Chapter 25
Ryn knew for a fact that there had been many occasions on which she had simply disappeared into a library and failed to emerge for several days, except for absolutely necessary things like eating and sleeping, and doing precious little of those.
Such days had passed in a frenzied haze of discovery—each hour a mere handful of minutes, each day still too short for all there was to learn.
So it was dismaying to discover just how long the hours could be when engaged in distasteful activities like writing invitations, planning a banquet, receiving well-wishers, and preventing her immortal shapeshifting bodyguard from stabbing anyone—or revealing his true identity, which was probably the greater danger.
Especially when her brother, bless him, was determined to play the careful guardian and spend those days becoming better acquainted with his sister’s “betrothed.”
If Ryn had set out to design two people more utterly opposite in their opinions, interests, and temperaments, she could not possibly have improved on the pairing of Xavi and Olivier, so it was with a great deal of horror—and helplessness—that she awaited their return the next morning from an early horseback ride.
Man to man, Olivier had said. Just a little time to get to know the man who would be marrying his sister.
No doubt he intended to ask awkward questions, and Ryn had no idea what Xavi would make of them. He was ancient and canny, but he had such limited experience with humans and very little patience to spare for jolly, oblivious, laid-back sorts like her brother.
So it was very natural that she should feel entirely panicked when Olivier raced into the sitting room in his riding clothes, muddy and wild-eyed, to grab her arm and tug her up from her seat.
“You’ve got to come with me,” he pleaded. “Tiddlywinks, I think I’ve killed him.”
He what?
Impossible, was her first thought. Xavi was not that easy to kill, and certainly not when his opponent was Olivier.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing!” her brother protested. “At least, not on purpose. But how was I to know he couldn’t ride?”
Oh sweet saints, she should have thought of that. Xavi had no need to ride, not when he could turn himself into a gryphon or a wyvern and fly anywhere he wished to go. And yet he’d foolishly decided to climb on a horse, just because her idiot brother asked him to.
Could he really be badly hurt?
“Where?” she snapped, bolting for the door at an entirely unladylike pace. She didn’t care what her mother thought. If Xavi was hurt…
“We were almost back,” Olivier confessed. “And Whirlwind bolted for the barn.”
And Xavi wouldn’t have known how to stop him.
It was absurd to feel so dismayed. Not when she knew he had to be incredibly difficult to kill. Just the idea of him being hurt because of her ridiculous family…
No, actually, it was just the idea of him being hurt.
She didn’t like it. Not at all. It made her feel breathless and scared and a little bit sick, and those feelings only intensified as she hurried towards the stables, where she found a pair of grooms kneeling on the ground, leaning over a limp body.
Xavi.
She shoved them aside, dropped to the ground, and set a hand on his shoulder. His eyes were closed, but she could see no blood, no evidence of broken bones. Perhaps he’d simply been knocked unconscious.
“Xavi, can you hear me?”
He groaned—a deep, guttural sound of pain that pulled an answering whimper from her own throat.
“We need to get him inside,” she said curtly. “Once he’s comfortable, perhaps he can tell us what’s wrong.”
“Send for a healer!” Olivier shouted. “And find a litter!”
Xavi groaned a few more times as they carried him in, but his eyes never opened, and his fingers never twitched. Even once he was laid out on the bed in his room, he remained pale and unmoving, and Ryn had to lean in close to ensure that he was actually still breathing.
“Olivier, what do we do?” She knew nothing about medicine. She was almost never sick.
“I’ll go and see whether the healer has been sent for,” he promised hastily, his eyes still a bit wild and his hair disordered from frantically running his fingers through it. “Wait here.”
And then he rushed out, leaving Ryn alone with Xavi. Scandalous, probably, but she didn’t care, because what did scandal matter if he died?
Not only that, but what would happen to the trials if he died here? Would they be over? Would she remain here alone? Would Kel ever know what had become of them?
Her eyes shut, and she reached instinctively for Xavi’s hand, squeezing it tightly as she begged silently for him to be okay.
“You cannot just die and leave me to do this alone, do you hear me? I won’t have it. We agreed to see these trials through. And I… And Kel would be devastated.”
It occurred to her suddenly that the hand she held in hers was no longer limp, but had grown tense and rigid. As if its owner was unsure what to do about the fact that she was holding it…
Her eyes flew open.
Xavi was not only very much alive, but watching her with a curious, alert expression in those familiar dark eyes, as if wondering what absurd thing she intended to say next.
“You’re… awake.” She stumbled over the words, feeling both relieved and slightly embarrassed. “I thought you were…” No, she wasn’t about to finish that sentence.
“Exactly how easy do you think I am to kill, that you behave as if I am on my way to the afterlife due to a simple fall?”
Awake and sarcastic, apparently.
And she was still holding his hand.
Ryn yanked her hand back as if it were on fire, and buried it in her skirt while her cheeks burned with humiliation.
“I… I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did that, I just…”
Actually, come to think of it, she had nothing to be embarrassed about. In fact, she had every reason to feel angry.
“Well, what was I supposed to think?” She fixed him with an accusatory glare. “You weren’t moving, and you were groaning in pain. I was worried you might have hit your head or been run over. You might be immortal, but clearly that doesn’t mean you can’t be killed.”
Xavi sat up and rolled to the edge of the bed, his motions smooth and obviously unpained.
“You were meant to recall that I have survived battles beyond count, defeated enemies beyond your imagining, and endured centuries under a fae curse. How exactly did you imagine that a horse was going to do me significant harm?”
“Have you ever even met a horse?” Ryn demanded.
“They are chaos on four legs. Brave and loyal companions half the time, and the rest fragile, excitable, and entirely irrational, with brutally sharp hooves and very little concept of their own size. If anything in all Abreia could kill you, my money would be on a horse.”
“It is true that I had never ridden a horse before,” Xavi acknowledged. “Which is why I chose to exercise this deception.”
This what?
“You scared me half to death on purpose?” Ryn didn’t even understand why her feelings were so chaotic.
Only that she was angry—so blindingly angry that she hauled back and punched him right in the chest. Which, in retrospect, was a terrible idea because his chest might as well have been a solid brick wall and only ended up hurting her fingers.
Ow.
Xavi’s eyes went wide and startled.
Clearly she’d surprised him as much as she’d surprised herself.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, shaking out her fingers while trying not to let on how much it hurt. “But that was a terrible thing to do.”
“Ryn.” Xavi reached out and caught her bruised hand. His hold was not harsh, but strangely gentle as he uncurled her fingers, checking each one while her cheeks heated once more and her heart pounded painfully. “You could have broken your hand.”
She would rather have broken her hand. Her arm, her leg, anything. Anything other than what she suspected was about to be broken by this utterly infuriating, mercurial, wildly powerful and dangerous creature currently masquerading as a harmless human man.
“I didn’t.” She tugged her fingers out of his grip, not certain she was telling the truth but unable to endure another moment of these feelings she had no idea what to do with.
“The longer I spend with your family, the greater the chance of them realizing I am not who they believe me to be,” Xavi explained, eyeing her as if he half expected her to fly apart on the spot.
“I chose to take advantage of my inexperience with horses to feign injury. Thereby permitting me to be left alone until it is time for us to depart.”
A genius idea, in fact. Ryn only wished he’d warned her about it in advance.
“Do you really think you can spend the next day in here alone without running mad or threatening the servants?”
A single arched brow reminded her of exactly how he’d spent most of his unimaginably long life. “I believe I can endure.”
“And what if they decide you’re too fragile and won’t allow you to attend your own betrothal ball?”
“I believe I can endure that, too,” Xavi replied dryly.
Oh. Well then. It did simplify everything. There would be no need to find him clothes. No need to teach him how to dance, or worry about whether he would be offended by her neighbors.
“All right, fine.” Ryn sighed and smoothed her skirts, trying to silence her own disappointment and dismay.
This ridiculous affair was her family’s fault. It was only right that she face it alone. She just… didn’t want to. “You’re right. This was a good idea. But next time, could you at least warn me first?”
Of course, there wouldn’t be a next time. But it was the principle that mattered.
“I have not been accustomed to answering to anyone for my actions,” Xavi returned slowly.
Almost thoughtfully. “There has been no one to care, no one to question me except Kel, and he accepts that danger is inevitable. But if it matters to you”—he inclined his head in acknowledgment—“I will share my intentions before attempting such a thing again.”
“Thank you,” Ryn said stiffly, lifting her chin in a brave attempt to pretend she didn’t care that much after all. “Now, I suppose you should get back to pretending to be mortally wounded. I will stay with you and be suitably distraught until the healer arrives, and then return to my tasks.”
The sound of footsteps coming down the hall drew a grunt of annoyance from Xavi, but he immediately lay back down on the bed, closed his eyes, and returned to that deathlike stillness with almost eerie swiftness.
A stillness he maintained for the next half hour as he was examined and proclaimed generally fit by the healer. She was somewhat concerned by the fact that he remained unconscious, but recommended only that he be kept quiet and calm so as to recover from an assumed head injury.
At length, Ryn excused herself to return to the sitting room, reminding herself sternly that this was for the best. It was silly of her to feel abandoned.
Xavi’s quick thinking would make their stay here much easier.
Now, the only things she had to worry about were remembering how to dance, surviving the neighbors’ scrutiny, and awaiting the moment this part of the trial would be over.
When they would once again be whisked off into the unknown.
If it were up to her, that moment could not possibly come soon enough.
Thankfully, Ryn was allowed to spend the entire day of the ball preparing herself and her wardrobe.
In her case, that looked a lot like pacing her room while wishing she were almost anywhere else in the world, doing anything but getting ready for a party.
If there was anything worse than trying to choose a dress, it was anticipating the exquisite awkwardness that was likely to make up the majority of the evening.
Ronal would be there, with Sariah and their respective mothers.
Ryn’s aunt would no doubt attend, along with Ryn’s cousins, including the one she’d once punched in the eye for calling her a liar.
And she would have to smile and pretend to be excited about getting married, and make up a story about who her new husband was, where she would live, and how happy they would be.
While enduring comment after comment about how they never thought they would see this day and how lucky she was to have found someone willing to marry her.
While that someone was upstairs pretending to be injured because he didn’t know how to ride a horse.
Everyone would be secretly laughing at him, and really, Ryn shouldn’t care, but she did. She cared that none of them would ever know the kind of person Xavi truly was.
One who didn’t need their approval. One who had survived shipwreck and war and centuries of a cursed existence just to be here. Who wielded impossibly powerful magic, destroyed monsters with his bare hands, and faced death without flinching. One who would do anything for a friend.
She wanted them to know, but it was a petty desire when so much was at stake. She just needed to smile, nod, get through this evening, and wait for the trial to be ended.
Oh, and she also needed to stop dithering and choose a dress.
In the end, she made the scandalous decision not to wear her double petticoat, or the many layers of flounces currently in vogue at court. Instead, she chose an evening gown of deep crimson velvet, with a wry sort of grimace at the color. Red, just like the professor’s stole she would never have.
Red is apparently not my color, she’d told the flirtatious sailor at the tavern.
Hoping to convince herself she no longer wanted it.
But was that true? Or was she only trying to ease the pain of loss now that it was beyond her grasp?
Much like her mother—putting on a good face for the neighbors now that the future she’d dreamed of for her daughter was no longer possible.
Xavi had promised that Ryn could choose her own fate. But how could she choose when the goal she’d once worked so hard for was now out of her reach? How could she choose when it seemed there was nowhere she truly belonged?
Tonight, though, was not the right time for such questions.
Tonight was for her family, so she donned the velvet gown despite her misgivings, layering it carefully over her traveling skirt and simple white bodice.
Just in case. The effect was a bit lumpy, but no more bulky than petticoats, and she was able to keep her pockets.
And the skirt was long enough to hide her boots—except perhaps while dancing, but she did not intend to do much of that when her “betrothed” was not in attendance.
Her hair she pinned neatly atop her head, with a few curls allowed to frame her face, and that was that. It was time to go down and confront her mother’s guests.
Alone. Just as she’d always been.