A Toiling Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

even give any
of the humans staring at her a glance. All her attention was
focused solely on me—as if I could be the center of the world she
seemed to desperately search for. It was there in the corners of
her eyes, a small desperation I never bothered to ask her
about.
    When she stopped at my table, she smiled
down at me, mischief playing in her eyes. “Hallo. Are you Akhlys?”
I just looked back up at her, wary but curious. She towered over my
table, patiently waiting for a response she was so sure of
getting.
    I was only at the tavern because I needed a
little break from wandering around while I figured out where to go
next. Back then I had no real goal. I got into the habit of always
moving around and during that time, even more so. I was trying to
decide if I wanted to go to the New World or not. Start all over in
a place where legends haven’t had time to be created yet.
    Where I could pretend to be no one and get
away with it.
    I turned to the woman and cocked my brow.
She held a small smile, as if everything was there for her to play
with. She saw me as another toy and for once, her greed didn’t
bother me. Charisma. Eithna had always been dripping with
charisma.
    “You are?” I asked in Gaelic. I already knew
she was from Ireland by the sweet Irish lilt. She smiled, even
happier with my response. She switched back to Gaelic, her words
throaty and yet soft and beautiful.
    She laughed. “Is mise Eithna.”
    “Eithna?” I remembered the name meant fiery.
“A fire elemental?”
    “Tá, and you are less scary than I thought.
Come to New World with me.”
    “Why?” I asked. She was so bold and abrupt
with me and I couldn’t seem to find it troublesome. Did I mention
she was all charisma? It didn’t even take me long to be wrapped
around her white slender fingers.
    “You’re going to teach me your magic.”
    She laughed at my blank expression and
pulled a chair out to sit across from me, leaning forward as her
voice lowered. “Come to America with me.”
    Her demands caught me off guard. They were
really demands, nothing that she said was poised as a question. It
was like she expected me to do it. Maybe that was why I agreed. She
came, she took control, and for once I could just leave it up to
her. Making your own decisions for thousands of years really does
get tiring.
    I could tell she was young, if a couple
hundred years could be thought of as young. So with the exchange of
only a couple of sentences we took off for America. Simple and yet
it led to so much more and ended with her death.
    She wasn’t there anymore to laugh at me, or
to tell me I wasn’t scary. She no longer woke me up in the middle
of the day with her soft and throaty words, wanting me to teach her
something else. I missed the child’s curiosity she held about
everything I had to teach her.
    I lay back down on the grass, coming out of
my memories and hating where my thoughts went while I was in La-La
land. I’ve barely thought about her lately. I worked hard not to. I
gave her a spot in my heart and now it was empty with nothing to
fill it up, right next to the other little holes created when I was
a naïve little being. Well, if the slauve got what he wanted, maybe
I’ll join her in whatever afterlife existed for beings like us. If
he was capable of doing it—which he wasn’t.
    Bits of clouds floated by and I lifted my
left hand, pretending to squash them in my palm. Just like what I
wanted to do to the slauve, but not before I got what I needed from
him. With the seeker out for the count for the next couple of days,
only the slauve would know who created him and I was almost sure I
would do anything to get him to tell me. If he wasn’t under some
kind of gag order, I could do it. I know I could. Hopefully.
    Usually beings are proud of their ability to
create a slauve, and yet there was no one out there claiming the
one from last night. Eithna was the last one to create one and it
got her killed by the Consort.
    A goodie bag