Page 56 of Shadows of the Lost
“Aw, c’mon,” Calem tried. “We’re just curious.”
She jerked her chin toward me. “You put him up to this?”
Words caught in my throat. Gods, why was it so hard to talkto her? To anyone? I’d managed to forge an easy relationship with Raven and Leena, but anytime it came to someone else, someone I saw in a potentially romantic light, I completely floundered. The simplest of questions always struck me off-balance, and I ended up saying nothing or saying something just plain stupid.
Don’t analyze it so much.Raven’s nonchalant advice rose to the forefront of my mind. When I’d first confided in Raven about my inability to speak with Isla, she’d urged me to simply be me. Of course, Raven didn’t have problems speaking her mind. She was likely to bite someone’s head off if they ever tried to silence her. Meanwhile, silence was what I did best. How did it help me to be me if I never said a word?
Calem drove his heel onto the top of my foot, and I jolted, blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “I have zero control over him.”
Isla’s gaze jumped to our feet and then back up to my face. An amused smile toyed with her lips. “I can see that.”
“Fortunately, I do.” Kaori had moved behind us with the fluidity and deadly quiet of an assassin, and both Calem and I flinched. With nimble fingers, she pinched Calem’s arm. “I need your help with something.”
“Good luck,” Calem whispered beneath his breath before turning on his heels to trail after Kaori. His soft chuckle lingered far too long after he departed, and I swallowed thickly as I tried to come up with anything to fill the dead air between Isla and me.
Fortunately, she spoke first. “I suppose I could use your help as well. There’s some wood we need to move.”
“Course.” Action gave me purpose. Give me a task and I’d go to the ends of the realm to accomplish it. Plus, there was something about physical exertion that cleared my mind and made it easier to think. I followed her without saying anything else, pausing onlywhen we came across one of the few broken homes toward the end of the clearing. Splintered wooden planks of heavy cedar from one of the blown-out walls littered the area. An oil-rubbed dresser had tipped over and spilled garments onto the ground, along with a handful of personal items. Two Charmers were already attending to that, which left the daunting pile of broken timber for us.
“Raven asked if we could relocate this to the woodworker’s tent just over there.” She pointed to a gazebo open on all four sides with a slatted roof and several tables covered in wood shavings. A bench covered with saws, chisels, and a variety of tools I couldn’t name was manned by a Charmer already hard at work fixing a broken table. I made a mental note to bring him the chest I’d left behind so that its owner could still use it.
Isla bent down and filled her arms with several planks of heavy lumber. Shock tugged at my lips, but I forced myself to keep them closed. Toned biceps were visible against the strained fabric of her blouse, and she carried her load with ease. It’s not that I’d expected her to be weak by any means, I just hadn’t expected her to be able to carry quite that much.
“You’re strong,” I said without thinking.
“I know,” she said over her shoulder, already striding toward the tent. “Keep up.”
I fumbled after her, carrying as much as my arms would allow. A comfortable silence settled over us as we worked, and the anxiety that had rushed through to my quaking fingers receded to a dull hum in my chest. She didn’t seem to mind, either. I couldn’t help but admire her. She never broke pace. She never complained. Even when a sheen coated her forehead, she simply wiped it away with her sleeve and kept moving. She was marvelous, and I wanted to know everything about her. I just didn’t know where to start.
So of course, I said something absurd.
“So… Have you been to Galvanhold?”
She paused, her brows inching together and forming a slight crease across her forehead. “Are you asking me if I’ve gone to prison?”
“No, I just…” Heat flushed my face, and I busied my hands with the wood. “Sorry, I just assumed you’d at least seen it since it’s on the way to Allamere. And I didn’t want to ask about Allamere because you already made it clear that was none of our business. Which I totally get. Not trying to pry.”Shut. Up.I focused on the timber as hard as I could and pretended I hadn’t just word vomited a nonsensical train of thought.
She blinked. Slowly. And then a laugh bubbled from her. “No, I’ve never been to Galvanhold, but you’re right. I have seen it.” Her expression turned somber. “I pray I never step foot there, either. That place has an awful aura about it. Only the truly wicked end up there.”
“Why not just kill them?” I shouldered another round of cedar and started toward the woodworker’s tent. “I’ve killed far less dangerous people for just about every reason you can think of.”
Her brows shot up at that. “Have you now?”
Fuck.I didn’t exactly regret my work as an assassin, but it wasn’t a pretty job. We didn’t kill needlessly or without cause, but we did kill for bits. Some bounties netted enough gold aurics to feed our family for weeks. It was a job that had to be done, and I just happened to be the person who did it.
“Not without a bounty.” I dropped the last of the timber to the ground and dusted my hands together.
“But anyone can place a bounty. How do you know if it’s right?”
I’d been asking myself that for decades. We’d never turned down hits from the capital for fear of how the former king would’ve reacted. Blindly accepting those requests—demands—was part of the strainedpeace between us and the law. There were still strangers, though, who placed hits. People with horrible intentions who lied to justify their need for a bounty. Yazmin had been one such individual when she placed a hit on Leena. And I’d known from the moment we set out on our journey together that she wasn’t the one we should be hunting.
Which is, of course, why we didn’t make it a habit of getting to know our bounties. “We don’t. We get the details, and we execute. At least, that’s how it used to be. Now that Noc is king, there are new laws surrounding the placement of hits.”
Isla set her splintered pieces of wood on top of mine. “Maybe they’ll start sending people to Galvanhold again.”
“Maybe.” It’d been years since I’d heard of any criminal winding up there. Sometimes bad people ended up in the cells beneath Wilheim’s castle. More often than not, they just wound up dead. The former king didn’t like the idea of his collection of bits going toward sustaining lowly prisoners. But Galvanhold was another thing entirely. That kind of sentence was reserved for those who deserved fates worse than death and transporting that kind of people to that remote island was a daunting task.
Chewing on her lip, Isla placed one hand on her jutted hip and looked out over the clearing. “If Gaige can’t control his power, is that where he’ll end up?”