Gandrett played with the pommel of her sword as she walked up to Nehelon’s door. The tenth hour, sharp, the message had said, and knowing how fast word got around here at the priory, she made sure she arrived a good time earlier just so the Meister wouldn’t have a reason to punish her.
She had long been done with her oatmeal cookies when one of the younger acolytes came running with a piece of paper with the Meister’s zig-zaggy handwriting speaking of urgency. So Gandrett had dropped her book—prayers to Vala—and anxious to be on her way, she had almost run over Kaleb, who had come to check on her after she had ditched him at breakfast. A few awkward words had been the result, and his cheeks had burned as she promised to sit with him at dinner that night. Empty words, she knew, for if Nehelon had it his way, she might no longer be here for dinner. A shudder ran over her back as she approached the carved door on the first floor, footsteps muffled by the thick rug that was unique to this level of the building.
She hadn’t even lifted a hand to knock when Nehelon’s voice sounded through the wood, beckoning her to enter, the cold tone of it making her hair stand.
What was the worst thing that could happen? She straightened her back and smoothed her tunic. Nothing—nothing could happen. At least nothing worse than what had already happened. The Meister had lent her to the man with that taunting gaze.
She took a steadying breath and brushed back a loose strand of hair then opened the door with more force than necessary, only to stop dead on the threshold—
There stood the man who had almost defeated her, the man who had glanced at her with glacial eyes, who had wielded his sword as if it was the only thing he’d ever done in his life, and—
And he spoke to a bird. Crouching on the floor, one hand resting on the windowsill, and perched on one finger sat a fat, gray bird, tweeting cheerily.
Gandrett was about to turn on her heels and leave when Nehelon, his face hidden by a curtain of dark hair, whispered something at the bird then flicked his hand and watched the creature take flight.
“Where else did you think I get the news from in this gods-forsaken place?” His words were as icy as the day before, but his brow lifted as he tore his attention away from the window and turned to look at her.
Gandrett’s eyes involuntarily shuttered. Nehelon had changed out of his leathers and was now wearing black pants and a tunic of equal color but with subtle embroidery at the collar and around the buttons and on the sleeves. His hair was washed, wavy, giving him a more civilized look than the dirt and leather the day before. But what struck her wasn’t his outfit but his face: clean and with the slightest bit of emotion—even if she had no name for what was playing in his eyes, it did something to her stomach that reminded her of nausea, but a surprisingly comfortable kind of nausea.
“Not gods-forsaken,” she gathered her thoughts and corrected him, remembering at that instant just how much disdain she held for the man across the room, who slowly and gracefully rose to his feet.
He cocked his head as if he couldn’t believe she had just replied in such a way, then leaned against the windowsill. “I haven’t seen any sign the gods—the male gods,” he clarified, “have any interest in this place.”
For a moment, he paused as if waiting to see whether Gandrett would be able to hold her tongue this time.
She was.
“But the goddess—Vala—she is here. I can tell by the storms that keep circling Everrun like a stroke of her hand, and the magic in the citadel, the magic in some of the acolytes.”
The words weren’t what had Gandrett gaping at him, for once forgetting she was doing exactly that. He ran a hand through his hair, and though she’d promised herself to face this man at her strongest, not giving him a flicker of herself, what he exposed when his fingers slid absently through his hair, pulling it back behind his ears… pointed ears.
Chapter Five
While Gandrett was still gawking, Nehelon’s face turned ashen with realization. Even if the dark strands had fallen back into place, covering what he had exposed, Gandrett knew by the look on his face that he was aware she’d seen them.
Fae. He was Fae. And he had made a fool of her all this time…
Gandrett swallowed and browsed through what little she had learned about Fae. Magic. They had magic. And not just the simple kind the Vala-blessed possessed.
While among humans, only those blessed by the goddess at their consecration had magic, there was one territory in Neredyn where magic—in all of its varieties—was as common as bad stew in the human territories: The kingdom of the Fae. A kingdom feared for over a thousand years, its nobles dormant in the evergreen forests of Ulfray, sworn to remain behind the lines where the magical green ended. Sworn by an oath that was as old as the desert around Everrun. And bound by a magic more ancient than the forgotten islands in the west.
That magic—the magic of the Fae, was feared. And if someone, anyone but the ones blessed by Vala, showed any signs they had it, they were exiled to Ulfray, leaving what happened to them up to whatever Fae were still alert enough to deal with them. And the legends she’d heard in her childhood, the legends even told by Nahir, didn’t suggest they were a merciful people, but a cruel one, killing for sport and feasting on their prey’s fear.
Gandrett’s heart slushed in her throat, racing as if it could escape without her feet, but Nehelon’s gaze—
From the look on his face, he was calculating the best way to put her down before she could work up a scream. The fastest way. Maybe a blow to the head with his steel Fae hands. Or rip out her throat with his perfectly white, now-bared teeth. She couldn’t muster the courage to turn her back to him and run. For the first time in her life—for the first time since that day she’d been torn from her mother’s arms—she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.
So as she kept staring, gawking bluntly, Nehelon stared her down, a warrior no longer, but a predator assessing the kill he was about to make.
Cold sweat covered Gandrett’s neck, and she forced her mind to function, to remain calm—or to return to that detached mode she went into while fighting.
As if the memory of herself wielding a sword broke the chain on her mind, her body started following her orders again, but there was something else holding her back. An external force—
And then, the door behind her shut so fast she could hardly see it move.
But Nehelon was still standing where he had been a heartbeat ago, his lips parting over his teeth in a feral smile that didn’t allow for much hope.
“You’re Fae,” Gandrett finally gouged out the words, and she wasn’t surprised her voice was shaky… or that it sounded like an accusation.
Because it was.
It was an accusation. If he was Fae, he was bound to dwell in Ulfray where the trees were growing over the dormant people. The dormant danger, the threat her ancestors, and their ancestors before them, had fought to contain, to banish from the human realm.
“How observant you are,” was all that Nehelon replied. But she could tell how powerful he was from the way everything about his demeanor, his posture, his movements, had changed. No longer slow and graceful—human. But quick, fluid, lethal.
Gandrett fought against the invisible hand—not a hand, a wall, a layer, solid as rock, yet transparent as air—magic—enclosing her and, again, found herself unable to move.