now, Sam of Wilds. You are a cog in a machine that will shred you to pieces if you do not keep up.”
She left me alone in the throne room.
I SAT on the top of a large sand dune, the sky above bright with stars. The others lay asleep near the fire below, the thin line of smoke rising up into the air. The stars seemed to be bigger out here, away from all the light and noise of the cities. And I thought maybe there were more of them, more than I’d ever seen before.
I hadn’t wished upon them in a very long time.
I hadn’t needed to.
But now?
Now I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if the path I was taking was the right one. I didn’t know if I’d made the right choices. I didn’t know if I could trust the people that I had thought could always be trusted.
“Shit,” I said to the stars.