Chapter 11 Sage
Sage
I blinked my eyes open and groaned. I was back in the fancy suite in the Divine Residence, lying on the floor in the same position I always ended up in when my spirit manifested in the Garden.
Swell. I’d hoped practicing the meditation Lord Quill had taught me right before bed would have helped keep my spirit in my body. But obviously not. It either didn’t work on controlling my spirit form or I needed a lot more practice.
Sir West stood a few feet away, his massive frame towering over me. He held out his hand in a broody gesture to help me up, and I took it and stood, my gaze darting around the room as I steadied myself.
Someone had cleaned up, putting the furniture back where it belonged and replacing the broken table with a new one.
And there, sitting on the couch, was Talon.
He was as stunningly beautiful as ever with his long white-silver hair and the earrings in his delicately pointed ears catching the light from the chandelier, and the captivating swirl of pink, purple, blue, and gold in his eyes.
The memory of his allure seeped through me, hot and achy, and in my mind’s eye I saw the moment we’d first met, that drop of water trailing down his naked chest to his partially erect—
Heat burned across my cheeks, and I wrenched my gaze away from him to scan the rest of the room. Rider and Quill weren’t there.
I frowned and Talon pointed to himself. “Quill and Ash’s friend. Talon.”
“I remember.”
The catch, as always with my life right now, was remembering what I was supposed to know in the Garden and not anything that I’d learned about him in the Gray.
We hadn’t really interacted here. Sure, he, along with the others, had saved me from Wells and Crane and those other men, but he hadn’t really spoken to me. Not last night, and not much after being attacked.
Our most memorable interaction was when I’d first arrived in the Garden and he’d been rude to me.
Of course, after being attacked by the shadow trapped within him and knowing no one would understand, it made sense for him to put distance between him and everyone else.
Another flash of heated desire sank low within me at how Talon’s allure had overwhelmed me and left me gasping.
Talon rose from the couch in one fluid motion and crossed to the chair closest to me, sinking into it with a grace that made my pulse lurch with desire, even though I still stood.
He was close. Too close. I could see the individual colors swirling in his eyes — pink bleeding into purple and blue, shot through with gold threads.
“I thought I’d keep you company this evening.” His voice dropped, turning warm and intimate. He leaned forward, his gaze drifting down my neck to linger on my mating marks before slowly traveling back up to meet my eyes.
I shrank back, unable to stop the reaction before it happened, suddenly hyperaware that he could see my dull, lifeless marks, and tell that a few of the marks had changed from red to green, indicating that I’d already bonded a mate.
Which I prayed wasn’t actually the case and was just a result of Zinnia’s magic putting the marks to sleep.
“You look stunning tonight.”
Stunning? What the—?
I wasn’t stunning. I was too sharp, too severe to be beautiful even as a human. In amongst all his fae beauty, I was plain. So why was he looking at me like that? Like he desired me. He wasn’t interested in a mate.
“He doesn’t have to stay,” West rumbled.
Except if Talon didn’t stay, then I’d be alone with West, and I wasn’t sure how much I liked that idea… even if Talon was acting strange.
“It’s fine.” I sank onto the edge of one of the chairs facing Talon, uncomfortable with his presence and uncertain how to talk to him while West moved to stand to my left and slightly behind me, a looming sentinel.
I really wanted to retreat to the bedroom and try to go back to sleep with the hope that I’d return to my body in my room in the Black Tower. But I didn’t want to be rude, and I still felt like there were social rules that I didn’t know about that I needed to follow.
Maybe if I was polite to him for a little while, I’d be able to excuse myself and retreat to my room.
Talon shifted in his chair, angling toward me, and his hand came to rest on the armrest closest to where I sat. His gaze drifted down to my neck again.
My heart thudded and I fought to keep my expression even. I tried to draw in a steadying breath, but it was ragged, and my cheeks heated with embarrassment.
Talon’s lips curved into a soft smile, but it felt fake, practiced.
What was he doing?
“Quill is arranging for clothes,” he said. “They’ll be waiting in your bedroom tomorrow evening.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I also wanted to apologize.” His tone deepened even more, sending a shiver of need sliding down my spine.
“Apologize?” My mind raced through what he could be apologizing for.
I really wanted him to apologize for abandoning me on the running trail or for his shadow attacking me and embarrassing me in front of Lord Rider, but I knew that wasn’t what he was talking about.
“I was short with you when we first met.” He held my gaze, his impossibly colored eyes mesmerizing me.
“I was concerned about my duty outside of the Garden, but that’s really no excuse to be rude.
” The lie fell easily off his tongue, and if I hadn’t already known the truth, I’d have completely believed him.
But I did know the truth, and this sudden charm wasn’t him.
“I understand.” I strained to think of something more to say. “Your ah… duty must be very stressful.”
I couldn’t remember if Ash or Quill had told me that Talon was a captain of the Black Guard but given that we’d only really met the other night and I’d just been attacked, I had to hope he wouldn’t think my question strange.
“It can be.” His fingers drummed lightly against the armrest, drawing my attention to how close his hand was to mine.
I inched my fingers away, everything within me saying I needed to put distance between us and a small frown flickered through his expression.
“I’m the Captain of the Gold Tower in the human realm.” Talon flashed me a soft, charming smile as if he was about to share a secret with me. “But I find I’m thinking about… other things when I’m here.” The way he said it, the way he looked at me made my stomach tighten.
This wasn’t the Talon I knew in the Gray. This was wrong, so wrong.
Why was he acting like this? Did he think because my mating marks were asleep that he’d be able to seduce me without any of the consequences?
Was the man currently sitting beside me the real Talon? Not the one I knew in the Black Tower?
Perhaps his shadow needed to feed and that was why he was taking a risk with me.
Except I couldn’t feel any of the aching, desperate need inspired from his shadow’s magical allure.
I wished Ash were with me instead. I wished he was the one flirting with me and prayed he was doing all right and wasn’t—
Wasn’t what? Hurting? Lonely? Missing me the way I missed him?
My chest ached at the thought of him. The warmth of his body pressed against mine, his teasing breath washing over me when he whispered in my ear, the things he said that made my skin flush, and the way he’d held me like I was something precious, something worth protecting.
I bit back a huff of frustration. I had no idea what Ash would be doing right now. It wasn’t as if I knew anything about him. Hell, I knew more about Talon because I interacted with him as Sawyer than I did about Ash.
And yet my soul ached for Ash in a way it didn’t for anyone else.
“What’s the human realm like?” I asked Talon, desperate to say something since I wasn’t sure I could just retreat to my bedroom without upsetting him.
“I haven’t seen much of the realm. I’m restricted to the Gold Tower and Addur, the capital city of the Kingdom of Erellod where the tower is located. But the area around Addur is rich farmland, very much like our western province.”
I nodded, pretending I knew what he was talking about.
I’d only been to Addur a few times when my parents had been alive.
We’d travelled in a stuffy carriage, so I hadn’t gotten a good look of the land outside of the city’s walls.
That, and I had no idea what the fae’s western provinces looked like.
I asked about humans and his duties as a Captain of the Gold Tower, trying to keep him talking about himself so he wouldn’t ask any questions about me.
But every answer seemed to circle back to me. Comments about my courage in surviving the attack, suggestions that he could show me more of the Garden, observations about how intriguing I was.
Each compliment made me more uncomfortable, more aware that this wasn’t the Talon I knew.
West stood silently at my shoulder, without a doubt scowling at Talon the whole time, until someone knocked at the door. With a grunt, the knight strode over to it and cracked it open.
“My lady, Magister Zinnia is here to see you,” West said, his large frame blocking the entrance preventing me from seeing anything in the hall.
Oh, thank the Father!
“Yes, thank you.” I gave Talon an apologetic look, hoping he couldn’t see how relieved I was. “I should probably talk with her about my… ah….” I brushed my fingers across my collarbone drawing his gaze back to my mating marks, “my condition.”
“Of course.” He glanced at Sir West who glowered at him then flashed the knight a brilliant smile. “I’ll wait here in the sitting room in case you need assistance.”
“Magister Zinnia,” I said as she stepped inside. “Let’s talk in my room.”
I gestured to the fancy bedroom, feeling like a complete fraud with my polite speech and fake smile.
“How are you feeling?” she asked as she closed the bedroom door, and we headed to the small seating area by the window.
“I’m managing.” I slumped onto the window seat, leaving her the chair.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be here last night,” she said. “I had a medical emergency and then wanted to do some research into the strange magic that was affecting you.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“Not yet. I’ve never encountered anything like it before.” She reached out her hand. “May I check to see if it’s still affecting you?”
I stared at her outstretched fingers. She’d already healed me. If she was going to discover I was really a human she would have figured that out already, and yet, it felt like the more often I let her magic connect with me, the more vulnerable I’d become.
Except there was no other way to determine if the strange magic both she and Magister Aster had sensed within me was gone.
“All right.” I placed my palm in hers and her warm, soothing magic seeped up my arm.
I sagged back against the cushions and closed my eyes. As much as I wanted to resist and keep myself closed off and protected, that wouldn’t help. The more I relaxed, the faster this would be.
The warmth of her magic spread across my chest and swirled inside me, then, a moment later, it retreated back down my arm.
Zinnia sat back and hummed in thought. “The magic is weaker than it was the other night, but it’s still there.”
“Could that be why I can’t change my spirit form clothes or even control whether I come to the Garden or not?” I asked. “Will that stop once the magic is gone?”
“Maybe. The magic could be interfering with all of that, although your inability to stop yourself from coming to the Garden is probably because of your mating marks.”
“But you put them to sleep.”
“And that just means you won’t be able to form a mating bond.” Zinnia’s expression softened. “I warned you about the desire spikes, the same could be said for the unconscious compulsion to come to the Garden that we women experience when it’s time for us to find our mates.”
“So I might be able to control it… eventually?”
Damn it. Controlling it right away would make my life so much easier. I didn’t want to have to juggle what I knew about Talon, Quill, and Rider in the Gray as well as in the Garden, and I sure as hell didn’t want to deal with Sir West.
But it didn’t sound as if I had much of a choice.
I closed my eyes, willing myself to relax. Except every shadow in the room felt wrong, every creak of the strange tree-castle or thump of someone in another suite made my heart lurch.
Father, I was exhausted. But my mind wouldn’t stop.
Crane was still out there, along with three others who’d helped him.
Would they try again? Drag me back to the sacred pool and finish what they started, or—
The memory of stabbing Wells, over and over again determined to break the forming mating bond rushed through me in a flash of hot then cold.
Or would Crane want revenge instead?
I needed to figure out how to stop manifesting in the Garden, and I needed to do it, now.