Queen of Thieves

chapter 20

Des couldn't sleep.

The tent wasn't uncomfortable, but Des had grown used to the gentle rocking of the boat. It felt strange to lie on solid ground. He shifted, feeling grains of sand shift under his stomach. Des had never been much of a back sleeper; some Mishtari didn't mind it, but Des always woke up with pins and needles in his wings.

Next to him, Alice murmured in her sleep.

Her small face was pinched. Des watched as her hands fluttered at her side like two pale birds. Her humanity seemed to shine through when she slept, he observed, like the glass fish in Storm Lake: so pale that you could see their pale blue skeleton under their skin. It had once made him cringe away from her, but now he couldn't help but find it oddly beautiful.

Not that Des would ever, ever admit that.

Alice shifted in her sleep. A lock of hair fell into her eyes, and Des fought the urge to push it back. He wondered what happened with Lamir on the boat.

He couldn't get the image out of his head: Alice, on the desk, and Lamir standing between her legs, his hand cupping her face. Des felt a sick feeling unfurl in his chest. He had no idea why the hell he kept thinking about it, but he knew that it had bothered him. Probably because they were in the middle of the most important mission in history, Des told himself grimly. He couldn't afford to let Lamir distract Alice. It was dangerous.

He sighed.

Screw sleep. He was going for a walk.

Des pushed through the tent flap, and he was greeted by the cool desert air. The night air was thick with the smell of succulents and desert flowers, and he breathed it in, scrambling up a large, black boulder. The stars pinwheeled above him, a swirling mass of crimson, gold, and royal blue.

"I thought I'd find you here."

Des didn't look down; after all of their years of training together, he knew what Lamir's footsteps sounded like. His dark hair was messy with sleep, and he was barefoot, revealing scars on his ankles. Des arched an eyebrow.

"You expected to find me here," he said dubiously, "in the middle of the night, philosophizing on a boulder?"

"Well, I didn't know you'd be philosophizing." Lamir shrugged. "But I knew you'd be here. When you couldn't sleep at the academy, you used to go up to the tower, remember?" He climbed up the boulder. "This rock is the tallest thing for miles."

He gave Des a lopsided smile — that same, infuriating smile that Lamir gave Alice on the boat — and irritation pricked Des's skin. "I don't recall inviting you to sit on my rock," he said coolly.

"It's not your rock."

"It could be," he pointed out.

"I don't see your name on it."

"If we're philosophizing," Des said, "names are meaningless."

They sat in silence for a moment. Des studied a shrub in the distance. Lamir's head was tipped back, and he was gazing at the stars with genuine curiosity, as if he could dissect the heavenly bodies with his eyes. That was the difference between them, Des thought bitterly. Lamir had always been comfortable in silence, and Des felt it in his chest like a rubber band stretched thin enough to break.

And Lamir knew it.

"You should have told me," Des said finally. "I would have kept your secret."

Lamir turned his gaze to him. "You mean about not actually being dead?" Des gave him a hard look; that wasn't what he meant, and they both knew it. Lamir blew out a breath. "You know, don't you? That's why you called me that. Bdyar."