“Seriously?” I snapped. “It’s broad daylight. And in the middle of a damn road.”
“And this is Malgrave,” Callan answered from a step behind me.
I couldn’t see him from this angle, but based on the exasperated note in his voice, he also had some kind of weapon pointed at him.
In addition to the two young men on our right, an entire group of people had now also materialized on our left. It baffled me that they were bold enough to ambush us like this right outside a bakery. Something like this would never have happened in Eldar or Castlebourne. But I supposed that Callan was right. This was indeed Malgrave, and Malgrave played by a different set of rules.
“Coldblooded Callan,” a man’s voice said from the group on our left.
The guy holding a sword to my neck moved slightly, allowing me to turn so that I faced the group. When I did, I noticed that the blond young man beside my ambusher was holding a white bolt of lightning aimed at Callan’s neck. However, he had also been allowed to turn so that he fully faced the others. Callan’s dark eyes met mine, then dipped to the sword across my throat, before he finally shifted his attention to the person who had spoken.
It was another young man. Medium height and build, with brown hair and gray eyes. My gaze drifted across the rest of the group, and I realized that they were in fact all younger than me. All of them looked to be somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. Three women and three men. Plus the two men standing behind us. Eight to two wasn’t bad odds for people like me and Callan, but the problem was the sword and the lightning that was already aimed at us at point blank range. Not to mention that every single member of this group looked absolutely furious.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you walk into this bakery earlier,” the brown-haired man said when it became apparent that neither Callan nor I was going to reply. “But here you are. Coldblooded Callan, back in Malgrave at last.”
It wasn’t the first time someone had called him that. Coldblooded Callan. It didn’t make sense for these to be Levi’s people, and it didn’t sound like they were Gale’s guards from our stunt with the window either. Which meant that Callan had more history in Malgrave that was about to complicate things for us.
All of them leveled stares full of rage and hatred on Callan as the brown-haired man continued.
“You ruined our lives.” He squeezed his hand into a fist as he held Callan’s stare. “And before we kill you, you are going to apologize to each and every one of us.”
Callan frowned.
Thick silence fell over the street as he said nothing for a few seconds.
Then he squinted at them. “Who are you?”
I almost burst out laughing.
The sheer indignation that flashed across their faces was so perfect that I had to smother the impulse to turn around and grin at Callan for that excellent comeback.
“You know exactly who we are,” the guy spluttered. “You ruined our lives!”
Callan lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug. “That doesn’t really narrow it down much.”
The man growled something unintelligible in response, but then the dark-haired woman beside him nudged him with her elbow, and he snapped out of his rage. Drawing himself up to his full height, he nodded towards the ground before our feet.
“Kneel,” he ordered.
Callan arched an eyebrow at him. “Not gonna happen.”
The guy behind him kicked at the back of his knees, but it accomplished nothing. Callan only continued staring at the group before him expectantly. I had to once again suppress the urge to laugh.
“Then take her,” one of the women snapped, and jerked her chin towards me.
The boot to the back of my knees did more damage. My legs buckled and I hit the cobblestones hard. Before I could recover, a hand grabbed my hair and forced my head back while the sword pressed tighter against my skin.
“That was a mistake,” Callan said, his voice low and deadly.
“Get on your knees,” the guy in charge said. “Or she gets hurt.”
Callan’s eyes slid to me, and I could tell from the look in them that both of us were trying to estimate if we could touch our palms together before the sword and the lightning bolt could finish us off.
“Now!” the leader snapped.
Slowly, Callan shifted his attention back to him.
Right at that moment, the door to the bakery was opened.
Two older women with decorated hats stepped across the threshold, and then screeched to a halt when they noticed us. Wide eyes blinked at us in shock.
“Uhm…” the ladies said in unison.
A wham echoed across the street as Callan used the moment of inattention to throw a force wall at the group before us. Someone blocked it partly with wind magic, but it was enough to send a few of them flying backwards. The two people behind us leaped back in surprise. I slammed my palms together and blindly threw a poison cloud over my shoulder.
Cries of alarm rang out, but they apparently managed to evade it because a lightning bolt crackled through the air. I rolled to the side as it zapped into the stones where I had been kneeling.
Callan had called up a spinning force arc and thrown it at the group. It cracked into the bakery wall instead as someone shoved it off course.
The two old ladies yelped in surprise and scurried back into the building while the patrons inside yelled in shock and fear as the wall shook.
“Retreat!” the leader of the group called as all eight of them sprinted towards the nearest side streets.
I hurled a poison cloud after the two men fleeing on my side, but they managed to round the corner before it could hit them. Annoyance rippled through me. I didn’t like getting ambushed right after eating, and I would have felt a lot better if we could have killed at least one of them.
Shaking my head, I pushed to my feet and brushed my hands down my dress. I had only bought it this morning, and now it was already rumpled. If I had known that we were going to be engaged in yet another fight, I would have kept my riding outfit on instead of having it sent back to the inn with the rest of the clothes I bought at Ylva’s earlier this morning.
“Friends of yours?” I asked, and shot Callan a sideways glance.
The force mage glared towards the corner where the group had disappeared. “Right.”
“Who are they?”
“Not sure. But I think I can guess why they’re pissed at me.” He turned towards me and ran scrutinizing eyes up and down my body. “You okay?”
I drew a hand over my throat to check for blood before replying, “Yes.”
He kept studying me for another few seconds, as if to make sure that I really was okay. It looked like he was going to say something else, but then he just nodded.
“Alright, then let’s go find those people we need.”
Finding those people ended up taking most of the day. And required us to head back to our inn and get those forged papers of citizenship from Castlebourne that Paige had made for us back in Eldar. When we at last reached the river that split Malgrave in half, darkness had fallen over the city.
I painted a pleasant smile on my face as the guards on the bridge studied our documents.
“Go ahead,” the female guard said, and handed us our papers back while her male counterpart waved us through.
“Thanks,” Callan said as he took them and slid them back into his pocket.
It was starting to grate on my nerves to have him take the lead like that all the time. This whole afternoon while we had searched for those two people Callan had mentioned, I had just been following along and doing what he told me to do. And now when we were heading over to the fancy side of Malgrave to pay them a visit, I was once more just tagging along on his mission. It annoyed me. But at the same time, I wasn’t sure what the alternative was since I didn’t have any connection to Malgrave or the people here.
Worry swirled inside me. Was this what it was like to be an us? If that was the case, I wasn’t sure I liked it all that much.
“The first one is just a few streets up from here,” Callan said, interrupting my confused thoughts.
Shaking off the strange feeling that had been trying to take root inside me, I instead turned my attention to the city at the end of the bridge while giving Callan a nod. “Alright.”
The city of Malgrave was split right down the middle by a river called the River of Souls. Nowadays, there was only one bridge across the wide body of water. The Bridge of Life was always guarded by constables from the north side of Malgrave, so that the proper and law-abiding citizens could make sure that none of Levi’s morally reprehensible people made their way across to cause trouble.
Because of the dividing river, Malgrave had always had an interesting history. But for now at least, the north side seemed to have accepted Levi’s rule over the south side. People from the north side still regularly crossed the bridge in order to drink and dance and gamble and escape their boring lives in any way they could by visiting the Entertainment District. But the people who lived on the sinful side rarely ventured to the other one. And as we made our way down yet another street, I could venture a guess as to why.
Almost all the buildings we passed were made of white stone. Everything was clean and modest and proper. Or in another word… boring.
“In here,” Callan said, and nodded towards a plain wooden door.
I flicked a glance up and down the road as we moved towards the indicated house. Oil lamps burned on top of evenly spaced metal poles that illuminated the pale stone street, but apart from the flickering flames, nothing moved. There were lights spilling out from some of the windows, including our target building, but I couldn’t see anyone inside. High above, stars glittered in the dark blue evening sky.
When we reached the door, Callan moved so that he was standing right in front of it while I was left standing behind him. Once again, I couldn’t help but be annoyed by the fact that I felt like some kind of employee. But since I didn’t know what we were about to walk into, I said nothing.
Callan raised his fist and thumped it against the door.
The thudding sound echoed down the street.
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
Then the door was pulled open and a man with light brown hair and brown eyes became visible in the small gap. “Yes?”
“Hello, Winston,” Callan said.
Panic flashed on Winston’s face as he stared up at Callan. “No,” he blurted out as he tried to shove the door shut again.
Before he could get it fully closed, Callan raised his boot and kicked the door in. Winston leaped backwards as the door flew open again. The move made him slam into a side table that had been placed against the wall inside the hall, and the small ceramic bowl on top of it wobbled precariously.
Callan strode into the hall. I followed him and then shut the door gently behind me. No need to alert the neighbors more than necessary.
Winston raised his hands and backed away while Callan advanced on him. It took him into a living room. A steaming cup of tea waited on a small table next to a large green armchair, and a book lay open beside it. Winston walked into the side of the couch before he managed to make his way into the middle of the room. I took up position in the doorway while Callan came to a halt a couple of steps in front of the now terrified-looking man.
From my position, I could see both of their faces from the side. Lethal power rolled off Callan’s muscular frame as he leveled a commanding stare on his target.
“Sit,” Callan ordered.
Winston promptly dropped to his knees right there on the carpet.
Heat pooled at my core just watching the absolute power and control Callan wielded in that moment.
On the floor, Winston swallowed audibly before looking up at Callan with fearful eyes. “Are you here to finish the job?”
For a while, Callan said nothing. Another wave of terror washed over the man’s face, and he shifted nervously on his knees.
“No,” Callan replied at last.
Relief crashed over Winston’s features, and he sucked in a shuddering breath. “Thank you.”
“I’m here because you owe me a life debt. Which means that whenever I come knocking, you do what I want.”
Lowering his chin, he dropped his gaze to the floor. “Yes, sir.”
“I need you to get us through a series of walls.”
He nodded.
“Answer,” Callan said, even though it had been an order and not a question.
“I will get you through the walls.”
“Good. I’ll let you know when and where. Be ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fuck, he was so hot when he did shit like this. I wanted to shove him up against the wall right there and claim that commanding tongue for myself.
But then Callan turned around and jerked his chin at me, telling me that it was time to leave, and that annoying sense of just being an employee started creeping back over my skin.
Pushing myself off the doorjamb, I left the still kneeling Winston behind and stalked back towards the door. The heavy footsteps behind me informed me that Callan was following.
As I pushed down the handle and pulled the door open, I tried to dispel those strange feelings inside me again but I didn’t fully succeed.
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to fit into Callan’s life. Or how he was supposed to fit into mine.
But there was one thing I knew for certain.
I would never make myself less for him.
Or anyone.
