A House Divided

Chapter 21

Dawn had begun to tinge the edges of the sky gray by the time Cianne left. She had stayed with Kila for far too long, even though their time together had felt like mere moments to her.

You must be careful. You cannot afford to make mistakes, she chided herself.

She knew it was the truth and yet she didn't want to accept it. She wanted to snatch every last moment with Kila she could have. When Cianne's mother had died, she had experienced the painful first steps into adulthood, into understanding that those who were there one day might not be there the next. She couldn't say why she had fallen back into her childish beliefs when Kila had appeared in her life, why she had convinced herself that he would never leave. The blow reality had dealt her when she had discovered his absence had been grievous. Ever since, she had learned not to trust in assurances that the people she cared for the most would never leave her. Lach had been slipping away from her for years, their unmatched feelings for one another building walls between them of which he was as yet unaware. Though losing Lach caused her untold pain, the thought of Kila's disappearing again was far worse.

She loved him. She had loved him since she had been thirteen, though the love had been different then. Starved for attention, she had lapped up everything he offered her, becoming his devoted puppy. She hadn't known enough then to fear he might take advantage of her, but she knew enough now to understand that was something Kila would never do. Being gods-gifted with the skills of an Enforcer didn't ensure that an Adept felt a deep sense of devotion to protecting the weak. No, that was something that came from within Kila himself, from the depths of his character.

Over time her love had grown and matured, though she had never let herself really acknowledge it. Whenever his face had appeared in her mind, she had tried to resist its allure. For all she knew she had mythologized him, and he was nothing like what her memory insisted he was. Yet now that he was back and she had spent time with him, she knew she hadn't overinflated his attributes in any way. Kila was a man of honor, a man who believed in ferreting out the truth, no matter the risk he incurred. He was kind, intelligent, and considerate, and he could make her laugh even when she was at her lowest and thought she might never laugh again. Her esteem for him had continued to grow, until she could no longer deny to herself that there never could have been room for Lach in her heart. He had never had a chance of winning her because her heart had long belonged to Kila.

She had been through too much to cherish an unwavering belief in happy endings, however. She wouldn't even let herself imagine what might happen between them. They had work to do, a mystery to solve, and she would focus on that work with singular devotion. Wondering about what might happen later, afterward, was a pointless waste of energy, and Cianne wouldn't allow herself to indulge.

The city had begun to wake. Shimmying up a baker's chimney was out of the question as the bakers had already started heating their ovens in preparation of baking the day's bread. She had made the mistake once of trying to scale a too-hot chimney, and it was a mistake she would never again make. Burns aside, the racket she had made when she had squalled with pain had been enough to bring everyone in the bakery running out into the alley to see what was the matter. She had barely been able to drag herself away, squeezing under a gap in a fence, biting down on her lip until it bled so that she could hold back the cry of pain as her burned hands had scraped over the alley dirt. For weeks she had been forced to find increasingly creative ways to hide her hands from her father. Training had been out of the question.

That was a shame, because the most direct route would have been to climb to the roof of the bakery on the next street over from Kila's and leap from roof to roof back to the outskirts of the enclave.