Chapter 41: Answer [1]

The sun beat down with the heavy, unhurried persistence of midday in late spring, baking the pale grass until the sweet scent of scorched clover hung thick in the air. Cane lay flat on his back, eyes closed behind the slit of his lowered lashes, arms splayed wide. Beneath his shoulder blades, the earth was warm and dry; beside his right hand rested a cracked-open gourd brimming with sweet, fermented berry juice and crushed ice one of the camp’s water mages had been bullied into producing.

Dragon Group.

A dry chuckle rattled in Cane’s chest. The name was Marcus’s stroke of comedic genius, pitched during that first shambolic leadership dispute with the puffed-up chest of a boy who believed a martial moniker might magically summon martial competence. Yelena had rejected it on the spot with that razor-edged scowl of hers, calling it childish, vulgar, and pretentious. But Marcus, possessing the stubborn density of an ox, had simply repeated it at every lull in conversation until her patience finally broke like cheap glass. Fine. Dragon Group. Whatever makes you shut your mouth.

Now, two days into their reign over this miserable quadrant, Dragon Group stood as the single greatest testament to strategic stagnation in the history of the academy. They had not captured a single banner. They had not even seen an enemy scout. Upon stumbling across a wide, muddy pond surrounded by willow trees and sun-bleached rocks on day one, the entire cohort had tacitly agreed that walking any further was a fool’s errand. They had pitched six crooked tents, built a fire pit, and simply laid down. No fortifications. No patrols beyond whatever token stroll Yelena forced on the low-ranking commoners to keep the tree line in sight. It was tactical paralysis elevated to an art form, and Cane loved every glorious, lazy second of it.

Yet beneath the golden warmth of the sun, a persistent knot of paranoia coiled low in his gut.

The Talons.

Two full days had crawled past since he and Raven dragged Felt against that tree trunk, bullied the boy into weeping compliance, and fed him the lie about Yelena’s group marching north. Since then, the forest had been an eerie, dead tomb. No poisoned darts from the canopy. No black-robed infiltrators slitting throats in the brush. Nothing.

Cane took a slow, icy pull from his gourd, letting the tart juice sting the back of his dry throat. A less cynical man might assume Felt’s terror had broken the chain—that the frightened kid had bolted from the woods, fled the territory entirely, and left Alexander’s vanguard blind and hesitant. Cane knew better. The Ashen Talons in the novel were not some ragtag band of angry peasants throwing rocks at carriages; they were a meat grinder staffed by patient, bitter professionals who traded in logistics, assassinations, and cold-blooded spectacle. An outfit that calculated did not pack up its knives because a single low-level runner went missing.

He rolled the possibilities through his head like pair of weighted dice. If Felt delivered the false lead cleanly, Alexander was likely repositioning his kill-squads right now, creeping north toward empty meadows and phantom tracks while Cane sunned his abs by a pond. That was the dream scenario—free breathing room bought with a cheap lie.

The uglier alternative made the hair on Cane’s arms stand stiff. If Alexander had looked into Felt’s sweating, guilty face and smelled the trap, the man wouldn’t charge north. He would dig in. He would wait in the shadows of the southern ridges, fingers resting on the hilts of his daggers, watching the treeline for whoever had turned his hound into a parrot.

Cane exhaled through his nose, dismissing the thought. If Alexander was coming, he was coming. Wringing hands over a terrorist mastermind while lying shirtless in the sun was a criminal waste of good weather.

A shadow broke the heat across his face.

Cane cracked an eye open.

Priya stood over him, holding a fresh cup of chilled juice, the pale wooden rim glistening with condensation. She looked down at him with a soft, round face, lips pulled into a warm, open smile that held none of the sharp disgust usually reserved for the scumbag of House Valerian.

Her outfit was an absolute marvel of academy regulation evasion. A fitted halter top of thin silk pulled taut over breasts so round and heavy they strained the seams with every breath, threatening to spill cleavage out the scooped neckline. Beneath a narrow, soft waist, she wore a pair of ridiculously skimpy denim shorts that rode high on her plump hips, the frayed hems clinging for dear life to thick, honey-toned thighs. As she shifted her weight from one sandal to the other, her wide, juicy ass gave a delicious, trembling sway that made Cane’s mouth water faster than the juice ever could.

He offered a lazy flick of two fingers from his spot on the dirt.

"You’re doing god’s work, Priya."

She giggled, the sound light and bubbly, and sank gracefully into the clover beside him. The motion caused her massive tits to bounce against the silk of her top, an erotic little tremor that Cane tracked with unashamed admiration.

"You looked thirsty," she said, handing the fresh cup down. Her fingers brushed his palm, warm and smooth against his skin. "And Yelena told me not to let you die of heatstroke. Apparently, a corpse ruins the camp’s aesthetic."

Cane took the cup, took a long swallow, and let his gaze drift past her generous hips toward the perimeter.

He was parked thirty yards out from the main camp, a solitary outpost of insolence. Yelena had ordered him away from the center tents yesterday morning in a fit of aristocratic rage, claiming his complete refusal to carry firewood was corrupting the group’s morale. The exile was supposed to be a punishment. Instead, it had turned into an open-air resort.

Fifty paces to his left, lounging under the dappled shade of three crooked pines, sat his five faithful disciples. All five were completely shirtless, their pale noble torsos glistening with sweat and coconut oil, each clutching a hollowed-out gourd while staring blissfully at the clouds. They hadn’t lifted a finger in forty-eight hours. Whenever Marcus or Yelena barked orders in their direction, the boys simply pointed toward Cane, took another sip of juice, and went limp.

Cane let out a short, disbelieving snort through his teeth.

Priya’s full lower lip pushed out into an adorable, exaggerated pout.

"Are you scoffing at me? I walked all the way out here with ice, you know."