I parked the Sparrow right outside the ranch I’d seen in the vision, not giving a shit about spooking the animals. Gradis stepped out with a sword in hand but ran back inside when I jumped out.
I kicked the door open with my own sword drawn. Gradis stood in the middle of his little house, sneering.
“Nal told me you survived,” he said. “Didn’t think you were dumb enough to come after me.”
“You mean you didn’t think I was smart enough to find you. Where is Nal?”
He laughed. “Off killing for me. What did you think?”
I slashed my sword across his before he could react. He lost his grip, and the blade shot into the wall. “Where?” I growled.
He started backing away toward the kitchen. “Just in town. I sent him after the mayor and his family.”
Fuck!
“You don’t look too happy about that. What’s more important to you, boy? I know you’d love to torture me to death. But what about Nal? What do you think he’ll do when he has to kill a little kid? Think he’ll go through with it?” He laughed again. “We both know he doesn’t have the guts.”
“You sent him to die!” I cut along his thigh, and he grunted as he kneeled to the floor.
“I did. So, are you going to question me, or what? You want to find out who’s handing out my orders, don’t you? Well, you’d better make a choice. You can torture me and let Nal off himself, or you can kill me now and try to save him.”
He wanted the easy way out. Coward. But I needed to reach Nal.
I shoved down my Rage and ran my sword through Gradis’s neck before bolting back out to the Sparrow. I reached the edge of town in less than a minute. People glared at me for parking so close, but I didn’t care.
I raced down the main road to the manor. A woman screamed from inside, alerting the guards, who threw the gate open to hurry inside. I shoved past them, barreling through the hallways the same way I’d seen Nal go in the vision. I jumped over a few fallen guards at the dining room’s doors.
Nal was kneeling on the floor, and he flipped his knife in his hand.
“Don’t!” I shouted.
He startled and froze. “Get out of here.”
“Gradis is dead.” He lowered the knife, and I ran to his side, shaking him by the shoulders. “Your curse is gone. Let’s go.”
He stared at me for a second, then sheathed his knife and created a portal, pulling me through it before the guards caught up.
We stepped into the middle of Gradis’s house, and Nal stared at the body crumpled against the kitchen cabinets.
“You just killed him?” Nal asked. “Did you get anything out of him?”
“I didn’t have time.” I wondered if Gasni would turn his back on me.
Nal took a shaky breath. “How did you find us?”
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“It’s a long story, but I’m working for the Spymaster now.”
He walked over to a kitchen drawer, lifted out a false bottom, and pulled out an envelope. “Then here. This is what you came for, isn’t it?”
I eyed the envelope, but my Rage bubbled up before I could stop it. I punched him in the face, and he fell back into the counter. “I came here for you, dumbass!” I roared. “If I just came here for information, you think you’d still be here? Huh? You think I would have left Gradis in one piece? What the fuck do you think my priorities are?”
He grimaced and started crying again. “Why? I tried to kill you, twice!”
“And you’d better have a fucking good excuse.”
He laughed. “You want my excuse? Fine.” He shoved me back, and I stumbled through a portal, slamming into a wall in a different house. He stepped through after me, and the portal disappeared. “Here’s my excuse.”
“Nal?” A young Givel woman with pale gray skin, black hair, and gold eyes stood by a corner, staring at me. She rubbed a hand over her slightly bulging stomach. Pregnant. “Who’s your… guest?”
“This is Genet.”
She beamed and rushed toward me, taking both my hands and shaking them. “Oh, finally I get to meet you! But…” She frowned, turning back to Nal. “You told me I never could.”
Nal turned his head, pulling his ponytail to the side to show bare, unmarked skin. “Things changed.”
She whimpered and slapped her hands over her mouth, looking like she might faint. He reached for her, but she slapped his hands away. “Clean up!” she ordered. “Go! Go, go, go!”
He chuckled and turned around the corner.
The woman faced me again. “I’ll find you a change of clothes, too. Wait here.”
I waited for several minutes in the woman’s living room, looking over the couch covered in sloppily placed pillows, the bookshelves, the toys scattered all over the floor. She had a kid.
But what did Nal have to do with— Oh.
His excuse. He had a family.
I looked around the room again. This was his home. He had a fucking home.
The woman came back with a stack of black clothes. “I hemmed the pants up a little. Let me know if they’re still too long. Nal won’t miss them.”
I took them numbly and couldn’t get any words out.
“Are you okay?”
“I…”
“Oh, right. He probably couldn’t tell you about us. I’m Sana, Nal’s wife.”
Wife. Holy shit.
“There’s a restroom right back there if you want to change.” She pointed to a narrow door behind me.
I nodded and hurried through the door. I dropped the clothes onto the counter, bracing myself against it as I slowed my breathing. Nal’s wife. Nal’s kid. I couldn’t believe it.
I looked in the mirror. Blood splattered my face and clothes, so I threw everything off, shoved my clothes into a trash basket, cleaned up, and put on the clothes Sana gave me. They were a little loose, but she’d hemmed the pants to almost the perfect length. She had a good eye.
Nal was waiting in the living room when I stepped back out. We stared at each other for a solid minute.
“Well,” I said. “This is a hell of an excuse.”
He looked like he might cry again. “I wanted to tell you.”
“But you couldn’t. I know.”
He pulled the envelope from a pocket. “You should still have this. It’s a time and place. Gradis never told me what for, but it seemed important.”
I took it this time and looked inside. The main chapel in Kes Ulra at midnight, in two days. I tucked it into my own pocket. “Thanks.”
“Keep going, Tisa,” Sana’s voice said down the hallway.
“I’m sleepy,” said a little voice. Nal’s face twisted as he looked toward the corner.
“I know, but this will be worth it, I promise.”
Sana came back, holding the hand of a little desen girl, maybe four or five years old. Her eyes shot straight to Nal and went wide. “Daddy!” she screamed.
He kneeled just as she ran at him, and he picked her up, rocking her side to side.
She leaned back and slapped her little hands over his cheeks. “Why are you crying?”
He laughed. “I’m just happy.” He nodded in my direction. “We have a visitor. That’s your uncle Genet.”
My breathing stopped, and my legs couldn’t hold me up. I slumped to the floor and pressed my hands over my face. What was wrong with me?
“Why is he crying?” Tisa asked.
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Sana?”
“Let’s go wait in your room, Tisa,” Sana said.
“But I want to talk to Uncle Genet.”
“We can always talk later, okay?”
“Okay,” Tisa mumbled. Footsteps faded around the corner.
Nal sat on the floor beside me, and neither of us said a word until I managed to catch my breath.
“You have a family,” I said.
He gave me a light shove. “So do you.”
“Stop.”
“I mean it. Anything you need, just say the word. Sana would be raising our daughters completely alone if not for you. Does that make killing Gradis worth it?”
I sighed and wiped my face clear. “Yeah. Yeah, it does.”