Chapter 34
For the next three days, everyone prepared to move our base of operations—as Talan called it quite seriously and Gareth referred to it with a glint of dark humor—to the Fontaine estate in the network of canyons known as Big Deep.
Alastrina and Ankaret spent the time holed up in the university laboratories with Gareth’s team, preparing for the transference of Neave into Alastrina’s body.
Ryder, furious about this part of our plan, stayed at Alastrina’s side in a futile attempt to dissuade her from participating—which, predictably, seemed only to solidify her decision even more.
“Once this is done,” she told Ryder, grinning mischievously after a particularly loud shouting match at a particularly awkward dinner, “you’ll never again be able to pretend that you’re better at wilding than I am.”
Smiling grimly at the memory, I spun around on my left leg and kicked out with my right.
My foot made clean, hard contact with the leather punching bag hanging from the ceiling.
I bounced back, ducking cleanly under an imaginary attacker’s sword.
Then I darted forward, leapt up, and pounded the punching bag once more, this time with my fists—one, two, one-two—until I had to step back, catch my breath, and wipe the sweat from my eyes.
The sensation of moving again, finally being able to make use of my body instead of being trapped in a bed, felt almost as good as sex.
Gemma had taken it upon herself to find training equipment for me and an unused space large enough to accommodate my routine, and she had succeeded beautifully.
Now I spent every moment I could in an empty ballroom conditioning my body, interrupted in two-hour intervals by Welma and her team of healers for quick examinations.
They were astonished by the rate of my recovery.
“I’ve treated many sentinels, my lady,” Welma had murmured to me during her most recent assessment.
She’d rested my leg in her lap and run her fingers over it as if searching for any sign that it had recently been shattered.
“But never once have I seen one heal from such extreme injuries so quickly.”
Well, you’ve never treated a demigod before. Outwardly I managed a modest smile. “They train us well in the Order. Easier to heal when your body is in peak condition.”
But it seemed that no amount of training could quiet my mind.
I’d been working for an hour straight with only fleeting seconds of rest. Several rounds with the punching bag, aerobic exercises that got my blood pumping, agility work, sparring sessions with phantom hostiles—through all of this, my body perfectly obeyed my commands, but still I couldn’t shake the thousand worst-case scenarios brewing in the back of my head.
What if, during the transference, something terrible happened to Lily?
Or to Ankaret, or to Alastrina? The former would destroy Farrin, the latter Ryder.
What if Ankaret’s power was not enough to fuel the procedure?
She had only just been reborn, and though she seemed stronger and more lucid every day, none of us knew what would happen once the transference began.
And if it didn’t work and anyone was hurt—or, gods forbid, killed—Gareth would take the blame.
What if all of our powers and those of the soldiers at our command weren’t enough to destroy Kilraith—truly destroy him? And what would happen to the Mist, the Knotwood, the Crescent of Storms if we did succeed?
And when I returned to Rosewarren, what would I find?
I was set to depart the next day and plead our case to the Warden for Order reinforcements.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the demon who had possessed Gareth there.
Had other Oldens managed to breach the priory’s protections?
What did Brigid and Cira think of me being gone for so long?
What did the Warden think?
Her face floated through my thoughts like a nightmare I couldn’t quite forget. That I’d heard nothing from her during my prolonged absence felt more and more like a warning.
I tossed aside my gloves and knee pads, which I’d worn only to appease Welma, stripped off the tunic I wore over my sleeveless undershirt, and began a series of slow stretches on the floor.
As I shifted through each position, I tried to focus solely on my breathing.
If rigorous movement couldn’t soothe my nerves, maybe this would.
Just as I lowered myself parallel to the floor, supporting my weight on my arms alone, footsteps sounded outside in the hallway. I knew their quick rhythm at once and smiled as the door opened.
Gareth entered in a huff, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his professor’s tie hanging loose about his neck.
But once he caught sight of me in the middle of the room, his breath caught, and my senses, stoked by my training, allowed me to hear his heartbeat roar into a gallop.
He deposited his armful of books on the table by the door with airy indifference.
“I was going to find somewhere to enjoy a stiff drink,” he said, “but I think I’ll just watch you instead.”
I looked up with a grin to see him leaning against the doorframe and watching me with obvious, unabashed desire.
The look in his eyes made me shiver with want.
Even seeing him just standing there, so reverently focused on me, cleared my mind more effectively than any of my exercises had—cleared it of everything but him.
“Has it been a long day, Professor?” I asked innocently, arching my back as I lowered my belly to the floor. “You look haggard.”
His eyes followed my every movement, branding me with heat that I felt all the way down to my toes.
“You wound me, my lady. Not all of us were lucky enough to be born with a face like yours.”
Serenely I crossed my legs and swiveled around to face him. “A face like what? Do elaborate.”
“Hm. Perhaps later, once the sting of that ‘haggard’ comment has faded.”
“You fiend. You know very well you’ve got what Gemma’s romance novels might call dashing good looks.”
Unable to resist teasing him, I pushed myself to my feet, stretched up onto my toes with a contented sigh—offering him a splendid view of my body while doing so—and began collecting my equipment neatly in one corner of the room.
He laughed, a low, throaty sound that made me shiver. “You’re right, of course. And it’s unbecoming to pretend modesty.” Then he put his hands in his pockets and came toward me, suddenly more interested in looking at the floor than at me.
“Welma told me you were down here,” he said quietly. “She looked quite sour about it. Now I see why.”
Bristling, I lowered one of my practice staffs to the floor and turned to face him. “And here I thought you were just here to admire me and make me feel pretty.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, his gaze flicking up and down my body. “I can do that and scold you at the same time.”
“I know my body better than Welma does. If she had her way, I’d be convalescing until June.”
“I’ll accept that,” he said, stopping a few feet from me, “if you promise me that this isn’t your way of fighting a stone titan without actually fighting a stone titan.”
The implication was clear, and I couldn’t even blame him for it.
“No, this isn’t that,” I said, walking past him toward the door.
“We’re preparing for what promises to be a terrific battle, and I need to get in shape for it, and fast. And I can’t show up to Rosewarren looking ragged.
The Warden will be furious enough as it is. ”
“She won’t hurt you, will she?”
Not even my sweaty, humming body could ward off the chill that came over me. I turned back to him, hiding my shiver with a smirk. “If she tries, she’ll regret it.”
“I’m serious, Mara.”
“And so am I. If everyone could stop fussing over me, and acting like they know my mind and body better than I do, I’d be much happier. It’s extremely tiresome to be lectured at and hovered over.”
He came toward me, raising one sardonic eyebrow. “Oh yes, it’s truly awful, isn’t it, to have people who care about you?”
“You know that isn’t what I meant,” I snapped, glaring at him as he approached.
For a moment neither of us said another word. He was close now, looking down at me with his hands still in his pockets and a soft, adoring light in his eyes that I did everything in my power to resist.
“You look soppy and ridiculous,” I declared. “You can’t just make me angry and then pretend nothing has happened.”
“And would it be terribly trite of me to observe that you’re beautiful when you’re angry?”
“It most certainly would.”
He smiled, smoothing a damp tendril of hair back from my face. “Then trite I shall be, for you are magnificent, darling.”
His touch was too delicious; I couldn’t help but lean into it. When he bent to kiss my neck, running his hands lightly down the curve of my back, my eyes drifted closed, and I took a step toward him, into him. His body burned against mine.
“I assume,” he murmured against my skin, “that since you’ve been training so vigorously, you’re also well enough for all kinds of other activities?”
I tilted my head back, allowing him access to the hollow of my throat, my breastbone, the hem of my shirt. His lips brushed against the swell of my breasts, and my entire body broke out in goose bumps.
“What a brilliant deductive mind you have, Professor,” I said breathlessly.
“Is that a yes?”
I ran my fingers through his hair and tugged him back up to me.
His pupils were blown wide with wanting, and as I leaned in to take his bottom lip gently between my teeth, I circled against him, aching for him, begging for him.
Even through our clothes, I could feel how hard he was, how desperately he wanted me, and with my body primed and humming from my hours of training, I nearly finished right then and there, simply from the friction of his hips against mine.
“Gareth,” I gasped out, “either take me right now or let me be so I can do it myself.”