22. Trust is a fickle, fragile beast #2
Slowly, I lifted my gaze to meet Kieran’s. He studied me with that one scrutinizing green eye, and I knew exactly what he saw looking back at him: my pupils blown wide, my gaze a little unfocused.
A look of disappointment flitted across his face quickly, and he gripped my wrist tighter. “Where is it?” His attention darted around my room.
I licked my lips and lied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
If looks could kill, I’d finally have some fucking peace with the glare he shot at me. He released me, though, and stalked away, leaving me to rub my reddening wrist as he strode towards the desk across the room.
The desk I’d never once used.
It gave me precious time to back up towards my vanity, where my satchel of Frost lay on its surface. I watched as he rifled through the desk first, then turned his attention to an end table, inching myself backwards a half step at a time, praying he’d turn his attention to the wardrobes next.
But he didn’t.
His attention snapped over, his head inclined ever so slightly.
Mist swirled around him, and I spun on my heels, deluded that I had a chance of beating him.
I’d launched myself all of a couple of steps towards the vanity before he re-materialized in a swarm of darkness in front of me.
He swept the pouch and its contents into his hand, sending powder kicking up into the air, and charged straight towards the bathroom.
My stomach plummeted.
“Kieran,” I warned in a panicked hiss as I scrambled to catch up with him. A feat, with how all the movement was making my head swim again. “Kieran! Whatever you think you’re going to do with that, do not.”
He came to such an abrupt stop in the doorway, I almost slammed into him.
“One,” he said deliberately. “That is not my name anymore, so stop saying it. And two, what the fuck happened to you, Nora?” He turned to face me with the satchel in his hand and gave it a look of revulsion. “Frost? Really? I thought you were far better than such things.”
I fixed him with an incredulous look. “You thought me better? Fuck. You. Don’t pretend like you don’t have vices of your own, high mage. The liquor is coming out of your pores.”
There was the slightest chance I’d spat his title with more anger than I thought I had left in me.
But if he didn’t want me to call him by his goddess-given name, the only name I truly knew him by, if he thought he could act high and mighty, I had news for him.
Slowly, he shook his head, white tendrils of hair settling over his eye patch, and huffed a beat of humorless laughter.
His next movements happened so fucking quickly.
One moment, he was inches in front of me; the next, he was at the sink, dumping my satchel of powder into it and turning on the water.
My eyes widened, and my feet moved faster than my body was ready for, sending me stumbling after him, as if I had any chance of recovering what he’d washed away.
I tried to grab the pouch from him, I really fucking did, but he tossed it into the tub and it ignited in a small burst of nytefire, filling the bathroom with an acrid scent.
“What the fuck was that for?” I shouted, but Jasper just shook his head at me, as if I was a child who’d disappointed him immeasurably.
That did nothing to quell the uneasy wave of anger budding inside me. I slammed my hand into his chest, ready to unleash a slew of unsavory words at him, but my oldest friend and first traitor wrapped his arm around me and held me firmly against him.
“I don’t care how determined you were to destroy yourself in Odessa,” he said, far too calmly. “It will not happen here, Nor.”
And with that term of endearment I hated hearing come out of his mouth, mist picked up around us, and my world shuddered into darkness.
Apparently, Jasper had stepped us to the stadium. Not that I’d know, having spent the last twenty minutes on my knees with my head in a plant pot, unaware of which direction the sky was.
He’d never had such infuriating audacity. When Jasper was Kieran, he’d been soft-spoken, studious, and as far from confrontational as they came. He kept his thoughts and opinions to himself with such intensity that sometimes, I was afraid it was because he didn’t have any.
“It’ll subside soon, I promise,” he said from somewhere nearby, clearly exasperated.
As if he hadn’t caused this entire fucking mess. As if he hadn’t barged into my room, ruined the sliver of peace I’d finally found, and made me sick beyond my wildest imagination.
“You’ve said that—” retch, “three—” gag, “times.” There wasn’t even anything left in my stomach—seeing as it had been empty to begin with—and my throat was on fire.
Jasper let out a bone-deep sigh. “Just…stay there, alright? I’ll be right back.”
I’d have laughed if I hadn’t started retching again. As if I could do anything other than grip that pot like my life depended on it, trying to gulp down lungfuls of old, earth-scented air.
I wasn’t sure how long exactly he was gone for, but it was long enough that the aftereffects of being pulled through the Between did finally subside enough for me to sink back against the stone wall with an absolutely defeated groan.
Closing my eyes was completely out of the question, though.
Even blinking set everything tilting on its axis for a moment.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that everything around me looked much like the Keep did, but I had sworn that the stadium was supposed to be a decent distance away from the walls.
Dark stone buildings, cloying vines, and gnarled trees stretched as far as I could see in any direction, including upward.
I tried to tip my head to take in the building that sprawled up above me, but that triggered a knot in my stomach I had no interest in provoking any further.
“Drink this.”
I let out a startled squeal as Jasper materialized beside me, crouched with an open waterskin outstretched in his hand.
“You’ll feel much better, trust me.”
“Trust you?” I wheezed before a cough rattled my lungs. “I’ll—” cough, “pass—” hack, “—thanks.”
Jasper rolled his eye and sighed. “Trust Eilir, then, who taught me how to make this when I couldn’t stop getting sick every time I stepped.”
I contemplated his offering for another moment before I snatched it and gave the opening a sniff. “Same as what you and Maksym got Gallan to drug me with in the cellblocks, or…?”
The snarky component of my nature wasn’t always so at the forefront, but I was having a damned hard time keeping any of it at bay.
The only thing that stood a chance of holding it back was bringing the waterskin to my lips and taking a few cautious sips.
Thankfully, the contents didn’t taste like much other than water, though I felt my stomach settle immediately.
“We didn’t drug you.” His mouth twisted into a tense line. “But yes, actually, it is. And I suppose I’ll have to make you more later today, when all that Frost works its way out of your system. Again.”
I thrust the empty skin back at him, sending water droplets scattering. “Fuck. Off.”
“What were you thinking, Enora?”
I braved closing my eyes to avoid the disappointment that settled back on his face.
“Frost? It’s fucking dangerous, you know that, right? Do you even remember how sick you were when you woke up? It was your body trying to purge all the shit you’ve been—”
“Why did you bring me here, Jasper?” He had no right to pass any judgment on the decisions I’d made on any aspect of my life since the moment he left it, and I refused to hear it anymore. “I could really use a few hours of sleep.”
Kieran sighed, gripping my arm a moment later and pulling me upright. “You need to learn about the stadium, and the sooner you get comfortable with it, the better.”
Despite my slightly hazy vision, I stared at him. “Comfortable with it? It’s a stadium, is it not? I hate to be the one to educate you on this, old friend, but I’m a guard. I’ve taken part in more games than I can count.”
There was that look again, like I was a child who’d said something stupid but endearing.
“Tell me then: how many stadiums have you competed in that are alive, hmm?” At my blank stare, he chuckled.
“I thought so. Things are different here, Nor. The stadium is rife with magic, and it is formidable. We’re able to hold all the Agōn Ferr here because it can be bent to Maksym’s will, just like all Kings of Grimmoria before him.
Obstacles, environments, fauna. It has the memories of thousands of years of Agōn Ferr in its walls, and it has a mind of its own sometimes, so you need to be prepared. ”
The more I learned about Grimmoria, the more I wasn’t sure if I was in awe of the way magic suffused the land, or if I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Okay, the stadium is alive,” I said slowly as I took a cautious glance at the building behind us. It looked very much not alive, leaving me with a lengthy list of unsettling questions about the rest of the buildings around the Keep. “And I needed to get familiar with it right this very moment?”
“No,” he sighed. “I…can’t coax it. But if you won’t talk to me, Nor, we’re going to have to work through things another way.”
My eyebrows climbed, and I waited for him to elaborate.
“Fight me,” he added. “However angry you are with me, we’ll sort through it in there. I’ll bear the brunt of whatever you have to throw at me.”
“I’m tired—”
My argument died on the tip of my tongue when Kieran reached into the thin fucking air and pulled out two quarterstaffs, one after the other.
He thrust one at me before I even had a chance to quarrel with him.
“We’ll come back tomorrow, and every damned day after.
However long we need for you to realize I am not your enemy here. I have never been.”