27. SEVEN DAGGERS IN A TREE
A few hours later, I approached Nivelle’s chambers again, intent on retrieving her for a particularly important task, only to find Silas emerging from behind his own door to greet me.
He had to have sensed my presence.
“Afternoon,” he said.
“Afternoon. You weren’t at breakfast.”
“I slept late, for once. Haven’t slept this much in a while. I’m guessing it has something to do with knowing you’re safe. I can . . . relax a little.”
I nodded. “Well if you’re hungry, I can have the house-fae whip you up something—”
“I’m fine. Thank you.” A charming grin graced his face. “Starting to sound like quite the Lady of this place.”
My cheeks burned red. Had I really just offered to have the staff cook him a meal? As if Niall and I were already—
“You’re his mate, Auren,” Silas said. “It’s natural.”
I chewed my bottom lip and crossed my arms. “You seem to know an awful lot about fae culture.”
“Do I?” He crossed his arms as well, splaying his wings wider so he could lean back against his door.
He was acting . . . friendly. Cheerful. Normal. And I didn’t know what to make of it. Perhaps this was how he always was, and I just hadn’t had the time, nor made the effort, to get to know him.
I stared at him for a long moment, noting the gentle lines that formed around his green eyes when he grinned.
The faint gray markings that sat upon his skin—the markings of a Dionach—which he’d glamoured when I first met him.
His hair—soft, golden waves that framed the strong features of his face.
This was Silas. Playful, steady, true. Gentle, yet formidable.
A force to be reckoned with, but also someone who had feelings, someone who had been searching for a purpose.
That purpose was me, and I hadn’t given him the grace he deserved. I shifted on my feet, shame wrapping around me like a vice. Starting now, that would change. I’d make the effort.
“Perhaps you could teach me what you know sometime.” I gave him a gentle smile—genuine. And gods, he leapt at the sight of it.
“Of course!” His voice practically cracked.
“I’d be happy to. You would think that being secluded on the isles would mean that the witches would know little-to-nothing of this land and its realms, but it’s quite the opposite.
Dionachs bring back just as much information from their travels and their minglings with humans and fae. Word spreads fast.”
“So you’re no stranger to a good gossip session, then?”
He chuckled. “Something like that. In fact, I’d heard a rumor in Northern Belthria, that a young woman was sending men home with black eyes and broken ribs every week during local brawls and contests.” He lifted a brow.
“You did not.”
“Swear it on Torin’s crown that I did. ‘Lady Everton’ was the woman to beat, besting every man in the ring, while turning the heads of everyone watching.” The look on his face was pure pride as he said the words.
I snorted a laugh. “Turning heads, huh?”
“Have you never looked in a mirror?”
Another flush stained my face. “Silas, you—”
“I mean nothing romantically by it, but it is the truth. You are a rare beauty, and you’re regarded as even more attractive by many because of what you’re capable of.”
“Then you truly know nothing of the hearts of men.” I dropped my gaze to the floor. “All my life, no one wanted anything to do with me. No one desired a woman who could out-perform them with a weapon, or knock them unconscious if she simply felt like it. Men wouldn’t even look at me.”
“Yet every man in that courtyard nearly broke their neck when you arrived that day for the king’s tournament.”
“They did not,” I argued.
“I was there, Auren. I witnessed it.”
“They were just astonished that a woman had even been invited to participate.”
He laughed this time, deep and smooth. “Think whatever you want, little one, I’m not here to argue. Just . . . take the compliment.”
Slowly, I met his gaze.
“You’re talented, and beautiful, and blessed by Karios himself. And you’re my Dionam. Needless to say, I’m overtaken with pride.”
Before I could respond, the door to Nivelle’s chamber swung open, and the witch leaned her head out to look both ways down the hall corridor. “What are you two arguing about out here?”
“We’re not arguing,” Silas and I said at the same time.
She looked back and forth between us, then pursed her lips.
“I came to summon you, actually,” I said to her.
“For what?”
“To see if you’d like to join me in a quick training session before we head east.”
Silas pushed off the wall. “Training?”
“You’re free to join as well,” I offered.
He kept his arms crossed. “I will never turn down a good training session.”
I swung my head back to Nivelle, awaiting her answer.
She started to protest. “I don’t have—”
“We’ll provide everything you need.” I smiled, and she shifted her jaw, as if weighing the risks and benefits.
“Fine,” she said as she stepped past the threshold.
The walk to the patio of The Keep was a quiet one.
When we stepped through the large double doors, Aremis was waiting for us. “Good, you made it.” He nodded to Silas. “And glad to see you are joining us as well.”
The sun reflected off Silas’s white wings as he stretched them out in the breeze. “Happy to.”
“Have you ever ported before?” Aremis asked Nivelle.
She shook her head. “No. But I’ve seen it done.” She gestured toward her brother. “Dionachs are able to port.”
“Good. So you understand the essence of it.”
“I guess.”
He stretched out his hand to her. “All it requires is that you have an anchor to the one who’s doing the porting. That way, they can take you with them.”
She stared at his hand.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “It feels like going into a wind tunnel for a brief moment. Quick as a blink.” I pressed my lips together, smothering a grin.
I’d knowingly said the same thing Niall had told me the first time I had been about to port with him.
And oh how untrue the words were for someone fresh into porting.
She eyed me warily, then placed her pale hand in Aremis’s. Silas took hold of his shoulder, and I his elbow.
“To The Elderwood,” I said.
We vanished into nothing, the echo of Nivelle’s yelp barreling down the tunnel of wind and space around us. A few seconds later, we materialized at the edge of the stream that skirted the large stone slab of a temple that never was. Silas caught Nivelle as she wobbled forward on unsteady footing.
Her eyes immediately found mine. “That was not ‘quick as a blink,’” she growled.
This time, I couldn’t help but laugh.
“You did well,” Aremis said as he stepped past us, toward the same foundation where Niall had trained me to port.
We were here again for two reasons. One, was so that I could learn how to port myself and someone else at the same time. The other reason . . .
Roirdan was crouched on the sizable stone slab, slinging daggers at a tree not ten feet away from him. The final blade left his hand in a fury, a blur of silver reflecting off the sunlight through the tree canopy as it soared through the air and sank into the bark, hilt deep.
He tossed his hair out of his face and stood, his back still facing us. When I began a slow, mocking clap, he spun.
I stepped up onto the platform and approached him. “Seems the pointers I gave you are paying off. This is leagues better than the last time I saw you throw a blade. You must be practicing daily . . . from the looks of it.”
Roirdan threw his head back and gave a mocking laugh. “You think you’re so funny.”
I snickered as I came up to him. “Been out here since you finished breakfast, have you? Is that how long it’s taken to finally make progress?” I peered around his hulking frame and pretended to struggle to see the other daggers that had found their mark—precisely where he’d aimed.
He stooped down to my eye level, and pointed at his target. “Clearly your eyesight is fading, because I count seven daggers in that tree.”
I turned my head toward him. “You can count?”
When he met my eyes, I gave him a wide smile—all teeth.
He let out a jovial growl, and his knees bent at the same time that he drove his shoulder into my side.
I folded over him, my hands landing on his back.
His arm wrapped around my middle, and he threw me over his shoulder like a ragdoll, taking me with him to the other side of the platform to retrieve his weapons.
Back at the edge of the pavilion, Silas looked like he was about to tear across the slab to wrench me free.
I bobbed against Roirdan’s muscular frame, swaying with each step he took, laughing heartily. “Don’t worry,” I called out, “he won’t go far, he’s too exhausted from throwing daggers.”
A pinch landed on the back of my calf.
“Ouch!” I giggled.
When we reached the tree, he slung me down, and I fell back against the bark, laughing once more.
“You’re a menace,” he said, wrinkling his nose amidst his grin. He pulled a blade out of the bark and slid it back into the baldric across his chest.
“And you are training Nivelle today,” I replied, catching my breath.
Another dagger wrenched free with a pop and the splitting sound of wood. “Says who?”
“Me. I see how you look at her.”
He gripped the next hilt and yanked. Hard.
“She’s a challenge, and you enjoy challenges.
Don’t you?” It wasn’t as much of a question as it was a statement.
Nivelle aggravated him, and in turn, he’d denied treating her like the powerful prowess she was used to being regarded as.
The dynamic was testy, volatile, but I was betting that was exactly what Nivelle needed in a training partner.
And at the very least, I’d get to tease Roirdan about it.
His smile was dripping with sarcasm as he tugged another dagger free. “If you think this is a good idea, you’re terribly mistaken. She hates me.”