Gods & Thieves ✔

49. Future and Past

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When I open my eyes, it's dark.

At first, I think I'm hallucinating, but...then I realize that it's just a night outside. Not a night exactly, but an early, early new morning, the hour before the dawn, the darkest, most silent, almost breathless hour.

I overslept! This thought wakes me up at once.

When I wash my face, untangle my curls, roll up the sleeves of my clean shirt symmetrically--and seductively--and finally feel confident enough to leave my apartment and visit Lo, sunrise is already beginning to dawn somewhere over the horizon. Its orange flashes illuminate the treetops, awakening birds and pleasantly warming the night air.

And it's only after breathing in the fresh air and stepping onto the threshold of Tayen's living room that I realize that it's still too early for meetings. Waking Lo up at such an early hour is uncivilized and careless.

That's why I'm waiting.

Without turning on the light, without opening the curtains. Without clinking tea cups or sticking my nose into Lo's bedroom, I'm nostalgically vegetating on the couch I once spent my nights myself...

Knock, knock.

Footsteps outside the front door startle me. Staring into the darkness, I hold my breath. I hear someone quietly, almost soundlessly, approaching Loretto's apartment from the outside. I tense up even more when a soft glow rolls along the door frame in the darkness, and the protective spell that Lo uses instead of a lock lets the stranger in. The door starts to creak open. But who can crack a shamanic charm?

Has the First Blood decided to come in person?

Or did the Empress send assassins?!

Without hesitation, I jump off the couch.

A moment later, a silhouette appears at the threshold.

In the darkness, I can't see anything except the outlines of a figure in strange clothes and with a tail of hair on the back of their head, but it doesn't matter. There is no time to think, and I only have a moment to scream, because aura flashes on the fingertips of the newcomer. Aura rushes to me with ominous, hot sparks, threatening, if not to roast me, then at least to deprive me of my senses.

I don't have time to fight back. I drop to my knees. I don't have enough skill to summon my aura, so I can only reflexively shrink, crouching on the floor behind the coffee table as a shield. My heart starts pounding in my chest, sending blood burning my veins, but I don't have time to properly realize my fear, either. The lamps in the corners light up.

The dark dissipates, forcing me to close my eyes.

"Eli, what are you doing here? Why are you sitting in the dark?"

I take a breath and swallow. After my eyes adjust to the light, I finally dare to stick my head out from behind the coffee table, and...no, I didn't imagine a voice. Lo is standing in the doorway in front of me. Fae stands and looks back at me with equal surprise. Faer posture is tense, faer eyebrows arched, and faer chest is heaving with adrenaline, just like mine. The strange clothes turn out to be nothing more than an old-fashioned tracksuit, which, combined with a high ponytail of hair gathered at the back of faer head, makes my mentor look like a different person.

When I don't answer, however, the surprise in Loretto's eyes turns into discontent.

"You can't wait for me in the dark," Lo says reproachfully, entering and closing the door behind faer. "I have unfriendly instincts. I can hurt you."