Chapter 10 Quill
Quill
Great Goddess, what was wrong with me? Had I actually been about to kiss him?
“I think that’s enough for now,” I told Sawyer, my voice gruff. “We should meet during the evening after class every couple of days.” And somehow, I’d figure out how to control myself. “But whether we meet or not, you should practice every night before bed.”
I didn’t know how much the meditation would help, but it was the only thing I could offer him that might let him control his magic.
Sawyer nodded and pushed out of the chair, wincing with the movement, his actions stiff. He headed for the door, and I forced myself to stay sitting on the edge of the bed, my body shaking with the effort.
The door clicked shut behind him, and I collapsed back on the bed with a groan.
The small recovery room felt too quiet, too small. Pale afternoon light filtered through the single window, barely bright enough to compete with the softly glowing fae stone in the ceiling.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my palms against them.
I was losing my mind.
He’d just sat there with his eyes closed, and I couldn’t help seeing his sister then the new arrival to the Garden, Sage. The need to protect her— to protect them, love them, cherish them was overwhelming.
I’d been drawn to him like a moth to a flame and had been about to kiss him when his eyes had opened. And then I’d fallen into his brown gaze, so similar to the stunned ones I’d gazed into when I’d called his name a rotation ago.
Goddess, I had to know where she was.
He’d said his sister was fine, safe, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. The urge to find her, to bring her into the fae realm where I could protect her, clawed at my insides. No woman was safe in the human realm.
But I already knew from the last time I’d given in to the need to ensure his sister’s safety that he’d clam up and become even more wary of me.
It was only a miracle that I managed to swallow those words and say something else.
I just had to trust him and prove to him that I was worthy of his trust in return.
Which was going to be even more difficult since I’d been forced to support Rider as the Lord Commander of the Black Guard and leave him trembling and throwing up on the running trail.
I scrubbed my hands down my face and huffed. This was getting out of hand. I couldn’t stop thinking about her — a human woman I’d barely met — and I couldn’t stop seeing her in Sawyer and Sage.
And really, I should be worrying about Sage and how she couldn’t change her clothes in her spirit form.
That most likely meant she couldn’t control when she manifested in the Garden or when she left.
And with her sleeping mating marks, and my mother’s obvious interest in her, not to mention that Crane was still on the lose, she was in as much danger, maybe more, than Sawyer’s sister.
I pushed myself off the bed and headed down the hall to Kit’s recovery room to check in on him.
Inside the small room, Payne slumped in a chair that was definitely too small for his large frame.
He was fast asleep, his head had fallen back at an uncomfortable-appearing angle, and soft snores escaped his lips.
Kit was also asleep, lying motionless in the narrow bed, his complexion too pale from blood loss.
I stood in the doorway for a moment, debating if I should enter and wake Payne.
From what I’d heard, the whole team had been through hell last night. Kit and Lewin had almost died from their injuries, and Payne was only alive because Sawyer had foreseen that he’d been poisoned.
Better to let him sleep, even if his neck would be killing him when he woke. Given how seriously injured his bonded had been, I doubt I’d be able to convince him to leave, even if he was just going to sleep in the room next door.
I stepped back quietly, returned to the infirmary’s main treatment room.
The room was empty, Flint possibly in the greenhouse tending to his medicinal herbs, and the examination tables were clean, their wooden surfaces gleaming under the bright light overhead, while the rolling tables he used to hold medical tools and supplies when he was working on someone had been pushed against the wall near the large wooden cabinet, ready for the next emergency.
What I really needed was to focus on the issues I could actually do something about.
The novice training would resume tomorrow morning, and I’d need to be on the watch for how they treated Sawyer. Should I convince Rider that one of us needed to run the trail with the boy to ensure they didn’t attack him again?
I’d like to think that Rider had scared the wrath of the Goddess into them when he’d yelled at them, but some of the advanced human novices this time around seemed stubborn.
Of course, I doubted Rider would agree to that or that it would actually help the boy get along with the other novices.
And how the other novices treated Sawyer wasn’t something I could do anything about. I could only reward people for good behavior and punish them for bad. I couldn’t actually change how they thought.
No, if I wanted to take action, it would have to be with Sage. There were things I could do to help her that would make a difference for her, which I doubted any of the other guys were thinking about.
The first thing I needed to do was go early to the Garden and discreetly arrange to have clothes waiting for her in her bedroom’s wardrobe. I might not be able to get them for tonight, but certainly by tomorrow night.
I doubted the High Priestess would demand Sage make an appearance so soon after being attacked so there were probably a few days before she had to leave the suite, but the sooner I got her clothes the better. You couldn’t be too careful, not with my mother and the games she liked to play.
I stepped out into the baily and drew in a deep breath of the Gray’s perpetually damp air. Mist curled around my boots, and the overcast sky hung low, threatening a rain that almost never came.
To my left and slightly in front of me stood the glassed-in greenhouse filled with all manner of herbs and some fae magic to help them grow with the realm’s limited sunlight. I couldn’t see Flint inside, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hidden among all that greenery.
Beyond lay the bailey with a dozen guardsmen going about their duties. The novices might have time off along with a few other guardsmen, but no one else did. The Black Guard was ready to defend the Gray and the Gates of the Realms every hour of every day without fail.
With a sigh, I wandered along the bottom of the castle’s wall hoping the fresh air would help clear my mind.
West had given his word that he wouldn’t say anything about Sage’s sleeping marks, which meant only one of us needed to be with her now, and tonight was Talon’s turn.
Which surprised the hell out of me. Talon had spent decades being deliberately rude to women, keeping them at arm’s length so he’d never risk bonding with one.
He was one of the most handsome fae alive, but with the shadow entity trapped within his shadow magic it was too dangerous for him to be mated.
It was too much of a risk to hope that someone would understand that the shadow wasn’t evil and wasn’t controlling him.
What was worse, was that the shadow fed on sex and exuded an allure that attracted both women and men alike, making it even more difficult for Talon to avoid women looking to form a mating bond with him.
Of course, given how shy Sage was and how she seemed to have accepted Ash and all his scars, I doubted she’d be seduced by Talon’s pretty face, but his allure was another story.
Except with how rude Talon had been when they’d first met and how wary she was of men, his allure might not stand a chance. Tonight was probably going to be awkward and uncomfortable for both of them.
I paused mid-step. Maybe I should join them. Just to make sure—
No. I’d agreed when Rider said we should take turns. It made sense. We still had our duties as the leaders of the Black Guard and we couldn’t ignore them, not with the state of the Gray or the novices. And most certainly not with the High Priestess watching us.
That, and I’d already arranged to meet my second in command at the White Tower in the Garden.
I was already falling behind on my duties because of the novice training, I couldn’t afford to let something important slip through the crack.
Both the Black and White Towers needed me focused, not distracted by a woman who made me ache for someone and something I couldn’t and shouldn’t want.
Footsteps approached, and I turned to see Rider striding toward me.
He moved with his usual predatory grace, his hair half tied back in a topknot, the shock of white at his left temple standing out against the rest of his dark locks.
A few guardsmen near the stables glanced our way before quickly returning to their work.
“How’d the meditation lesson go?” he asked.
I shrugged. “As well as can be expected, I guess. It’s hard to tell because it’s all on him. I can’t see what he sees or tell how well he’s concentrating.”
“We have to try something or we’ll lose him,” Rider said.
“Yeah, I don’t know how long he has,” I replied. “It sounds like his ability is growing in strength. Hopefully it will stabilize.”
“Hopefully.” Rider’s expression darkened. “One of Ash’s men informed me that the Order confiscated the artifact that trapped Sage’s soul in the Garden.”
“Did the Head of Artifacts at the White Tower get to catalogue it first?”
I had no idea if this new information proved or disproved the theory that the High Priestess was involved in Sage’s attack.
The artifact, an intricately wrought silver bracelet, kept a spirit in the Garden from returning to its body so it most certainly would be a useful tool for the Order, but there was also a chance that examining it might reveal information about who originally possessed it or even created it.
“Yes, but he didn’t have it long enough to examine. The Order claims that they want to do their own examination first.”
Which didn’t surprise me, but that meant the artifact wasn’t going to help us figure out everyone who’d been involved in attacking Sage since there was no guarantee that whoever had procured the artifact had also been in the sacred grove…
not that I expected it too, but it had been an avenue to investigate.
“Did Ash’s man say anything else? About Crane? The others who escaped?” It was still early in the investigation, but I had to hope. The sooner this was resolved, the sooner I could convince myself to keep my distance from Sage.
“Only that no one’s mentioned Wells’ dagger.”
Sage had said it had been engraved and Wells had clearly been using it for ritual magic. It was most likely another artifact, but the fact that neither the White Tower nor the Order indicated that they had it was another mystery.
“Yarrow’s keeping the investigation locked down tight,” Rider said, his expression hard. “Even Ash’s contacts inside the Order can’t get details, just that there are no leads.”
No leads. One confiscated artifact and another missing, and all four outstanding assailants gone. At least Addax was probably dead in a ditch somewhere from the hole Rider had stabbed in his torso.
A cold, hollow weight settled in my chest. Crane wasn’t the type to flee. He was the type to watch, to plan, to strike the moment he felt he could.
And with Sage having killed Wells…
“Do you think they’ll try again with the forced bonding?”
“Or revenge,” Rider said, voicing what I’d just been thinking. “Either way, she’s not safe.”