Chapter 10
Fenwood wasn’t an option for me that day. What if I lost control of myself in bed, as I had just done with Brigid, and killed my unlucky lover?
I laughed to myself at the thought, though it wasn’t funny. None of this was funny.
Getting to the Old Country from Rosewarren was easier now than it had ever been.
The Mist was pocked with holes, many of them patrolled by Roses, and many others stitched haphazardly back together by the beguilers among our ranks.
But those reinforcements would hold for only so long before the breach bells would ring again and we would have to start all over.
Until, of course, there was no Mist left to reinforce.
The entry point I chose that day was a thin patch of Mist two miles from the priory.
It wasn’t particularly dangerous since Rosewarren was so close; few Olden beings would take the risk.
The Mist here swirled with darkness, as if a great storm was brewing just beyond its shimmering veil.
Every few seconds, a violent flash of blue light illuminated the crisscross pattern of spells spanning the spot—a net of magical buttresses that kept this rift from getting worse.
Four Roses were on duty at the site. Gods only knew what they saw on my face, but it was enough to send them scurrying out of my way. They would probably report me to the Warden, but at the moment I didn’t care.
I cared only about finding something to fight. Something big, something I could hurt with abandon. Something that wouldn’t hesitate to hurt me.
But before I could enter the greenway’s twisting spellwork, a familiar cry pierced the air, and Freyda swooped down to block my path. She landed on my arm, making no attempt to be gentle with her talons, and glared up at me, shrieking.
I felt the curious gazes of the four nearby Roses upon me.
“Freyda,” I said sternly, ignoring them. “Leave me. Go to the aviary. Now.”
Freyda, of course, knew what I intended to do, and she didn’t budge, even though as my familiar she was meant to obey me, not the other way around.
I felt so desperate that I barely resisted the urge to shake her off me.
“Lady Mara!” a voice called out, followed by hurried footsteps through the grass.
Swallowing down a burst of irrational anger, I turned to see one of the pages who worked for Gareth’s team—a serious teenage boy who always seemed to be in a hurry.
“Professor Fontaine requests that you join him in the laboratory,” he said with a quick bow.
“Why?”
The boy quailed when he saw my face. “I don’t know, my lady.” Then he gave another quick bow, as if in apology, and hurried back toward the priory.
For a moment I stood in burning silence, reminding myself that neither Freyda nor this page nor the four Roses watching us deserved my ire.
Without a word I returned to Rosewarren. Each step was an effort; the greenway sizzling behind me, and the tendrils of broken Mist roiling at its edges, seemed to be calling my name.
***
By the time I reached the laboratory, I’d achieved a fragile calm. Freyda moved to my shoulder, her customary perch, and began cleaning her feathers. It was as if the little scene by the greenway had never happened.
But my throat was as tight as a fist, and my thoughts kept straying to the greenway and what lay beyond. Maybe I’d have found a chimaera to fight. Maybe the beast would have killed me.
I stopped in the open doorway of the laboratory, keeping my face impassive.
Naturally, the first thing that met my eyes was Gareth, who stood at the front of the room.
He was leaning back against his desk, one leg crossed over the other, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his gold, black, and blue professor’s tie hanging loose at his collar.
He insisted that his team dress in their university robes and ties here, just as they would in Fairhaven.
Something about morale and institutional dignity.
Incredibly, the sight of him wiped my mind clean. His forearms were slender, his gesturing hands eloquent. Later, I decided, I would examine how concerning it was that I found the sight of an unremarkable rumpled tie so attractive.
“All right,” Gareth was saying, “to remind everyone of tomorrow’s agenda: Katra, Blaise, and Geddings will accompany the Order’s eastern dawn patrol and set up a tracking station in Section Thirty-One, which will bring us to how many operational stations, Tarek?”
Tarek, who sat at a nearby desk taking notes, answered smoothly without looking up. “Three, out of a projected twenty-five.”
The room deflated a bit at that number, but Gareth remained undeterred. “Right, so quite a lot of work left to do,” he said cheerfully, “but I know you’ll all rise to the occasion beautifully, as you’ve always done. And Loudon, what’s your team’s status?”
Loudon Barnes sat filing papers in a series of leather packets. “We’ve gotten through about one quarter of the notes we brought with us from Fairhaven,” he replied distractedly.
Gareth raised his eyebrows. “Already? Well done.”
Fiacra Browning, the librarian I’d nearly knocked over earlier that day, muttered, “It would go much faster if the priory’s archives weren’t so thick with spellwork.”
“Ah, but we already discussed this with the Warden,” Gareth said, “and you know what her answer was.”
“Well, perhaps we should try asking her again.”
“She won’t change her mind,” I said quietly from my spot by the door.
Surprise rippled through the room at the sound of my voice.
“The archives are warded for a reason. We’re too close to the Mist to leave them unprotected for even a moment.
Olden spies would steal them the second they were vulnerable. ”
“Spies?” Loudon stopped filing papers to stare at me.
“Certainly with all your professorial intellect, you could deduce that we are constantly under surveillance by any number of potential enemies,” I said. “The Mist is right outside our doors, after all.”
The uneasiness on their faces delighted me. I felt like I was regaining lost ground, somehow exacting payment for my thwarted plans. I watched Gareth steadily. Go ahead and scold me, I thought. See what happens.
But Gareth didn’t take the bait. “Maybe we could replace the current wards with some that are a little smarter,” he suggested. “More specific.” His voice was pleasant, but his eyes were guarded. “Friendly to allies, unfriendly to enemies.”
Tarek finally paused in his note-taking. “Absolutely not. We don’t have the personnel to spare for yet another project.”
Blaise Gardiner, the cheeriest of Gareth’s friends, a stocky, ruddy-faced literature professor with a keen eye for finding useful information in allegory, looked to me hopefully. “You could persuade Her High and Mighty Ladyship, couldn’t you, Mara? You’re her favorite, or so everyone tells me.”
Truth be told, I liked Blaise. His boisterous, forthright nature felt so out of place at Rosewarren that I found the novelty charming. But I couldn’t help myself. It was as though I’d sprouted thorns, and they were hungry for a fight.
“What else does everyone tell you, Blaise?” I asked quietly.
Gareth pushed off the desk and clapped his hands. “All right, let’s move on. You all have your assignments. Loudon’s research team, let’s meet back here after supper.”
As the others gathered their things, Gareth came toward me with his hands in his pockets and a soft smile.
“It’s good to see you,” he said. “We’ve all been so busy since we arrived that I’ve only caught glimpses of you.”
I refused to let him disarm me. “You sent for me,” I said briskly. “I have a lot to do. What do you want?”
“I’d like to eat dinner with you.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“You do eat dinner, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” I replied, flushing.
“Then will you eat it with me tonight? We had so little time together in Fairhaven. And the days here are so full.” He shrugged a little, sheepish. “I’ve missed you. I think about dancing with you every day.”
I couldn’t wrap my mind around what was happening. Not ten minutes ago, I’d been ready to abandon all of this and let whatever enemy I could find in the Old Country destroy me. And now here was Gareth, flirting with me and being very sweet about it. The contradiction left me feeling unbalanced.
“I’m not hungry,” I said, turning to leave. “I need to find Brigid.”
Gareth, undeterred, followed me out of the librarians’ wing and downstairs. Freyda sent a single grumpy chirp our way before flying off down the hallway. In her absence, my shoulder felt cold.
“Bad day?” Gareth asked.
“No worse than any other.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
He nodded agreeably, taking off his tie and shoving it carelessly into his pocket. This had the unfortunate effect of leaving his collarbones on full display. I didn’t know if I wanted to bite them or snap at him to button his shirt.
“Good,” he said. “You certainly look fine.”
His words sent a frisson of heat rushing down my arms. “Stop talking about what I look like.”
“All right,” he said. “If you’re not hungry, maybe you’d prefer to spar with me first? We could work up an appetite together.”
I stopped to stare at him. We had reached the empty central training yard, which was dusted with snow. Small flakes danced through the air, and the sky was a dark gray canvas, suffused with the light of the Mist.
“Spar,” I repeated. “With you.”
“I’m not a complete novice, you know,” he said. “My parents were both soldiers.”
“And you are a librarian.”
He put a hand to his chest. “As if we librarians are limited only to might of the mind!”
“Fine.” I stormed across the yard toward the weapons racks, feeling suddenly galvanized. If I couldn’t fight a chimaera, I could fight him. It wouldn’t be enough—Gareth was no Olden beast—but if I didn’t do something I’d burst, and if I got to knock that smile off his face, so much the better.