His jaw clenched, Corian stepped toward her and paused. “I should have come with you. I didn’t have all the pieces before you left, and L’zar didn’t give them willingly to me then. That’s what I’m afraid of, ma gairín. It feels like it’s happening all over again, only this time I know the consequences of not seeing what he sees.” He took a sharp breath and grimaced at the ceiling. “Maybe the consequences of knowing what he plans to do are even worse.”
“Maybe they are.” Maleshi smoothed her dark hair away from her face and regained her composure. “There’s a good chance that if he hasn’t told you to do something, there’s nothing to do but wait and watch. And if he does give an order, no matter how insane it is, I hope you follow it. Sometimes I want to rip that drow limb from limb, but as long as I’ve known him, he’s never been wrong.”
“I was, though.” Corian slowly approached her and lifted a hand toward her face. Maleshi tilted her head away slightly and stared at him. He nodded, ran his fingers briefly along her cheek, and dropped his hand. “And I am sorry.”
“So am I.” Maleshi closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I think we’re finished with this conversation.”
“Right.” A pained frown creased his eyebrows, and he nodded. “I’ll let you get back to your drinking.”
“I didn’t tell you to leave.” When he turned back toward her, she gave him a soft smile. “You said you came looking for comfort, didn’t you?”
A wry chuckle escaped him. “That’s not what I found, but I’ll be fine.”
“Or you could stay. Find comfort without L’zar Verdys being at the center of it.” Maleshi nodded toward the bottle on the table, still three-quarters full. “That Bloodshine won’t drink itself.”
The corners of Corian’s mouth flickered into the hint of a smile, and he turned to eye the bottle. “Are you sure?”
“As I said, I know what I want. Just waiting for you to make your decision.”
He studied her silver gaze, then dipped his head and returned to the table to fill both their cups. When Maleshi joined him, Corian handed her a drink and raised his for a toast. “To Maleshi Hi’et, who always gets what she wants.”
“And Corian Vedi’im, who somehow always wants what he gets.”
They knocked their metal cups together, staring at each other, and drank.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Shut up, already! I’m trying to sleep.
With a groan, Cheyenne Summerlin rolled over in the massive bed and tossed the thick, itchy blanket off her shoulders. The muffled shouts and raucous laughter spilling through the substantial door to her private room quieted enough to let her slip back into unconsciousness.
Ten seconds later, something huge crashed into a bunch of metal and stone, followed by uproarious laughter and growling voices shouting in French.
The sound startled Cheyenne out of her sleep again, and she pounded a fist into the thick, hard pillow beneath her to push herself up. “What the hell is wrong with those guys?”
More shouts and laughter carried into her room. Someone else grunted and fell against more metal, then a deep, rough voice broke out in tuneless song.
With an aggravated grunt, Cheyenne sat upright and pushed herself off the side of the huge bed before striding barefoot across the room. She flung open the heavy, creaking wooden door and stumbled into the living room connecting her guest quarters in the raug city to Ember’s.
The ruckus outside was much louder now, echoing up the stone walls of the building and spilling into the main room through the open balcony. She blinked at the darkness of the sky beyond the balcony, not quite the black of night but nowhere near late enough for everyone to be awake like this.
So, the raugs get up and fight for no reason when it’s barely even dawn, huh?
Cheyenne stepped groggily toward the open balcony but stopped when another crash came—from Ember’s room this time.
“Damnit!” The fae grunted in frustration. “Come on. Just get this stupid… No, no. Wait!”
Metal clinked against stone, and the crawler bashed into the doorway of Ember’s room before scuttling through and darting wildly across the living area toward Cheyenne. The temporary O’gúl wheelchair on eight legs wobbled when two of its pointed feet struck the large pillow scattered across the floor. It almost fell over but paused, as if the old-school tech was aware of the danger if it kept moving.
“This sucks,” Ember muttered from her room.
Trying not to laugh, Cheyenne headed for the crawler. “Want me to herd this thing back in there for you, Em?”
“Oh, shit. Did I wake you up?”
“Nope.” Cheyenne pulled the silver activator coil from her front pocket and slipped it behind her ear. The pinch of the O’gúl tech syncing with her magic and her brain had faded at this point to little more than a fleeting itch, though her eyelids fluttered from the buzz of tech-induced magic.
“Okay, then yeah. Bring the stupid thing back in here so the magicless fae can depend on a machine again to move around.” Ember groaned. “Please.”
The lines of code scrolling across the crawler’s flat, unlabeled control panel translated the O’gúleesh symbols to readable English in under two seconds. Cheyenne stopped in front of the crawler and quickly scanned the panel. They weren’t kidding about the old-school part. This thing isn’t half as complicated as any machine in Hangivol.
She swiped the control panel and directed the crawler off the pillows and back across the living area. The machine moved quickly and easily this time, avoiding the doorframe altogether before it slowed to a stop beside Ember’s huge bed, which was built for a raug’s dimensions, not a fae’s.
“Oh, sure.” Ember rolled her eyes. “The thing has no problem avoiding obstacles when the drow gives it commands.”
Cheyenne walked slowly
