Fate Breakers

Chapter 40

Aviva

The night Esmeralda Sousa and Cadmus Cirila arrived is the same night Tora Dalthus showed up at our door. These past three days have been the most peaceful since Juno joined the unit, though I'm certain it's been nothing but hell for her. Lenore and Juno are courtiers, Tora is a true princess, and a Dalthus at that.

Tora moves like a shade. Her stare sends cold shivers down the spine, those pale, almost ghastly teal eyes sharp as daggers. She can be unsettling, but not in the same way as Cadmus is. She seems to pick up on how unsettled we all are by his presence.

"Did they say where he came from?" Unlike Juno, Tora doesn't shy away from hard labor. She was the first to jump up when Arelowe told us to start setting up the entertainment hall. Hadn't even realized we had one before she showed us the empty space, though I doubt this is really how higher ups intended for us to use the space. Even still, Tora went straight to cleaning, making fluid sweeps with the broom.

"They didn't," I answer. Given the odd tension that grew whenever the man's name was spoken, I doubt I'd be able to talk about it even if I was told.

Even with how creepy he comes off, I kind of have to pity him. Cadmus tries to lurk in the shadows, to remain unnoticed and unbothered. Cadmus seems to like his personal space. Gannon also seems to like Cadmus' personal space. Even now, Gannon roped the poor man into a trip down to the coast to receive the containers of food. Last I saw of Cadmus was him being shoved between an already bickering Hector and Réyes, while Calvel and Gannon fought each other on who got to lead the horse in the front seat. The new road carved out to the shore cut down the travel time, but with that group, Cadmus is likely going to come back with decades taken off his life.

"Quintero!" Arlowe's voice booms through the empty space. Her face is red and twisted in anger. The alarm comes when I see the start of a bruise on her cheek. She jabs a finger into my chest and snarls, "You need to get your bitch under control."

Oh great, Juno again. "What did she do now?"

Arlowe gestures to her face. "Snowball," she huffs, "a rock at the center. Told her if she was determined to sit on her ass outside, least she could do was scatter salt to keep people from cracking their heads open on the ground."

So Juno then decided it would only be right to crack open Arlowe's. "I'll go deal with her."

"Will you," Arlowe scoffs, "or are you going to have your new princess over there huddle up with Lenore so they both can give her a royal finger wag, again?"

I don't even look at Tora. The burn in my face and at my neck is already too much. It's been three days since Tora first joined us, and she's seen me be nothing but pathetic since the start. When I head outside, I try to savor the bite of the cold, gulping it down in deep breaths to try and shock my lungs into behaving.

Sure enough, just a few paces away from the entertainment hall, there's Juno, with her ass parked haughtily on one of the benches, arms crossed like a toddler. She sees me approaching, and her eyes narrow. This is going to be a fight, likely one more tick on the board that's pushing me closer and closer towards cutting my hair off so she has less to grab. Juno hasn't even said anything yet, but her demeanor radiates anger and annoyance.

Everything inside me just goes tight with anxiety, and it's a fight to keep my voice level. "Zantar."

"Quintero," she snaps back, voice dripping with disdain.

I swallow back on the lump in my throat, twice. It hardly loosens. I've got to struggle and speak around it. "You threw a rock, covered in snow, at Sergeant Arlowe."