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But even if she decided not to take the ship to Yurpa tomorrow and instead took one bound for the southern continent, she was still left with another night in this awful inn Another sleepless night where she could only hear the roar of anger in her blood as it thrashed inside her

If she were smart, if she were levelheaded, she would avoid any confrontation tonight and leave Innish in peace, noparticularly smart, or levelheaded--certainly not once the hours passed and the air in the inn shifted into a hungry, wild thing that howled for blood

CHAPTER 2

Yrene didn’t knohen it happened, but the atathered irl at the back was still at her table, still brooding But her gloved fingers were tapping on the scarred wooden surface, and every now and then, she shifted her hooded head to look around the room

Yrene couldn’t have left even if she wanted to Last call wasn’t for another forty minutes, and she’d have to stay an hour after that to clean up and usher intoxicated patrons out the door She didn’t care where they went once they passed the threshold--didn’t care if they wound up facedown in a watery ditch--just as long as they got out of the taprooo, either to save his own hide or to do sos in the back alley, and Jessa was still in that sailor’s lap, flirting away, unaware of the shift in the air

Yrene kept looking at the hooded girl So did et up? There were so like vultures for the past two days, trying to figure out whether the strange girl could use the weapons she carried It was co tomorrow at dawn If they wanted her ht would be their last chance

Yrene chewed on her lip as she poured a round of ales for the table of four irl--tell her that she ht now, before she wound up with a slit throat

But Nolan would throw Yrene out into the streets if he knew she had warned her Especially when many of the cutthroats were beloved patrons who often shared their ill-gained profits with him And she had no doubt that he’d send those very men after her if she betrayed him How had she become so adjusted to these people? When had Nolan and the White Pig become a place and position she wanted so desperately to keep?

Yrene sed hard, pouring another irl

But her ood woman--a woman who never wavered, who never turned away a sick or wounded person, no e in southern Fenharrow Never

As a prodigiously gifted healer blessed with no sht to charge people for what she’d been given for free by Silba, the Goddess of Healing And the only time she’d seen her mother falter was the day the soldiers from Adarlan surrounded their house, ar torches and wood

They hadn’t bothered to listen when her mother explained that her power, like Yrene’s, had already disappeared ic in the land--abandoned by the gods, her mother had claimed

No, the soldiers hadn’t listened at all And neither had any of those vanished gods to whom her mother and Yrene had pleaded for salvation

It was the first--and only--tilint of the hidden dagger in her mother’s hand, still feel the blood of that soldier on her bare feet, hear her mother scream at her to run, sifted mother alive while Yrene wept from the nearby safety of Oakwald Forest

It was from her mother that Yrene had inherited her iron stoht those solid nerves would wind up keeping her here, claiht and memory that she didn’t notice the man until a broad hand rapped around her waist

"We could use a pretty face at this table," he said, grinning up at her with a wolf’s s to yank her into his lap

"I’ve work to do," she said as blandly as possible She’d detangled herself from situations like this before--countless tio to work on me," said another of theblade strapped to his back Calers off her waist