ARIDEN SARETHOL IS A LIAR. Upon witnessing a hostile organization try to take control of a family heirloom, he must enact a dangerous plan that may get him and his friends thrown to prison, or worse, killed. As the veils of false peace slowly fall a...
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2412 Diori 06, Briss
The forest was turbulent around them, or maybe it was just Ariden's heart going crazy in his chest. He looked behind him, certain someone from somewhere followed them all the way from Jehnasson's town proper. Those soldiers finding one of their safehouses still rattled all of his nerves.
Or maybe it was because of the wonder he had just seen. Xanthy, bless her heart, only tried to help, but she blasted the entire shack into nothing but ashes by the time she was finished. And that extreme power...for a while, it reminded Ariden of the Earthshaker's might. He didn't spend every waking hour sneaking out of his own house arrest and spending time with the throne for nothing.
With the immediate threat of soldiers gone, Xanthy and June sent the rest of their party towards Penleth, to join whatever war's brewing there, leaving the Cutlasses on their own once more. And since then, Ariden kept track of every inch of the thick forest, eyeing anything and everything that moved.
"You're giving me a headache, swiveling here and there like that," Lufi's hand whipped out of nowhere and knocked him on the forehead.
He recoiled with a yelp, hands flying to the sore spot. The old scar on his face, the spot where the bullet grazed him, was still tender. It's been ages since he got that wound, but the memory of it was still something he relived in his dreams. His hand laid over it before glaring at Lufi.
"What was that for?" he demanded.
Lufi scoffed, crossing her arms underneath her dark cloak. It might have been the same cloak she wore during the failed Earthshaker caper, just washed and worn a dozen more times. "You ought to receive much, much more after what you did," she said. "I'm not the only one you should apologize to."
"Why should I—" Ariden closed his mouth, catching himself before he could deflect the blame and be a witch further. He ran the hand protecting his forehead down his face. "Fine. Whatever. I'm..."
What kind of crap was he pulling now? Apologies needed to be sincere, and Ariden was the opposite of that. He's nothing but a dirty liar, having twisted the entire Temple around his fingers, and now, he even escaped out of his imprisonment sentence. Was war a legitimate reason for skipping out of it?
He massaged his face, pausing his walk to regard the rest of the Cutlasses. Then, he copied what Leyre was fond of doing, tucking his hands close to his gut and bowing until his upper form was parallel to the ground. Strands of ocher hair—ones he should be cutting off now—shielded most of his vision of his comrades' mud-stained boots. Even Tria removed the lower half of her veil to reveal dark trousers underneath.
"I'm sorry, everyone," he said, grating each and every word out of his system. Apologizing was hard, so he shouldn't spend his life putting himself in situations where he had to. "I shouldn't have put you in trouble with our previous caper. It's my problem, to begin with. I shouldn't have used the Cutlasses to try and solve it. But you must understand—"
