Chapter 21 NEVER ANGER A GNOME
Chapter twenty-one
NEVER ANGER A GNOME
Ornella
Iwoke to familiar footsteps and groaned as I covered my throbbing head.
I had way overindulged in Rian’s wine and cneasú the night before.
My mouth was dry enough to make me nauseous, and yet the cushion under my cheek was wet from me drooling on it all night.
I did not remember falling asleep, but I hadn’t even made it off the cushion I’d been sitting on in the main room.
And I could tell that my magic still had not recovered from the chuka powder to absolve myself of the miserable hangover.
“Fuck,” I groaned.
“I see Rian was here,” Ciaran smirked.
He must have knocked over some empty wine bottles because I heard them clink and clatter together.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded without lifting my head to look at him. There was no way we were due to leave for Mionlach for hours yet.
“Ensuring you eat,” he said drolly, just as the delicious scent of smoked meat and fresh bread reached me.
“Oh, fuck yes,” I mumbled and dragged myself upright to peer up at where he stood over me with a plate of food in one hand and a waterskin in the other.
Ciaran wrinkled his nose at me, not even bothering to try and mask his disgust as I sat primly so he could put the plate on my lap.
I also snatched the water and drank half of it before the cap even hit the floor.
I was surprised to taste an herb in the water; something vaguely familiar that I was pretty sure would help my headache.
I wanted to ignore him as I ate, but I could not help keeping an eye on Ciaran as he began to move around Sage’s tent.
His mouth flattened and that knot appeared between his brows as he brushed his fingers over the art and wooden instruments from other courts.
He probably remembered Sage collecting some of those souvenirs.
“Rian likes to drink and smoke all his problems away,” he cautioned me without meeting my eyes.
“Suits me,” I mumbled around a mouthful of my food. While I felt like troll dung, at least I had managed to sleep through the night without crying.
“It does not,” Ciaran assured me, turning so his eyes could flicker over the state of me in judgment again.
“Oh, fuck you,” I snarled, giving him the finger before lifting the waterskin to chug the rest of the water.
“When you are done, I am taking you with me to the sparring field to start training the new recruits.”
I nearly choked on the water before lowering the skin to gape at him. “You must be out of your mind!”
“It would certainly be a better outlet than the one you went with last night,” he defended. “Besides, I seem to be the only one concerned by the fact that our greatest asset against the Sylvan still cannot summon her armour.”
“Ugh! I knew you wouldn’t be able to leave that alone for very long,” I muttered. I pressed my fingers against my eyes to try and alleviate the aching behind them.
“If you continue to be untrained then it will not matter how useful your power is. You will inevitably become a liability to us, little doe,” Ciaran maintained sternly.
“And you plan on remedying that situation right now?” I demanded in exasperation before I forced myself to take a deep breath. “Look, I do not disagree with you about the training. I need it. But I am not at my best right now.”
“You certainly are not. Which is why it is even more important for you to accompany me,” Ciaran maintained. “No one should be alone after losing a mate. Sage would never allow it if it was one of us,” he added quietly.
I had been about to snarl back at him for his insistence, but his final words about Sage made me stop and stare up at him in suspicion.
“Wait! Are you two taking turns watching me? Is that why Rian spent the night, and now you are here so early? To make sure that I am never alone?”
“You may thank us later when you’re in a better frame of mind to appreciate our efforts,” he assured me with an infuriating little wink.
“You fucking—” I bit off the insult with a low growl of frustration while he knelt in front of me. He was a little smarter than I would have given him credit for because he knew to stay just out of striking distance.
“I did not think you would object to the opportunity to learn my weaknesses,” he admitted. And damn him for making it completely impossible for me to decline.
An hour later, I was regretting all my life decisions while leaning against a tree and fighting to keep what remained in my stomach down.
“I am going to… kill you,” I panted just before losing the battle and vomiting once again.
Ciaran merely tsked at me from where he stood ahead of me on the trail, waiting for me to finish being sick.
“A waste of good food,” I heard him mutter before he took pity on me and walked over with the waterskin for me to rinse out my mouth again. But I was never going to forgive him for this torture. It was the third time that I had thrown up so far on this stupid run.
“I still don’t see what this has to do with summoning my armour,” I complained as I lifted my head. All of the warriors we had been running with were long gone.
“You are desperately out of shape. I have seen children with better stamina,” Ciaran advised matter-of-factly.
My jaw dropped as I turned to glare at him in offense, but he merely gestured back the way we had come as if that was supposed to mean something.
“Are you calling me fat? I like my curves!” I snarled, my ears pinned back in aggression.
“I am talking about your endurance! We have barely covered twelve kilometres in the last hour,” he explained. Then he snatched the skin back and continued jogging down the forest trail. He clearly expected me to follow.
I might have slipped into the Tithriall through the roots of the tree in front of me and met him back at the edge of the forest. But the chuka powder was still repressing my magic too much to risk it. So I tried not to sulk and forced my wobbly legs to comply with his pace.
Ciaran did not slow again until we finally reached the training field where I slumped into the grass at his feet in front of all the new recruits.
They would have gotten back from the warm-up run a while ago, but they stood waiting with hands behind their backs like proper little soldiers.
Until I hit the ground inelegantly, and then they started to shoot looks at one another.
Ciaran ignored their obvious confusion and split them into smaller groups to practice what looked like footwork. When he was done, he walked back over to where I laid, casting a shadow over my prone form.
“Get up, little doe,” he demanded wearily.
“I cannot feel my legs,” I whined, but he merely began prodding at my thigh with his toe, pressing progressively harder until I finally relented and clambered upright.
“You didn’t even break a sweat!” I accused with an envious glare at his dry tunic.
“Sage said you had some training, so show me what you know,” he invited, crossing his arms over his chest and nodding toward my feet.
It had been a very long time since I was trained with the Foraoise Elves, but I had refreshed my memory a little with Sage.
So I did my best to demonstrate what footwork I could recall while Ciaran watched impassively with that slight scowl on his face.
I was beginning to think it was the grumpy asshole’s default expression.
He asked all kinds of inane questions from what kind of weapon I preferred to whether I had trained for solitary combat or formation.
And it did not escape my notice that he was giving me almost all of his attention.
There were other trainers present helping to facilitate the whole group under his supervision, but he stayed working with me.
And there were a few of the female students who were less than impressed.
“Everyone else is done now,” I pointed out hopefully a few hours later. We were the last two people on the field besides the trainers who were gathering the equipment.
“You are not everyone else, you are a rider, and we still need to try summoning your armour,” he reminded.
But at least he finally sat down with his legs crossed under him the way Amira sat when she was about to do her witchy meditations. I found the thought of him doing that was humorous until it occurred to me that it seemed like something he might actually do.
Ciaran motioned for me to sit with him, and I happily sprawled on the grass. He frowned and waited wordlessly until I sat up and did my best to mirror his position with my hands resting on my knees.
“Will summoning it not be easy once I’m initiated?”
“Why would you think that?” he asked.
“I don’t know, I just assumed being more connected to all of you would make all those things easier,” I admitted. Especially after Sage was able to help me see the shields in my mind that I’d never even known were there.
“Connecting with your armour and your vargr have nothing to do with your connection to the other riders,” Ciaran assured me. “Now let us begin.”
Unsurprisingly, I did not manage to summon my armour, but I did finally sense the vague shape of it like a spectre hovering at the edge of my consciousness. I just couldn’t figure out how to bring it forward and into the real world. But at least I felt my magic finally come back.
“How do I make it corporeal?” I asked impatiently.
“You do not need to make your magic corporeal for it to manifest. You simply will it,” Ciaran insisted.
He had shown me the utmost patience despite his usual grouchiness. I didn’t like to appear weak to others, but his no-nonsense persistence somehow wore down my usual defenses. And it occurred to me after a few hours that he likely knew how to work with me because of Aodhan.
“But it does not feel like a part of me,” I found myself admitting in frustration.
“That is probably because you have not bonded with it. It has been a long time since my induction, but I seem to recall that it got easier once I summoned it initially.”