Gandrett’s mouth opened and closed, trying to find something smart to reply, and came up blank. His face, once more, had changed, a crack in the mask of stone he’d been wearing since the moment he’d revealed his secret.
That alone was enough to ask, “You said I was going to be in the service of Lord Tyrem Brenheran,” she swallowed the disgust at the taste of the name on her tongue, “but that I am to work for you.”
Nehelon held her gaze, that crack in his mask gradually sealing.
“What will I be doing, exactly?” she asked, for lack of better wording. So far, he had given her nothing besides that the task would be of utmost importance, but neither he nor the Meister had mentioned what it actually was she would be doing. Why she had been bought out…
“I will share in time.”
Gandrett huffed and wondered if she had truly expected to get an answer—a real answer.
Nehelon didn’t speak again until nightfall when he raised another earthen circle as a shelter, handed her food, and let her sleep without taunting this time. No snide comments or mocking.
On the third day of riding, the landscape changed, and Gandrett knew it was only a matter of time until they would ride through grass-covered lands and see streams and forests lining the roads. But first, they needed to cross the ruins of Ithrylan, its two towers silently hovering on each side of the valley that led them out of the desert.
“We cross right in the middle,” Nehelon glanced up at the ruins—each tower like a giant shadow in the distance, miles and miles apart. Twin towers. One sitting in a lake right where the Fae lands met the mountain range, the other crumbling away where the chain of mountains ended dropping into the East Sea.
Gandrett’s gaze followed his. He could tell by the slight shift in her posture as she took in the gargantuan, stone structures, which seemed to be forming a gate of otherworldly size. Not for travelers but for armies the count of thousands and thousands and thousands of men.
In the evening sun, the girl’s face looked flushed, alive, the grim expression replaced by awe for once. Nehelon allowed himself to take in the hues of pink and orange painting her skin, and the palette of reds bouncing off her hair, before he nudged his horse forward, Gandrett’s gelding following suit.
He could feel them, the horrors of the battlefield as they rode on, the countless lives that had been lost on that very soil, as if the dead were calling out for him. And the same way he had ignored it on the way to the priory, he shut out the sensation now. They were too close to Ithrylan to stop for the night, and if they continued at a steady pace, they would make it to Elste before nightfall. The closest village to the ruins where some merchants and traders held residence as well as some shady creatures of the realms. He had passed through on his way south, glanced at the bright window and the small tavern from outside, and decided that with a human in tow, it would be a good place to stay for a night to clean up and get a proper meal in her belly.
The absolute silence was the first thing he noticed. Then Gandrett’s gasp sounded at the shadow darting at them from the side. Nehelon’s sword was in his hand at the same moment he held out Gandrett’s plain blade to her. She grabbed it without taking her eyes off the giant desert lion zooming at them at neck-breaking speed.
“Stay close,” he growled, eyes on the lethal cat darting at them.
Gandrett had never seen any of them. Heard, yes, but never actually seen. They were the reason they didn’t stray from the priory or explore the ghost city of Everrun. But what she beheld when she watched the animal’s elastic movements had her already picturing it dodging Nehelon’s sword and going right for his throat. For a fraction of a second, the thought gave her a weird satisfaction. If the desert lion was busy with Nehelon long enough for Gandrett to land one blow—just one well-positioned blow, she could be rid of the beast and the Fae who had purchased her for the man who had ordered her admission to the Order of Vala. The man who, by his order, had taken her childhood away. And her entire life. Maybe it was justice that now that she was skilled to a degree no one but the fighters of the order achieved, he had to pay handsomely for her.
But freedom—
She took a defensive position atop her horse, prepared to fight as she had been trained to do. One blow.
The cat was racing for them like an arrow. Had either of them had a bow on them, one well-placed shot, and the cat would be down, but with their blades as the only weapons, the cat came dangerously close, its eyes not on the Fae but, as Gandrett realized to her horror, on her.
Her hands were steady as she assessed the movements, the weak spots in the cat’s anatomy, its throat, its neck, the soft part on the back part of its abdomen…
She was still sizing up the death on paws as the cat leaped, and as it catapulted itself toward her, it slammed into an invisible wall and dropped to the ground where it remained motionless. She gaped, her mind lagging behind what her eyes beheld. “How—?”
With a flick of his hand, Nehelon indicated it had been him.
“Magic,” was all Gandrett was able to say. He had done it with his magic. An invisible shield.
And then, shame came over her. While she had been calculating the odds that the desert lion may rid her of her new master, he had actually saved her life. She should be thanking him, but her mouth remained immobile and didn’t comment when Nehelon slipped off his horse and strolled to the unconscious cat with the comment, “As I spent my savings on you,” wearing a twisted grin and a shrug, “their furs pay well,” and drove his sword into the animal’s chest then skinned it.
Nehelon could taste the horror and disgust in the air between them. Good. If only for a second, he’d seen it there in her face, the hope the lion would go for him and end him. And she would have let him bleed out and made a run for it. He checked her expression as he rolled up the desert lion skin and tied it to his saddle, her features slowly returning to the schooled indifference she wore most of the time.
He could still hear it. The thrumming of her heart as it raced in her chest. She had trained with swords and fought people, but had she truly ever been exposed to the threat of a wild cat-like the ones living in those ruins? Had she ever killed? From the look on her face, she didn’t have that type of blood on her hands. Her fighting so far had been all in training, sparring; not the real thing. Though, even when she had found him climbing the wall, he hadn’t doubted for a second that she was capable of driving that blade through his chest or slitting his throat. The Meister had been right. And if she were to assist him in his mission, he would need both sides of her—the virtuous vessel to Vala as much as the ruthless fighter who was ready to let a powerful opponent bleed out.
Without another look at the carcass lying in a puddle of blood, he mounted his horse, and once more, they set in motion.
The sun was slowly disappearing, and no other threats were within hearing distance as they were almost out of the desert. Almost. Before them, right where they passed between the two towers of Ithrylan, a seam of spring grass spread to the north as if someone had drawn an arbitrary line in the dirt, forbidding the grass to grow beyond it.
Beside him, Gandrett gasped at the sight, forgetting her self-chosen muteness, and commented, “The Meister told us about it, but I never believed…”