CHAPTER 29 Torj
CHAPTER 29
Torj
‘Magical afflictions as byproducts of arcane warfare linger in the scar tissue and defy conventional healing methods’
– A History of Magically Inflicted Injuries
H IS CHARGE WAS not happy, and frankly, nor was he. A precaution , Audra had assured him.
‘Precaution my arse,’ he muttered as he performed his usual sweep of Wren’s rooms. According to her, nothing had been taken, but she looked shaken, her gaze flitting to her desk where a bundle of papers were stacked.
‘You’re sure nothing’s missing?’ he pressed for the third time.
‘ Yes ,’ she replied, exasperated.
‘You’re lying.’
‘I’m not.’
Gods, why did she have to fight him on everything? He stared her down, wondering who would crack first.
She did.
‘They didn’t take anything, I swear it,’ she told him. ‘But my notes on the sample Farissa gave me were disturbed. And...’
Her gaze fell to the wooden box on her windowsill.
‘And?’ he pressed.
‘The lid wasn’t on right...I might have left it like that myself.’
‘But you don’t think you did?’
Wren shook her head.
Torj strode across the room and opened the box, peering inside. His stomach lurched as his fingers closed around a familiar pendant...The one that boasted the family sigil of Edmund Riverton.
‘Tell me these aren’t what I think they are,’ he murmured in disbelief, his eyes roaming over the other damning trophies concealed within.
‘They’re not what you think they are,’ Wren replied flatly.
Eyes narrowing, Torj dropped the necklace back into the box as though burned. ‘Liar.’
Wren closed the gap between them and snapped the lid shut. ‘Mind your own business.’
‘What don’t you understand? Your business is my business now.’ He sighed. ‘I need you to give me your word.’
‘What’s the word of a liar worth, Bear Slayer?’
‘Embervale,’ he warned. ‘I need you to promise me that you won’t mark any more names off your ledger. Not while you’re in my charge.’
To his frustration, she scoffed. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘Because,’ he bit back, ‘it’s not just their lives at stake here. Your rooms were just broken into. A royal was attacked.’
‘One royal.’
‘An attack on one is an attack on all.’
‘I disagree.’
Torj threw his hands up. ‘For fuck’s sake, Embervale!’ A beat later, he gathered his composure and folded his arms over his chest. ‘Both Cal and I will escort you to your classes today. He’s still waiting for his lecturer to arrive, anyway. And I’ll speak to the High Chancellor about getting a guard stationed outside your door, even when you’re not here.’
Wren opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off.
‘It’s not up for debate.’
The nagging sensation followed Torj all day as he escorted Wren across the academy. She attended various lessons and carried out several tasks that her male teammate unhappily dubbed ‘novice grunt work.’
Torj marvelled from afar at how seriously she took her studies, at how she didn’t hesitate to answer a question when asked. Even with his limited knowledge of alchemy, he could tell Wren was quickly becoming revered among her peers. The only one who seemed remotely in the same league was that teammate, Zavier, who ran his fingers through his thick dark hair and thought himself far too dignified for Torj’s liking.
At last, when evening fell and Wren dismissed the idea of eating in the dining hall with the rest of her cohort, they returned to their rooms. Pleased to find the guard he’d requested stationed at Wren’s door, Torj dutifully carried out his security checks while Wren waited, her foot bouncing impatiently.
No sooner than he’d finished was he pushed towards the adjoining door, which closed promptly behind him. A scraping noise sounded from the other side, and he was amused to learn Wren was jamming a chair under the handle of the door, as though that would somehow prevent him from getting in if he needed to.
Torj gave her an hour. An hour of privacy to work on whatever ghastly poison or experiment she intended to inflict upon the world next before he strode back into her quarters through the bathing chamber with a steaming bowl he’d ordered from the kitchens and the fresh bread Branwell had given him.
‘Eat,’ he commanded.
She looked up from her mortar and pestle with glassy eyes. ‘Don’t you ever knock? It’s when you close your fist and strike it against the door.’
He slid the bowl and bread onto the bench beside her, pushing bottles of meticulously labelled potions out of the way, wondering if he was being paranoid or if he could, in fact, smell a faint tang of blood in the air. ‘My fists are usually only closed when I’m hitting people.’
‘Shocking.’
It didn’t escape his notice that she was trying to push a piece of parchment underneath a stack of books, hiding something.
‘What’s that?’ he demanded, reaching across her.
She batted his hand away. ‘Nothing.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that—’
‘You’ll be the judge of nothing , Bear Slayer. You might have been assigned to protect me from bodily harm, but you have no right to my private possessions or correspondence.’
For a moment, he was blindsided by the radiance of her indignation. She’d wiped the smudges of dirt from her face, and tendrils of her bronze hair had escaped the pin spearing through the knot at the top of her head. He stared until his gaze snagged on a glimmer of silver on the workbench.
It was the set of scissors he’d given her in the lead-up to the shadow war, after she’d requested them for her fellow alchemists in a meeting. ‘You kept them,’ he ventured softly.
She raised an arched brow. ‘You think I’d discard a perfectly good pair of secateurs?’
Torj fought the urge to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Instead, he gave her the smirk he knew enraged her to no end. ‘I think you like to be reminded of me.’
Wren snorted. ‘I’m not that sentimental.’
‘That’s right,’ he replied. ‘You’re all sharp edges and slicing words these days, aren’t you, Embervale?’
She turned back to her work. ‘As opposed to you, who clobbers people with your hammer and threatens innocent students in the halls?’
‘Exactly.’ Torj pointed to the steaming bowl of stew. ‘Eat.’
He left her once more to her tinctures and poisons.
Torj knew it was only a matter of time until she tried to slip past him. Her restlessness had been growing by the day; he could almost feel it vibrating in his own chest, tracing the line of scars there. He wondered if the break-in had only served to fuel her rebellious streak.
With one of the books Farissa had recommended for company, he waited, patiently. Arcane Ailments: Understanding Magical Maladies was a brick of a book, and if he hadn’t potentially been going mad already, the introduction alone might have been enough to drive him to insanity. He skimmed over several passages, the words blurring together as that familiar sense of dread set in...
In this chapter, we explore the subtle yet profound impacts of magical injuries, shedding light on the hidden toll they exact on those unfortunate enough to fall victim to them .
Torj rubbed his sternum as he read on.
Arcane burns, whether inflicted by fire, lightning, or enchanted weapons, present unique challenges in the realm of healing. Traditional salves and remedies often fall short when confronted with the volatile nature of magical fire—
He stopped reading as he heard the unmistakable sound of the guard stationed outside Wren’s door dropping to the ground. The fall had been cushioned by something, but not so well that it was silenced completely.
Wren had drugged the poor bastard, just as Torj had anticipated, and she was currently sneaking out of her rooms, just as he’d known she would.
The Embervale sisters had never been ones for the rules, but he couldn’t help the anger surging through him. It had only been this morning they’d found her door ajar, her rooms rifled through. Though he’d asked around, no one had seen anything. There was no suspect. Which meant she was knowingly putting herself at risk, not to mention putting his job on the line yet again.
Thoroughly aggravated now, he left his room and followed her.
Wren had pulled a dark cloak over her shoulders and a hood up over her hair, but her belt of horrors still clinked as she moved swiftly through the slumbering campus, alerting anyone to her movements. To Torj’s dismay, she didn’t look back once. She didn’t seem to sense him on her tail, nor did she take precautionary measures when rounding corners. Anyone could attack her. Anyone could snatch her away. She had to know what was at risk.
He stepped into place beside her. ‘What did I tell you about being aware of your surroundings?’
To his surprise, she didn’t jump, didn’t so much as flinch.
‘You knew I was following you,’ he said.
Wren didn’t look at him. ‘You’re predictable, Bear Slayer.’
‘I could say the same for you. Sneaking out without your bodyguard? I basically had it timed down to the second.’
Wren gave a dark laugh, not slowing her pace. ‘You think you know me?’
‘Better than most.’
‘I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?’
Irritation flared, and he grabbed her arm, drawing her to a stop. ‘This isn’t a game, Embervale.’
‘Who said I was playing?’ Wren replied.
Gods, he wanted to shake her by the shoulders, wanted to yell that he hated this as much as she did. Were it up to him, he’d be on the other side of the damn world by now.
Footsteps sounded nearby, and without thinking, he pulled her into a nearby alcove, shielding her from view. He had her front pressed to the cold stone, his chest flush with the curve of her spine, his nose nearly grazing the bare nape of her neck as he covered her body with his.
And she let him.
Momentarily startled, he froze in place. Normally, he’d expect her to be kicking and clawing at him. But beneath him, her breathing hitched – he felt it in the shift of her torso. This close, the scent of her was utterly intoxicating. His own heart rate kicked up a notch, his cock hardening against his will, straining against his leathers despite all his frustration.
‘You’re protecting me from the groundskeepers now?’ Wren murmured, though there was a sultriness to her voice.
Torj didn’t budge. ‘I’m protecting you from anyone and everyone.’ He spotted a piece of gauze tied to the crook of her elbow, a dot of crimson stark against the white. ‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It’s not nothing.’
Wren wriggled then, and all thoughts emptied from his head. She squirmed again, just enough that she must have felt the bulge of his growing erection above the swell of her backside.
She froze, her lips parting in surprise.
Torj eased back ever so slightly, deciding that to forge on was the best course of action. ‘If there’s somewhere you need to go, I’ll take you there myself.’
‘No, thank you,’ she said coolly. ‘I’m after a little discretion this evening.’
‘I can be discreet.’
A choked laugh bubbled from her lips as she gestured vaguely to the size of him. ‘Bear Slayer, there’s nothing discreet about you. Now let me go. You’ve earned yourself a night off.’
‘For fuck’s sake.’ The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. ‘You’re killing me, Embervale.’
‘Here I was thinking I was the one being pinned to a wall by a Warsword.’
‘Somehow I doubt you’d be in this position if it wasn’t where you wanted to be.’
Now, her body was practically humming beneath his. He could feel that storm raging within her, coaxing whatever magic lingered within him to rise to the surface.
‘Are you ever going to listen to me, Embers?’ He meant to pose it as a real question, but it came out low and gravelly, like a challenge.
Wren turned beneath him, so that they were face to face. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes hooded, and as her eyes dipped between them, over every point of contact, she licked her lips.
‘But I have been listening, Bear Slayer,’ she replied.
‘Is that so?’
Torj bit back a moan as she deliberately ground against him, his hardness undeniable now. She was no mere alchemist; she was a vixen , and she knew exactly what she was doing to him. Wren reached up, as though she meant to start unbuttoning his shirt here and now. Torj anticipated that first touch with his breath held, desire coursing through him like an electric current.
But it was her hairpin she sought, slipping it from the tumble of bronze atop her head, allowing her tresses to fall, framing her face, softening her hard expression. Her hungry gaze dropped to his mouth.
Still braced over her, Torj didn’t move, teetering on the very edge of control as longing unlike anything he’d ever known surged through him. He had thought of this moment countless times. Had dreamed of it, even when he’d tried so hard to cast her from his mind...Wren was going to kiss him , after all this time—
‘ You should be aware of your surroundings,’ she said at last, something tapping against the side of his neck, so lightly he wondered if he’d imagined it.
Until he saw Wren withdrawing her hairpin.
Spots swam in his vision and his legs buckled. ‘You...’
Wren gave a wicked smile. ‘Me.’
And everything went black.