Quill of Thieves

Chapter 47

He tilted one corner of his lips in disbelief. 

Astrid crossed her arms. "Perhaps I'm only back in these blasted tunnels because I hoped to lure Sebastian down here to have my way with him."

As was typical, Matthias ignored her theatrics. He observed her without a word, jaw ticking as if he had already determined her worth. She expected he most likely found her lacking. In his next breath, he stomped back from her and cleared his throat. Finally, his left hand fell back onto the hilt of his blade.

"Damn it, Astrid!" His tone was at odds with his posture. "It would be helpful if you stopped throwing my attempts at saving you back into my face."

She spread her arms wide. "Saving me from whom, 'Thias?" She gestured around them. "From dear old Wormy? Newsflash: a gigantic worm that size does not exist!"

"From yourself!"

Well, then.

His admission gave her pause, but it was suddenly the voice of her mother she heard instead, hissing in her ear: Control leads to power. Power without control is chaos. Control must always come first.

And you are weak.

But Astrid had control. More than Matthias could possibly know about. Because he couldn't know the truth of her. He absolutely could not. When she met his watchful stare, her stomach dropped to her knees. Do you know?  Their mutual suspicion clashed between them. You have your secrets, 'Thias, and I have mine.

"Why would you particularly care about me?" She prepared to shoot his own words back at him. "Why bother when I was never meant to be yours?"

"Because I will not lose another sister!"

Astrid had never heard him raise his voice. Not like that. Emotional. She wasn't sure what to say, but her lips parted regardless, perhaps to tell him that she was not, in fact, his sister, that she had never been particularly sure of what they were to each other, that she could be nothing to him with all these lies and secrets—

The ground beneath her feet trembled. 

It knocked Astrid off kilter. She braced a hand against the tunnel wall to steady herself. It quaked, too. She quirked an eyebrow at Matthias whose fist had clenched around his blood-sword. Is this your doing? 

She wanted to ask it, but her voice left her when her balance had. 

Clumps of dirt and pebbles clattered down from above.

Not again!

From behind her, she heard Sebastian utter some Scribal curse.

And then Matthias moved. He leapt across the width of the tunnel in one stride—to be fair, the tunnel was hardly that wide—and grabbed Abel around the wrist. Sebastian shouted in protest, and Abel gasped like a dying fish as Matthias yanked her away and swung her around.

"Calm down," he barked into Abel's paling cheeks. Her pink lips were turning a strange blue. "Astrid, come here. Now!"

Another round of tunnel shrapnel fell around their heads.

It was the panic in Sebastian's wide-eyed expression that sent Astrid rushing towards them, tripping on her final step when the ground rolled beneath her feet. Matthias caught her with his other arm; he had abandoned his grasp on his sword in favor of tearing Astrid's cloak from her shoulders. Shocked, she barely had time to utter a protest before Matthias shoved her long-sleeved tunic up to her shoulder. Her copper cuff gleamed even in the shadows of the unlit tunnel until Matthias slapped Abel's bare hand over it.