Chapter 26
What had seemed like a brilliant idea only a few brief hours ago began to look far less so as night fell and Xavi made out the sounds of guests beginning to arrive at the manor.
Voices and music and the clink of crystal filtered through the walls, and as the evening wore on, his frustration became almost unbearable.
He’d reckoned without his instinctive need to be aware of his surroundings. To assess dangers and prepare to face them. Or rather, he’d reckoned without his need to do so for more than just himself.
Ryn had been right—in this tiny room, he felt trapped and helpless. Blind and oddly anxious.
He was safe. Ryn was no doubt safe as well. She was with her family, and would have an easier time playing her part if she were not also worried about sheltering him from scrutiny.
So why did he feel like he was about to come out of his skin? Why did he feel as if all his instincts were telling him to find Ryn and run?
He’d been at war with himself for what seemed like hours when the door to his room burst open to reveal Ryn’s brother, looming in the doorway with a scowl on his generally good-natured face.
“I know what the healer told you,” he said. “But I don’t care. If you are even slightly genuine in your affection for my sister, you need to come downstairs immediately.”
Before he even realized he’d moved, Xavi was on his feet. He let out a not remotely human-sounding growl of rage and saw Olivier jolt backward—survival instincts overruling his stolid personality for the barest moment—before renewing his mulish glare.
“I guess that means you do genuinely care, at least a little. So come with me. I’ll find you suitable clothes and fill you in on the situation.”
He shouldn’t go. Xavi knew that. A single step into that room below and he risked being discovered. Ruining everything. But if Ryn was in trouble, he refused to leave her there alone.
“Tell me…” He almost added “human” to the end of that command, but caught himself just in time. “What has happened?”
“Oh, just the usual,” Olivier said as he led the way down the hall towards his own rooms. “Our aunt being insufferable, Sariah parading around on Ronal’s arm, ensuring everyone knows about her own betrothal while Ronal goes on in a loud voice about how lucky he is.
” Ryn’s brother scowled. “As if being married to my sister is the worst fate imaginable. And Tiddlywinks pretends she doesn’t care because that’s what everyone expects of her, but I know she does care.
Much as she loves her books and all that, she’s only human, you know? ”
Actually, Xavi didn’t know. He couldn’t possibly. But it wasn’t as if he could announce that to Olivier. “They are… insulting her?”
“Insults,” Olivier scoffed. “Those are easy. You insult my sister, she’ll either ignore you or give back as good as she gets.
But she’s… Well, she’s never had an easy time making friends, you know?
Her interests were always different, even when we were children.
She wanted to share them, but all of that enthusiasm just made the others run.
Didn’t understand it. So they made her feel small. Alone.”
This human rambled intolerably, but Xavi thought he was beginning to understand.
“It’s why I’m glad she found you,” Olivier went on doggedly. “Someone who really understands her. Who cares about the same things she does. Maybe not because they mean something to you, but just because it’s her, you know?”
Well, that was going to be awkward if Ryn’s family ever learned the truth. Because Xavi did not care about stories or books or old things, or about human scholarship or any of the other things Ryn held dear. He did, however, care that someone was being cruel to her.
He cared quite a lot. A little too much, in fact.
He should never have left her alone. Somewhere within him, he could feel the dark and dangerous impulses of Lesh stirring to life. The urge to teach these humans to fear him.
“I don’t want you to think Ryn is weak or anything,” Olivier added. “She’s the strongest person I know. Honestly, sometimes she makes me feel like I’ll never measure up. She just… knows exactly what she wants, and she goes after it. Unnerving at times.”
It certainly was. And Olivier had not been there to see her stare down an entire company of mutinous mercenaries, stand nose to nose with a storm cat, or sit down and start drawing as gryphons battled barely a few strides away.
“But I think she needs more than she’ll ever admit. Even if what she needs is just someone to be happy that she is who she is. I try, but”—Olivier looked a little ashamed—“half the time I don’t understand the things she says. So she hasn’t really had that since Father…”
Despite his fury and his growing need to see that Ryn was safe, Xavi remained clear-headed enough to acknowledge that Ryn’s brother, while often ridiculous, was not all bad.
The human was still soft and foolish and prone to overreaction.
But he was not entirely blind, and for that Xavi was willing to offer him a tiny measure of respect.
“She will be safe with me.”
The moment he said the words, they felt like more than a platitude. More than simple reassurance.
Something in the nature of a vow. One that wrapped itself around his heart and would not be shaken.
“Thank you,” Olivier said earnestly. “I feel like I knew I could trust you the moment I saw you. You actually do love her. So as long as you’re kind to her, I don’t care about anything else.”
It was unexpectedly painful to continue to lie to this soft, silly human. To allow him to think that love played any part in this charade. But there was no easy way to explain. Nothing that would not end in worse consequences for Ryn.
“Just get me downstairs,” Xavi growled through clenched teeth. “As quickly as possible.”
Human fashion was truly appalling. Xavi felt as if he could barely move, and the tightness of the cloth binding his throat was like a snake, drawing its coils ever tighter in an attempt to squeeze its prey to death.
But Olivier would not permit him to appear at the betrothal celebration without what he called “proper attire,” so Xavi submitted to the torture while forcing down all his darker thoughts and impulses.
Reminded himself that Ryn would be sad if he simply pitched her irritating brother out the second-floor window.
The man fussed for what seemed an eternity, but Xavi was at last declared “passably well turned-out” and escorted downstairs into an absolute sea of chaos.
His ruse, Xavi thought dimly as he battled the overwhelming tide of smells and lights and sounds, had not been such a terrible idea after all.
It wasn’t that he’d spent no time among others since the onset of the curse, but he had spent most of it alone with his own thoughts. Enduring silences so profound, he was often glad of the wind to fill the emptiness.
He was therefore ill-prepared to face the utter cacophony of faces and eyes and voices that assailed him the moment they reached the foot of the stairs.
Humans were everywhere. Oozing from room to room, congealing in small groups before breaking apart and then reforming elsewhere. And all of them were talking. All of them were watching. Hands were waving, eyelashes fluttering, and mouths gaping with laughter too loud and too long to be genuine.
The assault on his senses was almost too much, and Xavi was clinging to control by his fingernails as they threaded through the crowd in search of Ryn.
He was rather distantly aware of the staring and ripples of silence that followed his passage. As if some of these humans were less dense than Olivier and could sense the presence of a superior predator in their midst.
“I think she’s in the ballroom,” Olivier all but shouted, and Xavi recalled that for humans, a ball was a dance. She was dancing.
Except when they entered the room, it was quickly evident that no one was dancing. Instead, everyone was staring awkwardly at three people at the center of the floor—a stocky, soberly dressed man with sandy brown hair and one red cheek, a red-haired woman clinging to his sleeve and crying, and…
Ryn.
Xavi almost hadn’t recognized her. There was no stick or pencil in her hair, jabbed through that untidy knot like a sword.
Her clothing was no longer gray-brown and stained by travel, but instead was the color of blood—a rich, dark hue that turned her hair to silver-gold.
And her eyes were bright with something other than joy or curiosity.
They blazed like stars in her unnaturally pale face as she stared down…
… at the man’s hand on her arm.
As Xavi watched, time seemed to slow to a crawl. Ryn tried to pull away. When the man did not immediately let go, she pulled harder, breaking his grip so abruptly that she stumbled backward.
And suddenly Xavi was viewing the world through the scarlet haze of his magic unrestrained.
No human could have moved as quickly as he did, but he did not care. He caught Ryn before she could fall, shifted her to the side, and placed himself between her and the gaping human male.
He heard the gasps. The screams. The shuffling of feet and the sharp bursts of cursing—sounds of panic and dismay that suggested they had seen him as he truly was.
But none of it seemed to matter as he stared coldly into the muddy brown eyes of the man who’d dared to lay a restraining hand on Ryn.
And then he smiled—the same strange and terrible smile Lesh had often worn when confronting his prey.
“I suggest you run, human.”