1.15. Pretending You’re My Mother

“You.” Seth’s finger trembled upward to the center of the grinning, gory Verdugo.

Anna cocked an eyebrow.

“You are a fucking asshole,” Seth said.

Her eyebrow winched back down into place. “You broke the lantern.”

“Scout ahead? I was bait.” Seth kicked the lantern in question onto its side, cracking it further. “Wasn’t I?”

She shrugged.

“I can’t believe you.” He raked his shaking hands through his hair. “This was not what we agreed to. You lied to me.”

“I didn’t tell you, because if I’d told you, you’d have tried to worm out of it.” Anna scowled. “Wouldn’t you?”

“You don’t know that. You barely fucking know me.” Seth looked around the chamber at the great dead beast—the final grisly trophy in a cavern full of them. “I’d have wanted a conversation, at least.”

“A conversation.” Anna scoffed. “You’re fine, aren’t you?”

“I’m fine because I had the Fox. If I didn’t—”

“You had the Fox. That’s what it’s for. That’s why I hired you.”

“If I didn’t,” Seth repeated, “I’d be a fucking corpse right now.”

“You want to talk about corpses?” Anna’s ghostly pupils flared. “How about the family she obliterated this morning? Wanna find all their pieces, see if we can put them back together? I did what I had—”

“Bullshit,” he snapped. Her mouth hung open. “I saw it already, I don’t want to hear it from you, and I don’t need a fucking guilt trip. If this is the way you’re gonna use me then I need to renegotiate. This was fucked up.” He barked a laugh and shoved past her; she was too stunned to react. “That won’t pay much at first? Yeah, we’re revisiting that. We’re revisiting this whole arrangement.”

He stormed to the entrance of the cave and climbed to its lip. He caught his breath there, gulped the crisp daytime air, and felt another nauseous wave that nearly tilted him back into the cavern from whence he’d climbed.

Get out of here. Take the horse back to the carriage before she comes up here to stop you, get your stuff, and take a hike. Laramme will be fine. They need cooks in Laramme, and if not they need cutpurses.

His fist was on Demetrius’ bridle before he forced himself to pause. And do what with the kids? Tiago’s exhausted, maybe, but Ofelia might try to stop you.

And he wanted to hear from Annalise before he put this mistaken alliance behind him. Wanted—what? An apology? Would that keep him here?

He scooped a red handful of this anger, bottled it inside himself, and made a promise it wouldn’t. The second chance he’d pictured did not include dangling himself out as seraph bait. It just didn’t. Especially not for someone as ungrateful as the murani-headed woman pulling herself out of the earth behind him.

She’d left the spear down in the dark and brought the broken lantern with her. She placed it, without comment, into Demetrius’ soft leather saddlebag.

“Nothing to say?” Seth asked. “We’ll just ride back and you act like nothing’s the matter?”

“Fucking saints,” Anna snarled, and the saddlebag dropped carelessly to the ground as she wheeled round. The lantern inside chimed as it broke further. “You sound like a mopey teenager. Don’t know why we thought we needed another one. Fucking Annalise picking up strays.”

“You said you are Annalise.”

“I’m the smart part of Annalise.” She picked the saddlebag back up out of the dust and lashed it to Demetrius, who bore her anger-packing with stoic grace. “If I was the whole thing, I’d have left you with that pukestain Rohan, or ended you when you stole from me.”

“Let me talk to the whole thing. Let me talk to Annalise.”

“Can’t,” she said.

“Then you’d better—”

“Her head is back at the carriage. I can’t.” She clambered atop her horse. “So how about you shut up until we’re back, and save your complaining for her. Or I’ll ride home alone and you can walk, if you can’t help yourself.”

“Good idea,” he said. “Go on. I need a moment alone anyway.”

She blinked, momentarily confused, it seemed, by his refusal. Then she shook her head. “Don’t be stupid. Not letting you out of my sight.”

“You just said—”

“You owe me a head, boy.” She leaned down her saddle and sneered. “Remember? That’s your sentence. If you want to revisit it, we can. But you got very, very lucky last time. You want to push your luck again?”

And Seth was back in Rohan’s office. Back before the firing squad. This great white hope that had ebulliently strode into his life was all a lie, he saw. Just another collar trying to lock itself around his neck.

Fuck that.

“All right, Anna,” he muttered, as he climbed aboard. “All right.”

Stolen story; please report.

He spent the rest of the ride back in silence, figuring out how he’d escape this latest cage.

The shadows had grown short and lengthened again by the time they sighted the carriage. Anna slowed Demetrius to a canter and then a stop, and swung from her saddle without a word. Ofelia hurried to the reins she’d abandoned and tied Demetrius to the edge of the carriage while Seth slipped from him.

Seth looked past her daughter to the Verdugo, just in time to watch her yank her head from her shoulders.

The scowling pixie-cutted face he’d rode home with melted. The hair and skin and then the flesh ran in drizzling, blackening rivulets down the skull and sublimated into coal-dark vapor before it hit the ground. The headless Verdugo climbed into the carriage, naked skull tucked under her arm.

Ofelia dug a carrot from her bag and held it out to Demetrius’ doleful inspection. “You appear as though you’ve been Anna’d,” she said.

“Yeah.” Seth was in no mood to humor any of the al Ydrises. “Where’s Tiago?”

“Sleeping his Darkness off.” A muffled voice with a familiar Orwinese brogue sounded from the carriage. Annalise’s bobbed head, now reattached to the rest of her, poked out from the opening door. “Heya.”

He put his hands on his hips. “We should talk.”

She chewed her lip—whatever magic powered her Darkness had already applied her black gloss to it. “We should, yeah.”

Ofelia looked warily from the thief to the Verdugo. “Shall I find a place to be?”