The Amulet Of Nicmir (The Scripts Of Neptune, Book 1)

Chapter 62

"Nyle, what do we do?"

He was getting sick of that question. Sick of the answer he always had to give, too: "I don't know."

No one said much at dinner. The temple ceiling echoed with the quiet screech of forks on the old ceramic plates Chad had unearthed in one of the houses, and the fire spit embers high in the air, illuminating cracked, broken images of the gods on the roof. They'd been that way as long as Nyle could remember. No one seemed to care much about religion in this torn country any longer. They just wanted to survive.

He wasn't sure anyone was really sleeping that night. Lillian kept tossing and turning in her bundle of blankets on one of the mattresses they'd salvaged from the same house as the plates. Chad hadn't moved from his position, facing the ceiling, but Nyle could've sworn he saw him blink. Sam and Crynia might've been the most convincing--on separate mattresses, but only a foot apart and facing each other. Their hands linked the space, fingers woven together, Crynia's ring that Sam still hadn't explained catching the light of the dying coals and coming alive in the reflection. They were always touching, it seemed. Inseparable.

Crynia's slender fingers twitched, and she pulled her hand from Sam's and sat up, her dark, wavy hair falling in loose locks down her back. Rubbing her face, she breathed out, slow and heavy. Then, peeling her blankets back, she got to her feet and padded barefoot to the window, leaning against the frame, crossing her arms against the night chill that crept around in the darkness outside the safety of fire and bedding.

It was Sam who shifted and caught Nyle's focus, then, raising his head to look drowsily at Crynia, his hair wild from laying on it. Blinking, he brought his knees up, sticking his legs out of the nest he'd made himself earlier. Getting to his feet, he followed her path to the window, then wrapped one arm around her shoulders and one around her waist, pulling her back against him in an embrace as he buried his nose in her hair. Nyle closed his eyes and turned away; he had no right to watch them. It felt odd, anyway. Sam was his best friend, and seeing him so serious with a girl...it was a difficult thing to grasp.

"You're slipping again." That was Sam, his voice a gentle murmur. Nyle squeezed his eyes closed and breathed in the musty scent of his wool blanket, trying to drown them out, to give them privacy, but there was no other noise to distract him.

"I know." Crynia. Her words were a little louder than Sam's, choked. She was crying. "I don't know what to do."

"About your dad?"

A sniff. "If I choose him--if I choose him, I'll be killing thousands. But if I don't--" She paused, there. Nyle could tell she was fighting to speak past her tears. "If I don't, I'll lose him."

Sam didn't say anything to that. Nyle didn't know what he could've given her. An empty promise? A false word of hope? There was nothing hopeful about this situation, nothing easy. And that was exactly how Agnir wanted it.

***

The next day was lazy, melancholic, dreary. The sun was caught behind the clouds all day, a gold pearl smothered in raw cotton. Attempts at conversation died quickly. Nyle ended up sitting on the balcony overhanging the overgrown garden at the back of the temple, hanging his legs through the slots between the posts of the railing, watching the sea churn on the beach. It was stormy today; swirling its angry greys and blues and greens topped with salty foam. Nyle's father had always said that the sea and sky had moods, too, and they liked to match whoever watched them. Nyle couldn't say they'd observed him poorly.

Not bothering to look over when he recognized Sam's long stride coming up behind him, Nyle sighed through his nose and leaned his forehead on the railing. It'd leave dents in his skin, but he didn't care. He had bigger things to worry about. Besides, maybe they'd make Chad or Lillian or Sam laugh. There was nothing wrong with that.