The Immortal / Fourth Wing

Chapter Nineteen

POV: Xandor Galadon

Waking up with Liam in my arms was always unreal.

The room we were in only had two beds and two closets. The necessities.

Did Liam sleep in his own bed? No. Of course not. nstead he decided that using me as a mattress was the perfect thing to do. Not that I had anything against it.

I'e been awake for a little more than thirty minutes but didn' move. Liam was still snoring on me, and I didn' want to disturb him.

We'e been split into two groups for the day. Rhiannon, Sawyer, Cianna, Nadina, and Heaton spent the morning with Devera in this room, studying previous battles at the outpost, and were now out on patrol. Dain, Ridoc, Liam, Emery, Quinn, Violet, and I spent the morning on a two-hour flight around the surrounding area, with one extra tagalong - Xaden.

The constant dick comparing between him and Dain slowly got on my nerves.

After the two-hour flight we had an hour for ourselves, and Liam decided he wanted to take a nap. With me of course.

Now we sat at the wooden table that ran the length of the briefing room. "Consider this your Battle Brief," Mira continued, side-eyeing Ridoc as he scrambled back into his chair. "This morning was about a quarter of the patrol we'd regularly fly, so normally we'd just be getting back about now and reporting our findings to the commander. But for the sake of killing time, since we're in this room as the reaction flight for this afternoon, let's pretend we'd come across a newly fortified enemy outpost crossing out border" - she turned to the map and stuck a pin with a small crimson flag near none of the peaks about two miles from the Cygnisen borderline - "here."

"We're supposed to pretend it just popped up overnight?" Emery asked, openly skeptical.

"For the sake of argument, third-year." Mira narrowed her eyes on him, and he sat up a little straighter.

"I like this game," another one of the Montserrat riders said from the end of the table, lacing his fingers behind his neck.

"What would your objective be?" Mira glanced around the table, noticeably skipping Xaden. She bet-ter not have anything against rebellion kids. "Aetos?" Dain startled from where he was glowering across the table at Xaden and turned to face the map.

"What type of fortification are there? Are we talking a haphazard wooden structure? Or something more substantial?"

"Like they had time to build a fortress overnight," Ridoc muttered. I ignored them for the next minute, instead focusing on Liam's and mine interlaced hands. I had taken off my gloves under the table and held his hand. Gently brushing over his smaller one, he sent me a unnoticeable smile from beside me. Liam's hand with the rebellion relic laid on the table and the relic was slightly exposed. When he asked something, Mira's eyes shot to him and then down to his relic. I didn't like the way she was looking at it.

With a small motion of my left hand which didn't hold Liam's and lay on the table, a small black dagger shot out of my sleeve and into my now again gloved hand. It happened so fast that no one noticed anything but when I turned my hand slightly, the light from one window reflected directly into Mira's eyes, which shot to me. She gulped visible and answered Liam's question. I got back to petting Liam's hand.

A "Good job remaining professional, Aetos." made me look up again. One of the riders down the table whistled low. "Do you boys just want to whip it out and measure? It would be faster."