Chapter 24 #2
A few quick strides, and Khayrivven was close enough for her to touch him, but she stepped out of his way, not trusting herself with the proximity.
No answers, no touch. No answers, no kiss.
No answers… Well, she didn’t need to continue spinning that thought because she wouldn’t allow herself to end up in bed with him until this matter was solved.
Khayrivven’s eyes flashed a smoky gray as he reached for the door, and the moment it was open, he stood aside, mouth open as if words had built on his tongue. Words he wasn’t ready to speak—or didn’t allow himself. Lory didn’t care. She’d done all right without him before; she’d do the same now.
But as she passed by him, his scent hit her nose—a surge of embers and sage and the leather of the armor he’d stripped not even an hour ago—and her knees nearly buckled.
How could walking away from someone feel so wrong when self-preservation demanded she run?
Lory made it down the hallway in one piece, even when her chest threatened to splinter at every pace, the thin thread originating in her heart unspooling like a wordless connection she hadn’t been aware of before.
No, Lory didn’t hate him. She didn’t even want to. But now, her ego was wounded more than her heart. That was simply pumping her fire-laced blood like it had gained some new strength.
How she’d look at him without re-living the past hour in her head, she couldn’t tell. After all, she would need to work with him, train with him, go on missions with him, as her rank at Ashthorn demanded.
“Forgotten how to get to your room?”
At the corner of the stairwell, Lory almost ran into Hadrian, who wasn’t entirely stable on his feet himself. He braced an arm on the wall, wincing as he shifted his weight.
“Exercise injury, or did Anees hit you over the head for trying to manipulate her emotions again?”
“Shhh—this isn’t common knowledge. Are you inclined to let everyone know what I’m capable of?”
Lory put a hand on her hip. She’d had enough for today. “Worried no one will sleep with you if you don’t use your abilities?”
At that, Hadrian barked an unusually untamed laugh. “Please. Have you looked at me?”
A quick gaze up and down the phantom’s body, and Lory shook her head. “To each their own.”
She didn’t bother to wait for his response, merely stepping around him and following the length of the hallway until she ended up in the Medica quarters once more, right on Jarek’s threshold.
The new thornling sat propped up against the wall behind his cot, his nose buried in a book. On the nightstand, a bottle of the same wine Lory had just left in Khayrivven’s bedroom stood uncorked, but no glass to pour into.
“What brings you down here in the middle of the night?”
For the second time within a span of minutes, Lory almost jumped out of her skin.
“Well, Miss Vednis?” Princeton Nahrit, the Medica Hand, bestowed an inquisitive gaze at her from a few paces down the hallway. In his arms, he was carrying a pile of books, and a flask containing some smoky tincture was enjoying the honor of being throttled by his long, bony fingers.
“Hand Nahrit,” Lory inclined her head, grappling for an excuse before figuring out she neither had one, nor did she need one.
No one had forbidden her to leave her quarters after a certain time—not that it was smart for her, walking the hallways of the Ward alone in the dark. “I didn’t feel like going to bed.”
The hand nodded knowingly. “Neither did I.” With his full hands, he waved her over.
A glance at Jarek, still focused on the book in front of him, and Lory withdrew from the threshold, marching down the hallway after the Medica Hand.
Nahrit led her to his office, where he set down the flask first, then the books, on a sideboard already overflowing with scrolls and vials, books and maps.
“Sit, Miss Vednis.”
There wasn’t really an option for her to say no, so she did as she was told and placed her backside in the carved chair, placing her hands on the armrests and studying the bookshelves behind the desk, filled to the ceiling with tome after tome.
She could have liked it here. In a different life, perhaps, she would have studied here, not as a criminal forced to serve her sentence. She might have adopted Medica as her specialization, and she’d have helped people—magic wielders and regular people all the same.
A dark cloud gathered above her head at the thought of the career track that had been chosen for her instead.
“It has come to my attention, Miss Vednis, that you have been spending a lot of time with Thornling Grivor today.” His gaze wandered to the wall on his left, the direction of Jarek’s room, as he sat heavily in the cushioned chair—perhaps the only cushioned chair in all of Ashthorn. “Is there anything I should know?”
That it’s none of your business who I visit and how often, she wanted to say, but that would only get her killed … or would it?
His black eyes didn’t stray from her face as she wrangled an appropriate answer from herself, and he looked significantly older than his almost sixty years, when his forehead wrinkled in a stern expression. “Nothing, sir.”
“Are you sure?” Nahrit folded his hands on the edge of the table, waiting.
“It seems there has been a lot of coming and going in Thornling Grivor’s room.
A cluster of unusual attention for someone who should have died during trials …
according to Ashthorn protocol,” he amended, and something in the way he said it told Lory he didn’t fully agree.
“He said he’ll be completely fine by tomorrow,” she repeated what Jarek had said, but that was only part of her musings.
Nahrit inclined his head, that stern look sticky on his features. “He will.”
And I? Will I be punished for helping him? She’d completely forgotten about it the moment Khayrivven had snuck up on her in front of his room, and the worry caught up with her again now, as she faced one of Ashthorn’s most respected hands.
“Don’t you think someone would have already thrown you in the dungeons had that been the case?”
Or put a knife through my throat, Lory amended in her mind. Her mind—
An exhale of shock hollowed out Lory’s lungs as she realized Nahrit had responded to her thoughts rather than her words.
Oh my fucking gods.
“You could say so.” A mischievous grin threatened to spread on the hand’s mouth, the groove between his brows smoothing over.