The Hanging City (74)

My heartbeats thrum too swiftly to count. I search Azmar’s face. “Your fault this time,” I whisper.

He runs a hand behind my ear and over my braid. “Perhaps do not tell Unach about this, either.”

A sudden shyness overtakes me. Leaning back, I pull my legs to myself so I’m no longer straddling but sitting modestly beside him. Trying not to think of the telltale sign of desire I’d felt, which is definitely the same with trollis as it is with humans. I murmur, “What would she do?”

“She would not take it well.” He wipes a hand down his face. “None of them would.”

I’m glad he doesn’t sugarcoat it for me. And yet it stabs me in the chest like a rusted nail. I think of Perg’s mother, casting herself into the canyon . . .

Unach would never support us. Even Perg would never support us. And if they won’t, no one will.

We’re doomed before we begin.

“Which is why I’ve requested my own quarters,” he continues. “They would be much smaller, but more . . . private.”

My face warms. “Oh,” I say stupidly. “But this . . . The law . . .”

“There is no law against it . . . officially.” He leans his elbows on his knees.

I study him, the concern knotted at the corners of his eyes. “Because it should be obvious without the council declaring it.”

He nods. “Because aside from Perg, it’s unheard of.”

That wilted hope from last night grows new roots.

A moment passes in silence before I ask, “Why did you change your mind, Azmar? Last night . . .” I can’t find a way to finish the sentence without feeling foolish. I can still taste him on my lips. My pulse is erratic in the aura of his calmness.

“I did not change it,” he said, allowing an iota of panic to surge into me. “I merely accepted it.”

I study his profile, and then his eyes when he turns toward me, so resolute. I reach forward and splay my hand on his chest, over his shirt, where his heart is. Despite the firmness of his voice and the stoniness of his features, his heart beats swiftly, one hard pulse for every two of mine.

A strange jubilation burns in my core, and despite everything—Cagmar, Unach, the council, the laws—I find myself smiling.

His lip quirks at my countenance. “Did you think me heartless, Lark?”

I don’t pull away. “Only worried.”

His hand touches my thigh, and he leans in, but before I can kiss him again, loud footsteps sound outside the door.

I’m up so fast—smoothing my skirt, skittering away from the fire—that the room spins.

Unach barges in with such intensity that the door crashes against the wall behind it. Azmar stands, his expression utterly stoic, his body poised as though ready to fight.

My gut hits the floor. There is no way Unach could already know—

“Seven trollis,” she says, and confusion replaces my trepidation. “Seven trollis adolescents murdered, their heads left on pikes for us to find!”

My jaw drops in shock. And given the scathing look Unach throws my way, I know exactly who the perpetrators are.

Humans.





Chapter 19


Ufreya the queen and Sankan the oak tree.

Did the stars predict this?

Azmar answers Unach first. “Where? When?”

Unach whirls around and kicks the door shut. It seems all of Cagmar shakes with the frame. She stares it down, as though it might attempt to war with her, before turning to face us. Her green skin is especially bright, her glare hotter than the fire behind me.

“East fan,” she says. It’s a trollis district, not anything labeled on human-made maps. “Right on the border of the East Arrow.”

From what I can remember of trollis geography, she means somewhere south of Dorys, the township I’d run from after my father’s men attacked me in the stable I was sleeping in, in the earliest hours of the morning.

I shudder and hug myself. “Were they scouts, or—”

Unach reels on me. “Or what?”

“Unach.” Sadness brims Azmar’s calm cadence.

“Or raiders,” I finish, trying to match Azmar’s tone. “I assume it was my kind who did this.”

“You’re damn right it was your kind.” Unach marches closer, jutting a thick finger in my direction. “And what does it matter?”

I frown. “It matters.” Though even in self-defense, to put the trollis’ heads on pikes . . .

My stomach twists into a hard knot.

Unach growls, but she’s too sensible to take her anger out on me. Instead she grabs the side of her head, as though her skull struggles to contain her rage. “They were trainees. Innocent! They were running drills when they were attacked.”

I glance toward Azmar. Hadn’t he been in a similar situation when he got that scar?

I swallow, tasting the danger of the line I’m about to walk. “Perhaps the people of Dorys felt threatened—”

“Dorys?” The township name cracks whip sharp on her tongue. “What the hell is Dorys?”

I forget that the trollis have an entirely different way of mapping the world than we do. I know this land by its subtle roads and townships; they know it by great geometrical tracts and ranges. “A township—”