Ending Maker novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: One Room

Halfmoon Crossing was a town of one road, two taverns, and a river ferry that did not run after dark.

It was day twenty-eight, and the red clock hung over the roofs.

We came in at dusk, wearing borrowed brown cloaks over our armor.

Tavi walked in front, pretending to be a village girl taking her cousins home.

The innkeeper looked at us for a long time.

"One room," he said. "Last one. The ferry crowd took the rest."

"One bed?" I asked.

"One bed."

"We'll take it," Emmett said at once.

I turned my head so fast I felt it in my neck.

"We have a leash," he said quietly, without looking at me.

"Twenty paces. It's one room or I'm sleeping on the porch with my ribs on fire."

He had a point, and I hated it.

Tavi took a closet under the stairs, with a cot, that the innkeeper's daughter shared.

She looked at me with enormous innocent eyes as she left.

"Good night, Sunblade," she said. "Good night, Nightwarden. Sleep well."

"I'm going to kill her," I said.

"She's twenty."

"I'm going to kill her kindly."

The room was small and warm.

There was a bed with a patched quilt, a washstand, and a screen painted with herons.

A boy with two buckets filled the tin tub in the corner.

"You first," Emmett said, and held up his hands.

"I'll be at the far wall. The screen blocks the rest."

"The room isn't twenty paces long."

"Then I'll face the wall."

"You'll face the wall."

"I'll count the cracks."

I stepped behind the painted herons and peeled out of the golden armor piece by piece.

Under it I wore a thin linen shift.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Ending Maker from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.