Partisan - Book II

Wake Up

She hears voices in the night.

At first she thinks it's the dreams, her memories addling her mind again, but she doesn't know one of the voices and the other isn't—

Well, it's Ruben's voice.

She slips out of bed, garbed in a white sheath dress, feet bare against the cool stone. The hallways are long and dark as she wanders down them, and as she grows nearer to the candlelight-framed door she can hear the voices jab back and forth, low and rushed like sudden gusts of wind. Her hand hangs limply on the doorknob as they parry words like the swinging branches of trees.

Allayria walks inside. At the table sits Ruben, face set in stone and fists lying clenched on the wood table. Opposite of him is a man with close-cropped black hair and facial hair that swoops up along the sides of his face in short, severe ridges. Bright splotches appear on the man's cheeks, and when his gaze sweeps over it pins her with an accuracy so much like a hunting bird.

A hand twitches at her side, flexing as if to dart up and cover the long white scar on her chest.

I can kill him, is the first thought that knocks into her mind. There's enough distance that if he lunges...

Ruben stands, knocking his chair back, and when he moves toward her his arms stretch out, as if to herd her away from the room.

"Go back to bed," he murmurs, the stoniness in his face crumbling. Some foreign emotion flashes like the rapid scrawl of lightning across his face, but Allayria does not move. She turns, pointing her gaze at the man still at the table.

"What has happened."

She doesn't ask; she states it flatly, feeling, despite the lateness and the thinness of her dress, a kind of calculated authority take over her.

Now is not the time to be weak.

The man's eyes widen for a moment, then he too stands, executing a sharp, perfunctory bow in her direction. He folds a hand behind his rigid back almost subconsciously, and she marks him for a military man.

"Your Excellence," he states, with another inclination of the head. This too is not a question. "I was not told you were here. Frankly," and now he looks up, shooting a searching look at Ruben, "I was not told you had regained consciousness."

He is not surprised I am alive.

She searches his face for a moment. How many people know it? And why has Ruben kept my whereabouts and condition secret?

She spares the Skill master a quick glance, placing a hand on his arm as she walks further into the room.

"It has, I think, been a recent development," she says simply, and extends a hand out toward him. "I don't think we have met. My name is Allayria."

His eyes narrow for a moment, locked on her face, and then he extends a hand, gripping hers with a forcefulness she had anticipated. It's a deadened, hollow echo that trawls up her skin; like a ghost of what human contact once felt like. Part of it makes her skin crawl and she fights to keep her fingers still, fights not to flinch from it.

"Commander Beinsho, Paragon."

"You are the commander of the Halften forces then."

His brows raise, a question twitching across them, but she supplies the answer before he asks:

"My parents are ambassadors, commander. I know my titles, and my provincial names."

This information is new to him too; she watches as his gaze flits around her face, trying to figure out in turn, where she is from. But she denies him this.