Chapter 26

  Titus should have gone to bed when Axl got up with a noticeable sway and staggered towards his room for the night. Instead, he sat by the dwindling fire recalling the look on Snow’s face before the magician ran out of Bellane. Titus knew the look of painful resignation, of having to accept that the world had gone sideways and there was no fixing it.

  It wasn’t the first time Titus felt like a failure, but it had been a while since he felt as if he had ruined another’s life. He wanted to believe Snow could weather this. The magician talked as if he had been through trouble before, but Titus knew it wasn’t over. Axl would report all this and return with a hunting party – fully prepared to deal with magic.

  “I know what you’re doing,” a voice hissed in the dark. Titus turned to see Kern walking towards him from out of the shadows. The man had his arm heavily bandaged, but he still wore his sword at his hip as if he expected trouble even at this late hour.

  “I’m having a drink. Do you want to join me?” Titus offered a chair, but Kern had no interest. He came to stand closer to the hearth where the dim firelight gave away that his hand was on his pommel again.

  “You let him go. You’re protecting that snake,” Kern’s voice snarled with the accusation. “Axl doesn’t want to see it, but I’ll change that.”

  Titus knew in an instant that he was being goaded into a fight. It would be the last bit of evidence Kern needed to convince Axl, regardless of who won. Kern could look like the victim of a traitor or be the winner and tell whatever story he wanted over Titus’s corpse. The only way to win the game was not to play.

  “I did let him go, and Axl knows why. He could have set the whole building ablaze or killed all three of us in a blink.”

  “And why didn’t he kill us?” Kern asked with clear disbelief in his voice.

  “Because he doesn’t want to be seen as a murderer. I told you; he doesn’t like trouble. He can’t sell his craft if people are too scared to buy.” Titus allowed some tired irritation to come into his voice as he said it.

  Kern scowled at the answer, but he had no retort. Instead, he changed the subject.

  “You said he dealt with Waldron and the vampire… elaborate.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Titus had feared someone would ask him for a play-by-play account of that. He had been trying to work out a story that could hold up, but he feared running into Lia still with Snow and the whole thing falling apart. There was only one course… to fake ignorance.

  “When the magician figured out what Waldron was up to, I offered to stop it. It wasn’t right by any measure. I got the drop on him and then handed him over to the villagers. Sn- the magician then went to deal with the vampire.

  “I wasn’t expecting any more trouble and went for a drink, but Waldron found a way of breaking free from the villagers and made a run for it. He was running back to collect that vampire and ran right into his death. By the time I got there, the magician already dealt with him and the vampire was nowhere to be seen.”

  “How did the necromancer even know there was a vampire or where to find it in the first place?

  “The villagers asked us to help before Waldron showed up. We were investigating the deaths and found where he had stashed the vampire.”

  “And you believed it’s story?”

  “We were skeptical at first, but then we came back to the village and found Waldron was there. The bastard confirmed all of it when he quietly boasted to me of this new scheme.”

  Titus risked tilting back his pint to drain the last of its dregs while Kern continued to stand with his hand on his sword. His face was still hard with suspicion and Titus began to believe that nothing short of capturing Snow himself would convince Kern that he was on their side.

  This is what you meant, isn’t it? Titus thought in reply to Snow. While Waldron was slime, Kern was revealing himself to be a man so twisted by hate that he had become a monster in his own right. He wondered how Axl managed to walk that line – to fight for the innocent without sliding into such obsession that demanded anything unlike them was a menace. Or perhaps, he wondered, am I wrong about him too?

  Kern continued to bore into him for another few seconds before letting out a frustrated breath.

  “Get some fucking sleep,” Kern ordered before turning away. Titus heard him mutter the words ‘fucking drunk’ before walking back towards their rooms. It was a last-ditch effort to prod him, but Titus wasn’t so foolish. At least not this time.

  Titus turned his gaze back to the fire and allowed himself a brief triumphant smirk before returning to his problem. It was starting to take shape now. What before was just a tangled mess of feelings and images was starting to coalesce into a path, but he knew it wasn’t for the wavering soul. This path would require that he trust his heart or leave it all behind him.

  After a moment longer, Titus pushed the pint away and laid a few coins on the table. He got up with his eyes still vaguely resting on the embers of the fire, but in truth he was looking far away. In his minds eye, he pictured the black night beyond these walls and the magician riding in the dark, perhaps Lia still with him; the two making their way somewhere to regroup and reassess what’s going on. And the more he pictured it, the more he wanted to be riding with them than crossing swords with Kern.

  Titus knew his place now and it wasn’t with the likes of blind men.