Chapter 24
Stefano grunted as he blocked my kick. I ducked under his swinging arm and sent my fist forward as a distraction. I brought my opposite fist in for the blow, hooking up toward his lungs.
He stepped back, just dodging the blow, a look of surprise on his face. “Did I do something to piss you off?” he asked.
“It’s not you. Sorry,” I said, swiping at the sweat on my forehead. The justice hearing had left me angry and frustrated, partially at those who sought to exploit others, but mostly at myself for not making any more progress in discovering the path.
“Don’t be sorry. It’s awesome,” he reassured, stepping away to drink some water. He extended a cup to me, which I greedily accepted.
“I appreciate you doing this with me. Really,” I told him, knowing he didn’t need to be taking blows and getting beat on. These sessions weren’t in his job description, but they were immensely helpful.
He shrugged. “Like you said, doing this will help you better protect yourself, and my job is to protect you.”
Still, he was going above and beyond. He may not have been as smooth as Callen or Harthon, but his skill was unmistakable, and I was lucky that he was willing to share those skills with me.
“How did you get so good at fighting, anyway?”
He took another gulp before refilling his cup. “Harthon’s a good teacher. I’ve been with him for a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“Seven years.”
My eyes bugged. “Seven years? How old were you when you found his group? Eleven or twelve?”
“Ten,” he corrected.
So he was with Harthon during that mysterious time of his life that he kept so hidden.
Ever since the wolf incident, I’d learned nothing more of Harthon’s past. With him being so busy, I’d had little time alone with him, and what conversation we did have didn’t welcome those topics.
But I was still just as curious as I had been before.
I plopped into a chair, slowly sipping my drink. “How did you end up with them?”
Stefano scratched his head. “Their people and my people had a…run-in. He took me in.”
I knew without asking that it was probably the same type of run-in we’d had with the looters. Violent and deadly.
He didn’t mention any parents, and I wondered if he was an orphan.
It would probably be too intrusive to ask.
We got along, but we weren’t necessarily friends.
I liked him, and I was rather certain he liked me, but just because he was forced to spend every day in my company didn’t mean that we were confidantes.
“What was it like, being with them?” I asked instead.
He leaned his hip against the table, swirling the water in his cup.
“It was hard. We moved a lot. There was no space for people who couldn’t help, so I was forced to train.
But I wanted to learn how to fight, and Harthon watched over me.
North and Callen too, when they came along. I owe them a lot.”
“How come you moved so much?”
“Harthon was on a mission. We were chasing down some people and sometimes being chased by others, so it wasn’t an option to sit in one spot.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
He smiled a little. “I didn’t mind it. It was an adventure, and they were my home. Still are.” There was a warmth in the way he said it.
“Who were you chasing?”
“There was another group that Harthon knew from his past, and we spent most of our time hunting them. But there were other people, too. Sometimes we’d be hired to take care of rebels and stuff like that,” he answered, and I tried not to give away my pleasure at unraveling a new layer of Harthon’s past.
Time to push. “What was that group from his past?”
He cleared his throat and pushed away from the table. “That’s something to ask Harthon,” he answered. “Let’s run another sequence and call it a night.”
That was a wall if I’d ever witnessed one.
* * *
Empty darkness surrounded me, but I wasn’t as scared as I perhaps should have been. The darkness was more like a woolen blanket than a void, the air comfortable.
A ball of light appeared before me, suspended in the air. It swirled, much like the walls of the Domus that Harthon had shown me from afar.
A tugging pulled on my ribs at the same as the ball began to move, slowly floating away from me. I knew that tugging. It was the same one that pulled me up those tower stairs to the south-facing window. I followed.
The ground was uneven but soft beneath my feet, lumps rolling under my soles that reminded me of tree roots in the forest. I glanced down, seeking to confirm my thoughts, but I couldn’t find my feet in the blackness, the light contained close to the ball.
It was a miracle that I wasn’t tripping over myself.
When I glanced up, it was to see the light curve to the right. I adjusted my path, pulled after its gently sloping path like a magnet.
There was a flash of green to my right. I paused only long enough to see a single tree branch reaching toward me like an arm, three vibrantly green leaves dripping from its end.
Leaves that were alive.
I gasped, running my fingers along their veiny flesh, reveling in their color and beauty. No deadness threatened their edges, no dry patches marred their surface. They were perfection, soft and supple beneath my fingers, standing strong from their stems.
Sharpness dug into my breastbone. The light hadn’t paused with me, and I’d allowed it to trail too far away. I ran to reach it, the uncomfortable feeling receding as I closed the distance, and then it began to ascend.
A slope formed beneath my feet, and I climbed with the light, not questioning where it might take me but accepting that it was right. Maybe it would show me another branch. More of those stunning leaves I’d only ever seen when I was younger and a few rare trees still clung to life.
It leveled out, turned sharply to the left, and continued loping forward. Something hard and unmoving met my thighs.
That wouldn’t do.
We couldn’t be separated again.
I lifted one leg, straddling it, bringing my other leg over and pushing off—
“Etarla!”
Cold air beat against my face. I opened my eyes.
And my heart dropped from my body.
I was suspended in the air, only an inch of the tower’s window sill beneath my bottom, my feet dangling stories above the Citadel as cavernous shadows stretched before me.
The arm digging into my stomach yanked me backward before I could even understand what was happening.
“What the fuck are you doing? Have you lost your damned mind?” The charged words were followed by a slew of curses as I was dragged from the sill and drawn into a solid wall.
I recognized the voice as my heart began to pound with adrenaline.
Harthon.
My feet hit the freezing stone floor and I was spun in a dizzying rush. A big hand shifted to my back, locking me against his tense body.
“Answer me, Etarla. What were you thinking?” he demanded, his free hand tangling in my hair and pulling my head back. His hair hung loose around his face, and his eyes—they were wild, tracking across my face in panicked sweeps as if making sure I was here before him.
“I-I don’t know,” I stammered, overwhelmed by him and the dream and the fact that I’d almost shoved myself off that sill.
His brows knitted together as his fingers tightened, firming their grip in my hair but not hurting. “You almost flung yourself off that ledge. That’s a ten story drop, Etarla. You would have been dead on impact.”
Realization settled like rocks in my stomach. “I was dreaming. I was following the light. I didn’t know what…what I was doing.”
I became aware of my hands resting on the muscled planes of his chest—his very bare, solid chest, dusted with dark hair and speckled with scars—as some of the panic sharpening his features began to fade.
“What light?”
“It was a ball of light, and it was moving. I had to follow it. I didn’t know I was actually…moving.” Moving to the tower, the same one I’d come to again and again.
Harthon released my strands, his palm sliding down to encircle my nape. I twisted my neck to stare at the window I’d almost launched myself from.
It was the south-facing window.
Harthon followed my gaze. “Ana tells me you’ve been coming to this tower every day. Is that the same window as always?”
I turned back to him, my limbs beginning to tremble. I’d almost died.
Remembering his question, I gave him a stuttered nod.
“Have you ever been compelled to continue out of it?”
“No. The feeling always stops when I take in the view. But I didn’t even know I was at the window.” I gulped, my knees becoming unsteady. “I can’t believe I almost walked myself out of the tower.”
With all the violent fights I’d participated in, dying in this way would have been a twisted kind of irony.
My hands began to shake, and Harthon pulled me flush against him.
I melted into the grounding embrace, letting my head rest on his chest. Were it any other time, I would have been timid about lying against him, never mind his bare skin.
It was something I’d never done before. But Harthon’s arms were the comfort I needed, his familiar scent and strength signaling safety, and just for a moment, I needed it on a basic level.
“When I saw you there, ready to push off, I thought…fuck, Etarla, never do that again.”
“I’ll try not to. It wasn’t intentional,” I breathed, slowly coming to earth as his hand swept across my back.
“Tomorrow, we’re taking horses and traveling in that direction to see if anything happens. Something is clearly telling you to go that way,” he decided, and I nodded against him.
As deeply disturbing as it was that I’d nearly flung myself to my death, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat grateful for the dream. It was the first time in the past week that I’d felt something beyond the urge to simply stare at the hills and valley in the distance.
It was progress.
Mildly terrifying progress.
“What time is it?”
“An hour or two past midnight.” His response was a vibration against my cheek.
“How did you know I was walking here?” It wasn’t as if my room was guarded.