Chapter 136

LACERATIONS

SAELYNA

I don’t trust myself to speak. I’m too jittery at the moment (actually I’ve been so for a very long while now, since the “meeting” had been called).

It's Halden all over again. It’s like a sickness, this fear, this haunting memory that follows me everywhere I go, that emerges like a pest at the first jolt. It hadn’t been there before, not until that night with the mages. Not until I was almost certain death was near.

We reach the hospice and I lock the door with shaky hands as Cyran drops Caivan on a bed. I blink thrice to adjust my view in the darkness but Cyran is already ahead of me; he finds a jar of fireflies and shakes them awake. ‘Where’s Haron?’ he asks, casting quick glances around the empty hall. I hadn’t noticed the old man slip away when we got to the hall. Neither had I noticed the pair of eyes peeking out at me from under the bed to my left. Blue eyes.

‘Fuck!’ I curse aloud, and hold up my hands, ready to draw on the iden, ready to fire at will whe