ravaged hearts

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE,

RAVAGED HEARTS | CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  LOVE HAD ALWAYS been a twisted, unfamiliar concept to Io. She hadn't realised it until years later that she wasn't sure anyone truly loved her. Certainly her mother had, once upon a time, but she was dead, was she not? Her father was a no-goner, and while Lady Kuroki did care for her, it wasn't particularly love either. It was some combination of pragmatic opportunism, guilt for her mother's fate, and some passing mentorly care.

  What was left? Her friends?

  The pain of a vagabond and an orphan, Io decided back then, was that they'd never truly know the taste of love. Even when they received it, they wouldn't realise. All they'd do is give and give their hearts away and ask for nothing back because they'd never learned to do so, because they'd never learned that they had the right to have things, deserve things, yearn for things and get them.

  Now, for the second time in a week, she watched the man who caused her all this conflict from the safety of the nearby woods. They had to be careful, of course—Mali McKennen may have very well created these foliages and she was no fool. Not the smartest tool in the shed compared to the other Falcons, but no fool nonetheless. The Falcons wouldn't have let her live this long if she didn't possess some modicum of intelligence she regularly utilised in her day-to-day life.

  "They don't trust him."

  "He doesn't trust them."

  "It's a fragile alliance," Louis said. "Almost like he's a mercenary for hire."

  "Well, I suppose he was their landlord, in a way."

  "An interesting way of seeing things," he murmured, ducking behind a particularly leafy branch when Bassanio suddenly turned their way. Io, who was behind a tree trunk in the first place, didn't move at all. Motion might attract even more attention. That was to be avoided.

  When Bassanio had turned away again, they both moved back to their original positions. Io let out a quiet sigh of relief. It didn't matter how many times she did things like this. It was always... nerve wracking. It was enjoyable in some way but above all it was terrifying.

  The human life was fragile. One wrong move, and it was all over.

  She didn't dare let her guard down. She whispered to him, "The foliage would cover our approach, but they could use it to their advantage as well."

  "McKennen's the problem." They'd never quite grasped Mali's powers. It had something to do with plants, but did she directly control them? Or did she simply communicate with them like Louis? The latter seemed unlikely—they'd have been discovered long ago if that was the case, but still.

  "We'll have to take her out first." Normally Io would just choose to snipe her off, but she didn't want McKennen dead. She was young, and if she was anything like Sorrya, perhaps still a bit saveable. Io didn't want to take any more lives than was necessary, especially wiccai lives. They were already so rare anywhere except the Hatlen Isles.

  "We can lure her away from the others, knock her out of commission for most of the raid," Louis suggested. "I could probably manage that fairly easily with some birds."

  "That sounds good," Io nodded. "Do it just before the raid so that we don't need to set anyone on watching her. Shouldn't be too difficult. Without her powers McKennen is nothing."

  Louis tilted her head. "That's true. I've never heard anything good about her combat prowess. All her confirmed kills or missions relied heavily on her powers, which is probably why she goes on so few of those." The few times she knew McKennen had been sent out was all for operations during battles, usually in woods and fields, where her powers could actually be used to its full extent.