“But you’re here.” Reaver scanned the mist and the empty street. “Accepting it all for a female?”
“Never said I accepted it either.”
Nothing was said after that for a long time, but Kieran seemed to watch Malik even closer. We walked what I knew was the very outskirts of the cramped district of Croft’s Cross, even though I couldn’t see any of the buildings stacked on top of one another in staggering, clustered rows. It was the smell of the sea and the scent of too many people forced to live in a too-small place that tipped me off.
The mist was fading over the edges of the district near the sea. I saw more of the moonlight-kissed waters, but orders were still being shouted from the Rise, arrows still being lobbed. No horn had blown again, alerting the citizens that it was safe.
The mist was damper here, closer to the ocean, and a fine sheen of sweat dotted my brow beneath the hood. The slender streets of what seemed to be shops and homes appeared empty and silent through the mist. Not even our footsteps could be heard as we cut between two one-story buildings and began climbing the steep path—an earthen pass through birch trees.
“Who is this friend?” Kieran broke the silence. “And where in the hell are we walking? Atlantia?”
“Stonehill,” I answered as Malik snorted. “Aren’t we?”
“We are.”
Stonehill was a district somewhere between Croft’s Cross and the Stroud Sea, where those who had a little coin but not a lot called home. Usually, there was one family per home and little space between the normally one-story houses with terracotta roofs used for patios.
“And this friend?” Kieran persisted as we found our way onto another uneven sidewalk.
“Someone who can be trusted,” Malik answered as we came upon a stucco home with no courtyard and a door leading right onto the sidewalk. I was able to see that it was dark beyond the two latticed windows on either side of the door. “His name is Blaz. Wife’s name is Clariza.”
“And how do you know them?” I asked as he hit the bottom of the door with his booted foot. “Why should we trust them?”
“I met Clariza one night in Lower Town when she and her friends were smuggling barrels from a ship that’d come in from the Vodina Isles. Barrels that smelled suspiciously of black powder,” he answered, kicking the door again and stirring up the mist. “You should trust them because those barrels did, in fact, carry black powder that they plan to use to blow up the inner walls of Wayfair.”
Reaver slowly looked at him. “What the fuck?”
Descenters. They had to be Descenters. But how was Malik involved?
“And you should also know,” Malik continued, “that they do not believe you to be a Harbinger of doom.”
Well, that was good. “And you? Do you believe that?”
Malik said nothing.
The door cracked open just then, revealing a sliver of a tan cheek and one brown eye. That eye lifted to the shadowy recesses of Malik’s hood, dropped to the cloaked body in his arms, and then darted to where we stood. The eye narrowed. “Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not at first,” Malik responded in a voice barely above a whisper. “But, yeah, you will once you know who I have in my arms and who stands with me.”
Wariness radiated from Kieran, tasting of vinegar as he crowded Malik’s back.
“Who’s in your arms?” the man I could only assume was Blaz demanded in an equally low voice.
I didn’t think Malik would answer.
He did.
“The King of Atlantia.”
My mouth dropped open as Blaz uttered, “Bullshit.”
“And I have his wife with me,” Malik continued. I thought for a moment that Reaver might actually eat him. “You know, the Queen.”
“Double bullshit,” Blaz replied.
Sighing, Malik looked over his shoulder to where I stood. “Show him.”
“Yeah.” The eye narrowed even further. “Show me and then tell me what my good man here was smoking that got him showing up at my door on a night like this, telling wild stories.”
The fact that the man hadn’t shouted to the sky at the mention of Atlantia was somewhat reassuring.
Deciding that we were already knee-deep in whatever this was, I edged past Kieran and came to stand beside Malik. I lowered the hood of my cloak.
That eye swept over my face and then darted back to the scar on my brow, going wide. “Holy shit,” he gasped as Kieran reached over, tugging my hood back into place. “It’s you. It’s really you. Holy shit.”