“You’re coming for a walk with me.”
Mische turned around, startled. Her eyes went round in surprise, then scrunched in something resembling a wince.
She winced when she saw me. Winced.
“I have to—”
“I don’t want any bullshit excuses, Mische.” I pointed to the path ahead. “Walk. With me. Now.”
“Is that an order?”
“Is that an attitude? You’ve been spending too much time with Oraya.”
No smile at that. No returning joke. She just said nothing.
Concern twisted in my stomach.
I held out my hand to help her up. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“It can wait.”
I didn’t move my hand. Just stared at her.
Mische and I had been friends for a very, very long time. She knew when there was no point arguing with me.
She let out a sigh and took my hand.
“Jesmine said there are demons out here,” Mische said. “We shouldn’t go too far.”
Mische and I wandered through the more secluded paths in the cliffs, out of earshot of the camps. It was dark here, though not so dark our eyesight couldn’t make out what it needed to. Better yet, it was quiet.
I’d missed quiet.
Meanwhile, Mische seemed so uncomfortable she was practically trying to speed walk through our stroll.
I scoffed. “As if I believe you’re afraid of demons.”
“Why wouldn’t I be afraid of demons?”
“I don’t know, Mish. Maybe because you ran off and joined the Kejari like it was another day of the week.”
That sounded a lot more bitter than I intended it to. Thought I was at a point where I could joke about Mische’s actions. Guess not.
Maybe I wasn’t the only one, because instead of giving me some kind of smart-ass retort, she buried her hands in her pockets and kept walking.
“That was different,” she muttered.
It took me a second too long to understand what she meant. I kept pace beside her, my eyes slipping down—to the scars visible where her sleeve rode up.
My lips thinned. A wave of concern passing through me.
And with it, frustration.
“Mische.” I stopped and touched her shoulder. She stopped walking, but seemed reluctant to look at me.
“What?”
“What do you mean, ‘what?’ I’ve put up with you every day for fucking decades. Enough.”
“Enough of what?”
“You’ve been avoiding me since—”
“I haven’t been avoiding you.”
“Oraya told me about the prince.”
Mische’s mouth remained open for a moment, her half-spoken words dying on her lips, before she closed it.
“Alright.”
Alright.
This fucking girl. Mother help me.
“What?” she said. “You’re angry. I know. It’s a big political problem and—”
I scoffed. Actually scoffed, because what the fuck else was I supposed to say?
“I’m not mad about the prince.”
“Well, obviously you’re mad. So what the hell are you mad about?”
“Something is wrong with you and you won’t tell me what it is.”
It was more direct than I should have been. Maybe I was worn down after months of trying to help someone who hadn’t wanted to be helped. Between Mische and Oraya, it was exhausting.
She and I stared each other down, silent. Mische’s eyes were big and stubborn. Most of the time, they looked pretty and doe-like. People often said that Mische’s eyes were her prettiest feature. But they didn’t see her pissed off. Then, they were downright terrifying.
She wasn’t quite there, yet, but I could see the shadow of it, and that was bad enough.
As if she should be giving me that look. When I was the one following her around getting snapped at for the great crime of worrying about her.
And I was worried about her.
“Enough with the bullshit,” I said. But the words came out soft—as soft, I supposed, as I meant them. “Tell me what happened.”
“I thought Oraya told you already.”
Oraya didn’t tell me why you’ve been avoiding me for a week, I wanted to say. She didn’t tell me why you were put in that apartment instead of in the dungeons. She didn’t tell me why you look so broken.
“Oraya told me about a dead prince,” I shot back. “I don’t give a fuck about that. I’m asking about you.”
Mische stopped walking, then turned around. The anger drained from her face, leaving behind something childlike and conflicted that reminded me so much of the way she had looked when I first found her, it made my chest physically hurt.