by S. R. Witt
“Or, you can choose another path, one that will lead you to a different ending.” He squeezed my shoulder. “But it will be your path and yours alone.”
His confounding riddles left me more desperate and tortured than I’d been when I came to see him in search of work. “I just want things—”
“To be the same?” The Grandfather helped me to my feet and led me to the Sanctuary’s door. “I’m sorry, Saint. Nothing stays the same for long. I wish you all the luck in the world.”
A stone of worry plunged into the pit of my stomach and churned up emotions I couldn’t express. I wanted to know when I could come back, what I could do to make the Shadows let me return to the fold.
But I didn’t ask because I was afraid I already knew the answer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Frosthold’s bitter wind slapped me in the face the instant I stepped out of the Sanctuary of Shadows. The cold transformed my wallowing self-pity at my exile into something else. Something darker.
You don’t want me? Fine. I’ll do this on my own.
All I’d done was help the Shadows keep the Burning Throne from turning into the prize in a game of keep-away between the Hoaldites and the nightspawn monsters. Yeah, I could have been more careful, but no one had told me not to read the books.
I’d fix this. I just needed a plan.
Step one: Find the Burning Throne.
Step two: Make sure no one else could ever find the damned thing.
Step three: Fuck if I know.
Step four: Profit!
A melodic chime saved me from having to think too hard about step three. It took me a few seconds to realize there was a pale gray message icon in the upper right-hand corner of the transparent user interface. I flicked it with my finger, and it unrolled to reveal a simple message from Bastion. “Tavern. Now.”
Great. Now Bastion wanted to jerk me around, too. Well, he was in for a shock. I was done being everyone’s chew toy.
I headed to the tavern, sticking to the shadows and scrambling onto rooftops to stay clear of the crowds. The Hoaldites probably hadn’t tipped off the guard that I was a thief because they wanted to get their hands on me before the authorities were involved. But that didn’t mean there weren’t a bunch of people out combing the streets for me trying to claim the reward the Hoaldites were offering.
When the rooftops weren’t thick enough in the direction I needed to go, and I had to get down to the street, I kept my hood pulled low to cover my face, and pretended I was just another adventurer braving the bitter cold for a few copper pieces and a taste of excitement.
A constant stream of traffic flowed into and out of the tavern. If I ever got a chance, I was going to buy the damned place and settle into the comfortable life. The NPC who ran the joint had to be raking in money hand over fist because it was one of the few places in Frosthold to get a decent meal and some cheap booze. When I spied a pack of adventurers heading inside, I mingled with them and slipped into the tavern unseen.
Bastion was sitting at a table near the center of the common room, a huge flagon of something alcoholic raised to his mouth. The damn thing was so big he couldn’t even see around it, giving me a chance to sit down at the table without him noticing my arrival.
His eyes bugged when he lowered his drink and saw my scowling face. It only took him a second to regain his composure and flag down a serving wench with a snap of his fingers. “Another of these for my friend.”
I waited until she was out of earshot and then hissed, “Is this a good idea?”
“I’m not drunk,” Bastion said with a roll of his eyes. “I’m not even buzzed.”
“Drinks cost money. Money we need to save right now.” I looked around the tavern, hoping I wasn’t drawing any unwanted attention. “And I don’t need to be hanging out where someone can spot me.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I’m paying for the drinks. And why do you care who sees you?”
I ground my teeth. “I spent most of the money I’d saved on mom’s hospital bill, and I still owe them fifteen hundred bucks, minimum. How do you have money to blow on drinks?”
My flagon arrived, and our conversation went on pause while Bastion paid the server.
I hid my face behind my upraised drink. It was a little sweet, a little bitter, and the alcohol helped numb my rage and confusion. It was all I could ask for, just then.
When I had to come up for breath, Bastion was waiting. “You’ve got a lot of nerve accusing me of holding out on you. Seems like you’re the one who’s hoarding cash without telling me where it came from. How’d you even have the money to pay any of the hospital bills?”
I doodled in the beads of moisture on the outside the leather flagon with my fingertip. “We don’t have time for this kind of fighting. I’m screwed, and if we don’t figure out how to make some money, pretty much now, we’re done. We’ll lose everything. And not just here.”
The fact that we were sitting in the most advanced virtual reality simulation known to man and we still couldn’t figure out how to make ends meet pissed me off. Everyone else was having fun, going on quests, uncovering the hidden mysteries of Invernoth, and my brother and I were trapped by real-World responsibilities that never let up. It wasn’t fair.
“Just trail the guards again. Find out where the rich folks are and rob ‘em blind.” Bastion turned his flagon between his palms, eyes locked on mine. “I can donate some of the money to the church, and we’ll keep the rest for ourselves. Easy peasy.”
That was the brother I knew. Just go with the flow, do whatever was easiest. No sense in trying too hard if you didn’t have to. Since the day he’d washed out of the big leagues, he hadn’t bothered to even try to make things right. Now he expected me to fix everything.
Fine. He wanted me to be in charge. I’d be in charge, and see if he had the guts to go along with the crazy plan pushing its way up through the dark thoughts at the back of my head. “Can’t do that anymore. There’s a problem.”
I rested my hand on the stiletto at my belt, a symbol of my real profession, and waited to see if the lights would come on in Bastion’s eyes.
It took him a few seconds, but it finally sank in. He grunted and asked, “No more shaking down fat merchants for extra coins? That sucks.”
Admitting I was on my own made me uncomfortable. Getting Bastion to follow my lead made me even more nervous. If I hadn’t been so angry, I don’t think I’d have had the guts at all. But I was pissed, and I only saw one chance at fixing this mess. “I’ve got another plan. It’s going to be dangerous, but I think we can fix everything in one shot. But you have to trust me.”
We nursed our drinks as Bastion decided how to react to my news. I didn’t want to rush him, and I didn’t want him to think I was trying to take the reins of our relationship. I mean, I was, but I didn’t want him to think that. Bastion was hard enough to follow, leading him was just about impossible if he didn’t think the whole scheme was his idea in the first place.
I waited for him to say something, and kept my eyes on the adventurers coming and going. The place was busier than usual, and foot traffic kept the doors opened more often than they were closed. The owner had to keep stoking the fires to hold the winter chill at bay, and he was coated with sweat from hauling wood and raking the coals.
In addition to there being more of them than normal, the adventurers coming into the tavern looked a lot more banged up than usual.
“Looks rough out there,” I noted.
“You didn’t hear?” Bastion asked. “Goblin raiding parties are crawling out of the woodwork. Good guys are still winning, for now, but like you said, it’s getting rough out there.”
That wasn’t good news. “I thought we took care of that.”
Bastion snorted. “You know what else people are saying?”
Something told me I didn’t want to hear whatever he had to say next. “Let’s have it.”
My brother leaned across the table and motioned me to come in closer.
“They say there are wolf-people out there with the goblins. And a fucking ogre.”
Fear bubbled through my guts, but a hot spike of anger replaced it before it could get out of control. “If that’s who we think it is, then we need to deal with this sooner, rather than later.”
Bastion didn’t take his eyes off mine. The shadow of some undefined emotion rippled across his face. “You think we can fight off a goblin army and deal with the rest of those nightmares from the other night?”
I reached across the table and clasped his forearm. “No, and we don’t have to. There’s another way. We just need—”
A voice I recognized and did not want to run into again, came from behind me. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Shit.
Before Bastion or I could react, the scaled archer I’d met in the library took a seat to my left.
Indira eased into the seat to my right. “Hello boys,” she said with a wicked smile. “You’re about to make my friend and me very rich.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The archer’s forked tongue tasted the air and her eyes burned into mine. She’d been leery of me and my motives in the Hoaldite library. Now it seemed very obvious she straight up hated me.
Bastion’s hands were flat on the table in front of him, but the deep lines carved across his brow told me he was two seconds from drawing his burning longsword and taking a swing at our new friends.
Keeping this surprise meeting from turning into a bloodbath became my top priority. Not because I was worried Bastion would hurt someone, but because I was very sure these ladies could fuck up our day in a whole host of creative ways if we started a tussle. “Fancy meeting you two here. Indira, I thought you’d be out incinerating goblins since there are so many of them in the neighborhood.”
The elf smiled and smoothed her straight, golden hair behind her pointed ears with delicate fingers. “One of you has been very naughty.”
I fidgeted in my seat. Bastion had no idea what I’d been doing, and I didn’t have time to prepare him for what he was about to find out.
Every face at our table had a smile plastered across it, but the undercurrent of violence was thick and jagged as a coil of razor wire. There was a second where everything could have changed. If I’d let Bastion slice Indira’s head off her shoulders, maybe things would have gone differently for all of us.
But I made the decision to talk everyone down and keep the blood from flowing. “Why don’t you tell us what you’re talking about?”
Indira’s smile turned frosty, and her crystal blue eyes flashed with a cold flame. “You didn’t hear about the Hoaldites?”
I rolled my eyes in an attempt to put her off the scent. If I pretended this was no big deal, it wouldn’t be a big deal. I know, I know. Wishful thinking. “What? Are they out stealing milk money from old ladies again?”
Mercy cleared her throat. “She’s talking about the theft.”
Bastion’s hands clenched on the edge of the table, and his eyes widened as he realized the only thief at the table, me, might have done something idiotic. “Who stole what?”
The situation was spiraling out of control. Bastion’s desire to become a paladin of the church made him sympathetic to the Hoaldites, and he didn’t understand why they got under my skin. Of course, he still didn’t realize they were blackmailing me and holding my reputation hostage because I hadn’t bothered to tell him. I kept thinking I’d get the whole fiasco straightened out before it involved my brother, but the timer on that particular time bomb had just counted down to zero.
Because, when it got right down to the wire, I didn’t know how Bastion would react if he and I ended up on opposite sides of this war. After all, there was a sizable reward for turning thieves into the guard, and it would definitely earn him points with the Hoaldites if he took me out of the picture for them.
This was the exact nightmare I’d been trying to avoid, turning up like a bad penny.
The elf clasped her hands on the table and gave me her sweetest, frostiest smile. “Someone stole a valuable book from the Hoaldite library. The church is offering a very, very handsome reward for its return. They’re also offering an even larger reward for the identity of the thief.”
Bastion tensed. “And how does that involve my brother and me?”
Mercy examined her fingernails, which I now realized were actually short, sharp claws. “Your brother was in that library last night.”
Blood thundered in my ears, and I felt the weight of Bastion’s stare. His voice grated against my ears. “Is that true?”
Pressure mounted in my skull until I was sure my eyeballs were going to shoot out of my skull and into my drink. I raked one hand through my hair and nodded. “Yes, but you have to understand—”
Indira’s voice shot through the tension at the table like an arrow aimed at my heart. “The point is I think you stole that book.”
Bastion snorted. “Maybe Saint hasn’t been shooting straight with me, but I don’t think he’d steal from the Church.”
Oh, brother, if you only knew.
Indira smiled, a warm, broad expression that made me want to crawl under a rock and hide from the shitstorm I knew was coming. “He stole from me, why would he draw the line at stealing from the church?”
My brother’s eyes narrowed and he stared straight at me. “You stole from her?”
Shit.
See what happens when you keep secrets from your family, kids?
“It was just—”
Bastion didn’t give me a chance to explain. He snorted with disgust and snatched his drink off the table.
Indira’s eyes never left mine. Her smile turned venomous as she laid her demands out for us. “We don’t want a fight. We just want the reward the Hoaldites are offering.”
“I imagine they aren’t willing to accept a letter of apology from the accused?” I asked, hands drifting ever so slowly toward the stilettos on my hips. Any second now, someone was going to get stabbed.
A faint line of blue fire appeared around Indira’s hand. “Come peacefully, no one needs to get hurt.”
I snorted. It was time to bluff. “I’m not going anywhere, peacefully or otherwise. I’m going to sit right here and drink my ale and pretend the two of you aren’t bothering me. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll walk out the way you came in and forget you ever saw us.”
While I spoke, I kept my eyes on my brother, hoping he’d get the hint. We were going to have to fight.
But Bastion wasn’t picking up what I was laying down. He took another drink and stared daggers in my direction.
The fire around Indira’s hand glowed brighter. “You wouldn’t dare.”
The anger I’d felt when the Shadows chucked me out into the snow came back, a hundred times hotter and a thousand times sharper. “Wouldn’t I?”
If Bastion wasn’t going to back me up, I had nothing left to lose. If I went with these two, my time in-Game was just as over as if they killed me at the table. There was no reason not to take a shot at Indira.
Mercy interrupted my moment of furious Zen with a quiet statement. “Maybe there’s a way we can claim the reward without turning you in.”
I raised an eyebrow in Mercy’s direction. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“Give us the book.”
The fire around Indira’s hand turned red, and she glared at Mercy. “That’s not the deal. We’re taking him in.”
Bastion waved his mug in my direction, sloshing ale across the table. “Not like he can give you what he doesn’t have. Because you don’t have the book, right, Saint?”
I cleared my throat. “If I get the book for you, you’ll let us go?”
The fire danced through Indira’s eyes and her golden hair caught its reflection like fireflies swimming in honey. “No guarantees. But if you give us the book, we can talk about what happens next.”
Bastion laughed. “You’re not hearing me, lady. He doesn’t have the book.”
I couldn’t l
ook at my brother when I dropped the truth bomb on him. I’d seen enough pain from my family for one day. “Okay. I’ll show you where it is.”
I didn’t wait for them to follow me out of the tavern. My world was crumbling around my ears, and they could come along for the ride or not. I was out of fucks to give.
The door to the tavern banged behind me, and a cold grimace spread across my face. I couldn’t shake the feeling some of us weren’t getting out of this mess in one piece.
I just hoped my brother and I survived.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Bastion shoved his way through the crowded street to catch up to me a block from the tavern. A quick glance over my shoulder showed me Mercy and Indira weren’t far behind. I knew Indira had a spell prepped and ready to burn a hole in my spine if she suspected I was up to no good.
Good, let her try and burn me down. I didn’t care. If she thought I was walking to my death without a fight, she deserved the pain coming her way.
“I can’t believe you stole from the Hoaldites,” Bastion growled under his breath. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“It’s complicated. Those dickholes have been on my nutsack since the day we started this stupid game.” My breath leaked out of my nostrils in twin streams of fog. “I need to know if you’ve got my back on this.”
Bastion didn’t say anything for a worrying pause. “I wish we had more time to talk this out.”
Which was shorthand for, Why didn’t you tell me this shit days ago?
And he was right. Keeping my cards close to my vest had put us in this bind, and now he had to decide which way to jump without being able to see the terrain. I’d screwed us both, and yet I was asking him to come along for the ride to Hell. “I can’t explain it, but I’m in the right on this. You’ve gotta trust me.”
He didn’t answer, but I didn’t have any time left to convince him. I’d just have to make a move and see which way he went.
My head throbbed with a building anxiety headache. In the next few minutes, everything was going to change, one way or another.
