Chapter 19
In the clamor and the panic that followed the dragon’s escape, éadha’s collapse went almost unnoticed.
It was several days before she regained consciousness.
When she finally woke, she just lay still, staring at the ceiling, floating on a soft cloud of exhaustion.
Just to have it stop, even for a little while, the wheel she’d bound herself to that day so long ago when she stepped in to help her friend.
A small sound to her right made her realize she wasn’t alone.
With an effort she managed to turn her head and saw Ionáin asleep in an armchair by her bed.
His hair was growing out, she thought. It was starting to look more like his old tangled mop, and his face in sleep was soft and relaxed.
So different, she thought, from the aloof, distant figure who strode about the halls of First House with the other apprentices.
More like the Ionáin she’d grown up with in Ailm’s Keep.
Her heart twisted inside her with regret and longing.
How much she’d give to be there with him now.
To go back to their old life, far, far away from the Masters.
As she watched, he stirred, his eyes coming open then widening as he saw she was awake.
“Hey,” he said softly, rising from his chair and coming to crouch down beside her bed, covering her hand with his. “Welcome back. You gave us all a fright. How do you feel?”
She tried to answer, but her voice was still almost gone; it took several goes for her to manage a hoarse “I’m all right.”
Ionáin’s face darkened as he watched her struggle to speak, his brows drawing together and his eyes hardening into anger. “They’ve gone too far this time,” he said, rising to his feet, pacing across the small space. “I can’t let her keep treating you like this.”
éadha tried to shush him, tell him it wasn’t Ailbhe’s bullying this time, but the effort it was taking her to say anything only upset him more.
“This is insanity, you being hurt because of me. Senan’s told me stories about how far Keeper girls will go to eliminate someone if they think they’re a rival, but…
” He shook his head from side to side slowly.
“This place. I thought I knew what we were coming into. The status games, the coupling—I thought I knew.” He looked across at her then, and there was a new expression in his eyes, one she hadn’t seen before, almost one of grief.
“But it’s more than that too. There’s a darkness… ”
éadha’s heart went cold. What had he learned? But before Ionáin could say anything else, a nurse came bustling in and saw him standing there. Immediately she stepped in.
“My lord, please. The Master Healer was very clear; the patient needs to sleep. It’s only a couple of days until she’s to keep for Lord Senan in the autumn trials.”
Her tone was polite but unyielding, and after a moment Ionáin nodded once, briefly. He leaned down to éadha and gave her hand one last quick squeeze, his eyes suddenly blazing with determination as he murmured, “I will fix this.”
A moment later he was gone. The nurse fussed about for a few minutes, straightening her sheets and checking for fever before leaving éadha alone once more.
The next morning when she woke, she felt more like herself.
With an effort she pushed herself upright, then shakily swung her legs off the bed and onto the floor.
From beyond the closed door, she could hear someone moving about.
Levering herself upright, she shuffled to the door.
She was dressed in a thin white infirmary gown that reached down to her knees, the cotton brushing against her legs as she moved.
Leaning against the doorframe, she peered out, expecting to see the nurse again.
Instead, a familiar dark-haired figure stood with his back to her in an alcove opposite her room.
Inside the alcove was a wooden counter currently strewn with bunches of dried herbs.
From where she stood she caught the tang of fennel and the bite of poppyseed.
Gry was stripped to his training vest and bent over, absorbed in grinding seeds into a paste with a pestle and mortar, the muscles in his arm jumping as he rhythmically ground the fine shells.
She stared at him without saying anything, knowing she didn’t need to for him to sense her standing there.
Sure enough, after a moment he laid down the pestle and without turning around said, “Not dead then?”
“Not dead,” she replied, her voice still hoarse but at least audible now.
He turned to face her, leaning back against the counter as he folded his arms and looked her up and down.
She was suddenly intensely conscious of just how thin her gown was as his eyes came to rest on hers. “How are you here?” she said abruptly.
Gry looked at her, the ghost of a laugh in his eyes as he said, “Can’t a chap take an interest in herbs without people reading things into it?”
“So not keeping an eye on me?” she said, her mouth twitching.
“Fishing again, Ailm?” Gry said. “This secret promise of yours you insist on keeping. It’s proving expensive, hmm?”
“It wasn’t that,” said éadha, slowly shaking her head. “Not this time.”
“Well, whatever it was, it almost killed you, éadha,” said Gry, frustration creeping into his voice as he looked at her. “Just…can you stop spending yourself so lightly?”
“Some things are worth spending yourself for,” said éadha quietly, and in her mind’s eye she pictured again the moment when the young dragon burned its way out of the cage and sprang into the night sky. With a growl, Gry pushed himself away from the counter and came to stand in front of her.
“Not to the point of almost dying, they’re not. When I heard the healers couldn’t wake you, I almost…” And he turned away, one hand raised, as if he wanted to take hold of her but knew he couldn’t, that she was still too fragile. “I need you here. I need you to not be dead. Do you hear me?”
“Gry—”
“No. If you’re going to almost die, you can’t expect me to stand here and say nothing. I know he got there first. I know that. If I could, I’d go back in time to be the one you met first.”
“You’d have to go back pretty far,” said éadha faintly, a traitorous heat beginning to rise through her body at the ferocity in those gold-flecked eyes, the way he was standing over her, as if only a superhuman effort was stopping him from catching her up in his arms.
“Close your eyes,” he said abruptly. “Will you do that for me?”
And éadha knew she should say no, that she should step back into her room and close the door before this, whatever it was, went too far.
Before she did something she knew she shouldn’t.
But even as she whispered, “No,” her eyelids flickered closed, as if she couldn’t help herself, couldn’t stop herself from responding to the question in his voice because it was a question she also needed to know the answer to.
“Now feel” came the quiet command, and it was like he’d set a match to her soul.
With her eyes closed, her power took over, reaching out without conscious thought to the young man standing facing her.
As she did, she felt him step in closer.
There was a sensation of something falling away, and then it shone out, there, so white and blinding in front of her, the molten core of Gry’s power as he released his thought-wall and stood before her, his whole self.
Whole and completely vulnerable. Her breathing grew shallow as she took in the glory of it and felt her own power respond instinctively, massively, from deep inside, her silver strength beginning to pound at her own thought-wall, as if it wanted to smash it all down and reach across it.
To finally touch him, the power of him. Any minute now, she thought, she was going to lose control; her power was going to take over and she wanted it to.
To lose herself in this feeling that was rising up inside her like a force wave. To be taken over.
As if from a great distance, a voice sounded, faint but insistent.
It was her nurse, speaking to someone else at the foot of the stairs leading up to the sick bays.
The next moment there was the sound of her feet on the stone stairs, echoing up into the first-floor hall where the two of them stood, lost in each other.
éadha’s eyes flew open at the same time as Gry’s, and his power snapped out, smothered in an instant.
Like someone being released from a spell, éadha swayed a little where she stood as her body became her own once more, no longer the slave of her power.
With one last glance Gry turned away, back to the counter again.
éadha stepped back into her room and closed the door just as the nurse reached the top of the stairs.