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chapter four. sowing doubt
"Sure is taking his time."
In the dark, time inched by.
They had found the cart with an ease that didn't translate to their temperament; high alert, they searched the night. After what he had done, could they trust that this, too, was not a game? But as it became apparent that they were not being pursued, their adrenaline dampened, boredom replacing it, and the post-jitters turned them dull, and glowering.
There was fruit, bruised, spilling from the cart; Dalaia had taken to picking pieces up, testing how they split against the low rock wall opposite them. Sitting some degrees safe from the pulp, Marth and Orikas watched.
Fallon hadn't joined them. She stood on the cart's wheel side, wedged in the shallow dip. It looked like a shell on her back. If anyone had asked, she would've argued she was standing watch. The truth was, she didn't want to betray her thoughts. She was stuck. Somewhere between the brush of his skin against hers, and the terrified sobs of the gnome child. A look in any of their eyes would've betrayed ambivalence. Her resentment. Not that Orikas had forced her hand, but that he'd once again, put her in prime position to make the final call.
Squish.
Dalaia was standing at the cart's back, a tomato juicing against the wood. She'd lost her balance making her way across the mess of wooden crates.
"Whoops," she said.
"You alright there?"
"No." The tiefling let the pulp plop to the ground. "I can handle one of you sulking, but two?"
"This isn't sulking."
"Wise words," said her brother, his voice carried on the wind. "You have no reason to sulk."
He always knew what nerves to stamp: she couldn't help obliging him.
Fallon pushed off of the cart. "You can elaborate on that."
"Gladly. You made the right decision. It was for our survival."
His words dripped in double meaning, they had had this conversation before, and before, and before. After they'd escaped the basement, their dynamic had been set. Orikas wasn't built for the life she'd been leading since learning to walk. Without her skills, her hardiness, he wouldn't have made it a season without falling foul to the streets. In exchange, he cleaned her conscious by playing moral arbiter: the devil on shoulders, sometimes both, at the same time.
