AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I force a tight smile. “Damn right you can’t.”
As I leave the war room, I can feel Hadria’s eyes burning into my back. She knows I’m holding something back—she’s not stupid. But for now, at least, she’s willing to let it slide.
I just hope I can get this whole mess untangled before it all blows up in my face.
Again.
CHAPTER 12
Scarlett
I’m used to sleeping anywhere, but tonight it takes a while to drop off. The hard flooring under the blankets and hessian bags I’ve put together as a bed is extra-uncomfortable with every muscle tense and aching from the brutal training sessions Lyssa has been putting me through. Part of me resents her relentless pace, the way she seems determined to push me to my limits and beyond. But a deeper, quieter voice whispers that I need this—that I have to be strong enough to face whatever awaits us when we finally track down Grandmother.
And to be ready when Lyssa turns on me.
But I fall asleep at last, heavy, dead to the world so that the next thing I’m aware of is Lyssa’s voice.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty!”
I roll over and blink up at her, standing over me up here in the hay loft. Then I yawn.
“You gonna nap all damn day, or you wanna wake up and actually get some work done?”
I sit up with a groan, massaging the muscles at the nape of my neck. “Give me a break,” I grumble. “I’m exhausted. You’ve been working me like a dog.”
“Nope,” she says. “Like a wolf.”
That wakes me up.
And then she does what I usually do, avoiding the ladder and just dropping from the edge of the loft to the floor below. “So what’s the matter?” her voice carries back up. “The big, bad assassin can’t take a little training?”
And that gets me up and moving. I follow her lead, dropping from the edge of the loft to the floor and face off. She’s a few feet away, folding her toned arms across her chest. Even dusty and sweat-stained from the road, she looks like she just stepped off the cover of some high-end biker magazine—dark eyes, that wild blonde mane tumbling around her face…
I look away before the flush creeping up my neck can give me away. “I didn’t hear you come in, that’s all.”
“You didn’t hear the bike?”
“Obviously not.”
“You need to sleep lighter or one day you’ll wake up dead.”
“I—”
“Whatever.” Lyssa pivots on her heel. “So, how are you going on those documents?”
I hurry over to where I’ve been working on them and beckon her over. “Look at this. I pieced something together the other day and I?—”
“And you’ve been keeping it from me?” she says sharply, coming over to look over my shoulder.
“I forgot,” I correct her. “And you didn’t come out yesterday.” I have to try really, really hard to sound okay about that, even though I spent all day berating myself for breaking down in front of her. Obviously she stayed away after that. “I just…haven’t had a chance to bring it up. But I did mean to mention it as soon as you got here—and now I have.”
She studies me for a long beat, those flinty brown eyes missing nothing. When she finally speaks, her tone is clipped and brusque. “Show me.”
I hesitate, something in her brusque manner setting me on edge. Is she really that pissed about it? She’s the one who was off living her best life yesterday, while I was stuck out here.
Taking up a page of my handwritten transcription of what I’ve discovered so far, I hold it out to her in silence.
Lyssa snatches it from me, scanning the text with ferocious intensity. I watch her face closely, looking for any flicker of expression, any hint of what she might be thinking. But as always, Lyssa’s emotional shields are firmly in place, that gorgeous face a mask.
