❝ We must be prepared to sacrifice the few to save the many that will come after us. ❞
[book 2]
The Grey Bloods may have dwindled in number, but the creatures still gnaw at Muovea, threatening the small measure of peace that was won when the Grand D...
That place again. Yorvik Keep. Galya had mentioned it when she first stumbled upon their cabin in the woods and claimed the same thing. Whatever the Ghuls were trying to find there had already been plundered.
Oliver looks to the bags tied to his saddle, some of those bags belonging to Alicia. He hasn't seen her wear it, not since they left the capital, but he knows Alicia still has the key. The key she took from Yorvik Keep, hidden beneath the coffin of the man who murdered the Faceless Queen.
Suddenly he's certain that key is what the Ghuls are trying to find, and suddenly he trusts them even less. How could such a key possibly lead them to the cure?
"Oliver?"
Glancing up, he meets Galya's gaze. "Yes?"
"You look like you just figured something out."
He clears his throat and shakes his head. "Just worried about Alicia."
Galya doesn't believe him, but she straightens in her saddle with a nod. "She knows what she's doing."
Oliver doesn't reply, his mind too busy reeling from realising what the Ghuls are after. Alicia must know too, Galya told her the same thing about Yorvik Keep, yet she's kept the key to herself. Maybe she's been too preoccupied lately to even consider it, but she's never been so neglectful.
For whatever reason, Alicia is hiding this from Samantha and her Ghuls, delaying their acquisition of the cure, and he has to trust that she knows what she's doing. Even if it's becoming harder to trust her with every passing day.
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Oliver doesn't realise they've arrived at their destination until one of the Ghuls ahead of them cuts through a wall of vines, revealing cracked stone beneath and little else.
Letting out a sigh, he resigns himself to more cold nights in a tent surrounded by echoes of the past.
He jumps down from his saddle, wincing when his side flares with renewed pain, but the fire has dwindled to mere coals. Pain is the last thing on his mind as he watches Sam's immortal army begin their work of finding the entrance to the ruin.
Thinking of her, Oliver's gaze finds Sam helping her Ghuls, hatchet in hand to clear vegetation and determination in the set of her round jaw.
He hasn't spoken to her—not properly—since joining their group. Uncertainty plagues him, like an itch he can't scratch. He doesn't know whose side he's meant to be on anymore, not when Sam follows the Ghuls across this country like they're the answer to all her problems.
The girl he knew in the Commons would have buried the creatures in their tomb.
Oliver continues to watch as Sam steps away from the stone being slowly revealed, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. She ticks her hatchet into her belt and turns, trekking through damp underbrush to where a barrel of water has been set upon a boulder. Grabbing a metal cup, Sam needs to tip the barrel to get any water out and Oliver takes advantage of the situation.
