Respite & Resolve

[Adrian Kane]

Arikan

She returned faster than he anticipated, and almost immediately, his gaze shifted to the darkness behind her shoulder. It was empty.

His own fell to stillness while she hurried through the state of the world. Talin was right about her. Gone for two days and returned with more information than the Yellow could source in two months.

From the flatness that emptied his gaze of emotion, one particular phrase shifted his expression into swift thought. Deposing the Amyrlin Seat reeked of the movements of the Chosen. They’d done it before and would do it again, but according to Nythadri, it was but one move on a rapidly rearranging board. To coordinate the downfall of two of the light’s greatest channelers on the same night was respectable. Better, it was also a trail.

These things he considered, but they weren’t what tugged him to his feet nor cast cauldrons of fire to his eyes. Call it the hand of destiny or the Great Lord’s own luck, but he licked his lips with an eagerness that she would not have seen from the previously stoic dreadlord.

When he looked at her, he saw vulnerability. No, more. She was desperate.

He nodded in answer to her question: “No. But I will help myself.” A deft hand clasped the cape across his shoulder. For the first time in years he was going to return to the Black Tower, but this time, he would claim it as his own, and he was going to do it as himself.

“Go,” he told her, awaiting the portal he anticipated she would open, but before she could summon the power to her grasp and take him into the unknown, he paused at her side, looking down into the icy determination of her gaze with a warning embedded in his own.

“Don’t betray me,” he said.