Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
“I’m going to ask about our merchant. Don’t leave without me.” He glances back at Dain. “Let’s go, Krovlish.” Offering me another precious grin, he disappears into the store, followed quickly by Dain.
“Is that the same guy?” Drake asks Cat, turning around in the saddle. “That cannot possibly be the same fucking guy.”
I try not to look, but fail, and when I glance over my shoulder, I catch a glimpse of her shrugging and quickly looking away.
“Maybe this is who he could have been if his dad hadn’t led a whole rebellion and fucked him over by getting executed and having him thrown into the quadrant and making him responsible for all the marked ones at the age of what? Seventeen?” Ridoc muses.
“Yeah,” I agree, my eyes on the door. “That.” And yet…if all of it hadn’t happened, would we still be us? Or is the miracle of our relationship the result of a precise combination of tragedies that broke us both so completely that when we collided, we became something entirely new?
“Or it could just be that he loves Violet, so he’s not a dick to her,” Mira says, eyeing a puckered-browed Deverelli man who scurries back into a dressmaker’s shop at the first sight of us, dragging a woman along with him. “Guess we’re more visible than we thought.”
“We’re the only ones in black,” I mutter.
“Fire-bringers!” the man accuses in the common tongue, then slams the door shut, rattling the glass.
“Rude.” Ridoc adjusts in his saddle.
“And wrong,” Cat mutters. “Some of us just want to fuck with your feelings, not burn your house to the ground.”
I huff a laugh, but Ridoc full-on snorts.
Xaden strides through the cloth merchant’s door with Dain, tucking a black velvet pouch into the front left pocket of his uniform as he comes down the three stone steps. “She’s a dealer of rare books, two streets up the hill.”
Stunned, I hand him back his reins, and he mounts quickly. “It can’t be that easy.”
“It can,” he says, tapping his pocket. “We don’t share a currency, but gemstones seem to speak in every language.” He looks over his shoulder. “Good job, Aetos.”
“Was that a compliment? What the fuck is going on?” Dain asks, his gaze flying to mine. “Did you give him something?”
I shake my head, and Drake starts us forward.
“Fire-bringer” is hurled as an insult in our direction more than a few times as we make our way down the rows of shops and up the two streets where Xaden and Dain were directed. The flurry of activity dwindles from the urgency of a daily produce-and-goods mercantile district to more varied and niche shops by the time we reach the second street. When we stop in front of Tomes and Tales, there’s ample room next to the trunk of an enormous tree for the horses to wait.
The shop itself is two stories, built in various shades of gray stone, and unlike the streets below, none of its sides touch the buildings around it. From the outside, it looks to be the same size as the bookstore I visited in Calldyr with Dad, a little larger than the library in the Riders Quadrant, but nowhere even an eighth of the Archives.
“You’re on,” Xaden says from the ground, reaching up for me.
I swing my leg over the sable mare and dismount into his arms, noting how he takes his delicious time sliding me down the length of his body.
He keeps our eyes locked, and the heat I find there, the need that flares as my hands drift down his chest make my breath catch. I reach for our bond out of reflex to tell him how much I want him back in my bed, and my hands fist the fabric of his uniform when I remember it’s blocked here.
“I miss the bond,” I whisper before I can think better of it.
“Me too. But you don’t have to say what you’re thinking for me to know,” he whispers, his hands slipping from my waist to my hips. “I can read it in every line of your body. Your eyes are a dead giveaway, too.” Under my fists, his heartbeat accelerates. “Always have been. You have no idea how many times I almost fucked up on the sparring mat when I caught you watching me.”
He says this now? When I can’t just drag him into the nearest room and lock the door? Suddenly, the last six weeks feel like an eternity.
“I swear to Amari, you two get one inch closer and I’m going to throw a bucket of water on you,” Mira warns, breaking the spell.
I fall forward, leaning my forehead on Xaden’s chest right between my fists, and feel his laughter rumble as he closes his arms around me.
“Do riders get nicknames once they earn their wings?” Drake questions Mira. “Because I’m pretty sure yours would be Killjoy.”