47. Henry #2
“Oh, I know she will. It’s a custom set of blades. Can I show you?”
Gaven glances up at the house.
“She’s just reading,” I reassure him. “She won’t try to sneak out until dark. This will only take a few minutes.”
He waves a hand and palms the dagger at his hip, an anxious habit of his. “Lead the way.”
I start down the gravel path toward the armory at an easy pace with his steady footsteps close behind me. If I rush too much, it will set him off.
Instead of going into the armory, I veer off behind it.
Gaven hesitates a step. “They’re not in the armory?”
“This isn’t the kind of gift I want people to know she has.
” I take a step closer and lower my voice.
“There are ceremonial things I will give her for everyone else. But these blades are for her to defend herself from people who might not be expecting her to be able to. I know you’ve taught her a lot.
I want to be sure I’ve picked something she can work with. ”
I don’t wait to see if that satisfies him. I just keep walking around the building until finally we reach the holding cells. He doesn’t say anything, but I can read his discomfort as we approach the building.
“No Drained in here this time. No one has been in here since that night, so I figure it was a good place to hide them for now and probably the one place in the whole fort where I’m certain she won’t go looking for something.”
Gaven huffs a laugh. “Pray to the Divine she’s learned her lesson about poking around this building.”
I unlock the heavy metal door, and it groans open. Bryce and Carter aren’t here yet, but they will be soon.
The air inside the building is stale and musty. Afternoon light pours in through the windows on the second floor, highlighting swirling dust motes. He steps past me into the room, his focus entirely on the spot where he killed the Drained the other night.
I don’t know how he knows. Maybe it’s some old fighter’s instinct or just the finely tuned intuition of a man who has been vigilant for so long, but the second I close the door behind Gaven, he spins on me. He draws his dagger, and I feel the prickle of him summoning his magic.
His face morphs from confusion to frustration as he meets my eye.
“Your magic won’t work on me,” I say. “I’m not a danger to Harlow. I’m only a danger to you.”
This is not how I wanted to do this. I know better than to stand between a bodyguard and their charge.
I wanted to incapacitate him with the poison blades I had made for Harlow, so we could question him, but that plan is out the window.
Now he’s not just fighting for his life. He thinks he’s fighting for hers, too.
Gaven comes at me hard, and he’s better than I expected. I’ve never seen a man his age move with such lethal precision. A sharp sting in my bicep focuses my attention. I didn’t even realize he had two blades until he cut me with that one. Divine know what else he has on him.
If I were anyone else, even a Breeder, his skill and efficiency would be enough. But I have met death many times before and won’t meet it again, at least not from anything in this fight. Not when use of his holy fire requires a threat to Harlow.
I’m younger, faster, and my senses are more attuned than Gaven’s, but it’s the best fight I’ve had in a long time.
It takes almost twenty minutes for me to catch him with a blade between his ribs.
He stumbles back a step, blood pouring from the wound.
He takes a step, but his leg buckles and he goes down on one knee.
I’m going to have to heal him enough to get information, but this will at least slow him down.
“Had enough for now?” I ask.
“That’s a death blow,” he says, panting.
There’s both shock and resignation in his eyes. His salt-and-pepper hair is plastered to his forehead and his usually perfectly pressed shirt, soaked with sweat and blood, sticks to his skin.
“Not for a healer.”
I step forward and rip the blades from his stunned hands, tossing them aside.
Then I press my hand to his side and summon my healing magic.
It prickles at the edge of my blood-slicked palm, but when I try to weave it into the wound like I have for so many people before, nothing happens.
It hovers just over his skin, never quite settling in.
“It won’t work,” he laughs, spitting blood onto the dirt.
“What won’t?”
“Your magic.”
Dread spreads through my blood. “Why?”
“It’s the reason I was hired,” Gaven says. “Surely you looked at me and wondered why Harrick would let me protect her when my only blessing is borrowed.”
My mouth goes dry, my stomach bottoming out at the realization of how badly I’ve miscalculated.
“If you were planning to torture me for information, boy, you’ll be disappointed,” Gaven says. “You won’t be able to magically patch me up and break me down again. I’m impervious to Divine blessings.”
This is why Gaven Pomeroy protects the youngest Carrenwell daughter.
He has no Divine gifts, only the borrowed use of holy fire to protect his charge.
What he does have is the extremely rare talent of being impervious to Divine magic.
I didn’t even know it was possible until now.
I want to deny it, but it makes so much sense.
I curse and run to the cabinets on the far side of the room in search of something to stop the bleeding. The last cabinet on the right has some old linen sheets, and I race back to Gaven with them. He’s already on the floor. One hand pressed to his side, his mouth moving in silent prayer.
Pressing the linen to his side, I meet his grave face.
“Why were you poking around the recovery room?” I ask.
Gaven winces, flashing bloody teeth. “It’s the only room I haven’t even been able to get a glimpse into. People come and go, but the security is tighter there than anywhere else in the house.”
This was not how this was supposed to go. While I’m sure Harlow knows a lot about the layout of her family estate, there are surely things that only the family bodyguards would know about what happens during an attack and where family members might be hidden if someone were hunting them.
Gaven grips my wrist hard. “For some reason beyond my comprehension, Harlow likes you. She’ll try to convince you she doesn’t care or have any hope, but she does.
She’s left white roses for her sister every week for years, even when she knew Rafe wouldn’t give them to her.
I know your goals with her aren’t altruistic, but she deserves better. ”
The guilt is a gut punch. I feel the anguish in his words. It’s hard to watch someone mourn their unrecognized potential and the people they love.
“Gaven, why is she here? Why did the Carrenwells agree to this?” I ask.
He’s started shaking, the cold from the blood loss setting in. “They’re afraid of your family and they wanted to find out what you wanted after all these years.”
I’m stunned he’s become so suddenly forthcoming after everything Harlow has told me about his loyalty to her father.
“Don’t look so shocked,” Gaven says. “My loyalty is to her. Not them. You might make your vows with your fingers crossed, but I don’t lie to the Divine.
If I make a vow to Vardek to protect someone, I mean it.
I have watched over her since the first moment her mother placed her in my arms when she was just a few days old.
Liza rarely came to the nursery. She was so busy with her older children, but I was always there.
I have watched her every day since, and I have kept my word to Vardek. ”
“Yes, when it’s convenient—when it doesn’t put you at odds with your employer,” I snap. “As I understand it, you’ve only been true to that vow in the last few months.”
Gaven’s eyes widen in shock. “She told you.”
“She told me.” There are a lot of things I can forgive a man for. I’ve wandered down many dark roads myself, but being assigned to protect a child and letting someone else abuse her is unforgivable.
Gaven rubs a hand over his face, leaving a smear of blood behind.
“When I was young, I didn’t know how to do my job when it was at odds with my employer.
I have never forgiven myself for that failure.
I see it every time she looks at me. When she was old enough to understand my role in her life, the first thing she learned about me was that I would always protect her—as long as the threat was from outside the family. ”
His brutal honesty is jarring. Though it’s been ever-present in my life, I forgot that death is so intimate.
“Why are you telling me all of this now?” I ask.
He looks away and heaves a shuddering sigh. “Because there is no other time to and there’s much to tell.” He winces. “There have been other children blessed by Vardek—new blessings of holy fire. Harrick killed every one of them.”
I stare at him in disbelief. For years, we thought we understood the depths of Harrick Carrenwell’s cruelty, but yet again we have underestimated him.
Even the nonbelievers of the fort and city wouldn’t dare to slay a Vardek-blessed child, but the leader of Lunameade has been doing it for years.
All to keep his people dependent on him.
“Does Harlow know?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I’m not supposed to know. He told me one night when he was ranting drunk. He must have forgotten about it or I wouldn’t be here.”
I can’t even begin to process this information, but Gaven slaps my arm.
“Whatever you’re doing with that magic—” He gasps. “You need to tell her.”
“I don’t?—”
He squeezes my arm. “Lie to yourself if you need to, but don’t waste your breath on a dead man. I know you’re more than you’ve let on. I may not see auras like she does, but I can sense it, and that feeling has the essence of a different Divine.”
“She knows,” I say.
He frowns. “If she knew, she wouldn’t get so close.”
I look down at the linen in my hand. It’s completely soaked in blood, as are the knees of my pants. Gaven has very little time.
He closes his eyes and swallows thickly. “Tell her I love her. I should have protected her much better than I did. I know she won’t forgive me for what happened six months ago, but I’m sorry anyway.”
“What happened six months ago?”
He presses his lips into a tight line but says nothing.
“Gaven, what’s the urgency?” I ask. “Why the urgency for the Carrenwells? Why did they agree to send her here so quickly?”
He blinks his eyes open. “Their well doesn’t work anymore.”
“Why?”
His head drops, and he loses consciousness for a moment. I slap him, and he startles awake.
“Why doesn’t their well work?” I ask.
Gaven shakes his head. “Don’t know. ”
“How do you know it doesn’t work?”
Gaven rasps something that sounds like “Madness.” He shudders with a great, rasping sigh, and his body goes still.
I stare at him in disbelief. One swift swipe of the blade and ten years of meticulous planning have fallen apart.