Roarke shoves one last potato in his mouth and stands. Without hesitation, he draws his knife and cuts clean across his palm. Blood runs to pool in the grooves left by others sealing bargains. His advanced healing seals the wound before he’s finished turning and begun to leave.
“Seth?” Roarke asks.
“What? Me? Why me? Can’t you just tell him or write him a list or something?”
He is suggesting a combination of caution and Chaos might be our best chance of success right now.
Chaos and caution – is that even a thing?
But no one listens to me, I mean Roarke is literally heading for the exit. Discussion time is over.
“You gave us your word,” he calls over his shoulder.
“And I vow to keep it. If I wanted out of my honor, I would have ensured you were dead. But you need to tell me what it is you want,” Tan says, his voice raising louder and louder as Roarke nears the door.
Killian draws his boot knife, runs a slice down his palm, then slaps his hand flat onto the timber and forces himself to his feet. A bloody print remains on the surface, as he flips his knife end over end and follows in Roarke’s wake.
“We’re relying on you. Seth, give the man his orders.”
“Give the man his orders,” I mutter.
To babysit mages and monitor the border and protect the Spring. Why can’t we just have this conversation? Aside from the caution part?
I purse my lips together, holding back an exasperated sigh. I’m going to need to sleep on my horse at this rate – these guys have no idea how much energy this is going to expand.
But, despite my reservations, I knock on the top of the timber table and let the Chaos lose. A scroll curls out of the wood, the paper peeling up from the grain. Tan just looks at it with wide eyes.
“Is it that important?” he asks.
“Yes,” all three of us echo.
I stand with weak knees, my grip on my blade nowhere near as strong as I’d like it to be. But I draw my own blood and let the drops fall before following my brothers.
“Three,” I say, hearing Tan grab the scroll and open it up. The paper sounds ancient, and even I have no idea what translation of our needs Chaos has put on the thing. This is the best and worst game of trust ever played, and the whole thing has butterflies – no firedragons – bashing around in my chest. “Two… One…”
Tan yelps as the scroll bursts into flames and all evidence of his mission is turned to ash. Now we’ve not spoken of it, and unless he says something out loud, there is no way anyone can know of this.
None of us turn to confirm, but the sound of his blade drawing blood is unmistakable.
“Leave and return,” Roarke says at the door, stepping into the hall and out of sight.
“Are you sure you don’t want to know what that said?” Tan calls.
And the answer is yes! Of course, I do. It could have told him to ride to the coast and have all night sex with every woman in sight for all I know.
But Chaos doesn’t work like that. It wants to mess with the current flow of order in the world around me – but not to make my life or my desires crazy and out of control. No, Chaos is like an avalanche falling to smother everything in its way, leaving the world flat and white and unobstructed for me to pass. Or a flood, washing through the land to clear everything in its path, letting me walk leisurely in its wake.
If putting Tan at that Spring, and him working with the mages, will help destroy Lithael – then that is exactly what Chaos will do.
Even if it has left me feeling weak. Making a scroll with written instructions is a very specific request of a magic that likes to be let free to deal with things however it pleases.
“Leave and return,” Killian says at the door.
Two steps later, I’m about to do the same when Tan shouts, “Seth.” I turn to meet his gaze. “Are you sure?”
I nod. “Deadly sure. Leave and return, Tanilya.”
I have no idea how we manage to leave the estate without being stopped or questioned, only that maybe whatever was written shocked the man so much that he had no time to react, to stop us for questions, or even send men to escort us off his land.
We make it about fifteen minutes down the road before I slouch forward over my horse’s neck and hang in place.
“Well, I think that went worse than I anticipated,” Roarke says.
“Better,” Killian grunts.
“Definitely better,” I add, half-slurred because I’m half-asleep and also muffled by my cheek being squished against my horse’s neck.
Then I close my eyes and let my mind fall heavily toward sleep.
“You two have very low standards,” Roarke says. I can’t see him, but I can hear him pulling his book from his saddle bag.
“Just realistic ones,” I argue.
“Is it worth me asking what was in the note?”
“Nope, Allure, it is not. Have some confidence.”
“Hope,” Roarke say.
“And trust,” Killian adds.
Chaos is a power that makes me trust only four people in my life – five now actually – and the power itself. I trust Roarke, Killian, Pax, Thane, and Vexy, undeniably Vexy. No matter how impossible I thought that would be.
“Trust,” we all echo once more.
Silence settles amongst us, and I may even have dozed off for a second before I hear Roarke sigh heavily. I open one eye in time to see his book flop open to a page read so many times the spine is broken.
“OriginSeed. Born with every choice in the land and the ability to Seed another. But the soul must choose
