Eder woke, shortly after he returned to his room, and spent the afternoon watching him with wary eyes, tracking Kane's pacing back and forth.
When the time came for them to eat their evening meal, late on in the day, Terrell did not emerge to join them in Sampson and Davena's room, and when Kane finally braced himself to open the door, the room was empty, abandoned.
The news of Terrell's departure cast a shadow over the meal. Sampson suggested looking for him in the garrison, as he'd maybe changed his mind about waiting with Kane, but nobody wanted to leave the Academy at night to go and find him.
That night, Kane tossed and turned, wide awake from his midday siesta and the anger that still coursed through him, hours after the fight. He fell into an uneasy sleep, as the moon rose high over the city.
In his dream, his arms were around someone, warm and comfortable, who smelled of green grass and a deep, primal musk. He nestled into dark curls, and the person rolled over. He found himself face to face with Cahaya’s white eyes, curiously penetrating despite their blindness. She was glowing, light shining from her face as she smiled at him, but her light only reached so far, and the rest of the scenery was a dim, dark blur.
“What are you doing here?” Kane asked, and his voice sounded both echoing and faint.
Cahaya smiled and said something, but the sound Kane heard was nonsense, birdsong and giggling and snippets of hymns.
“I can’t understand what you’re saying,” he said.
She laughed, and it sounded like gulls and the chittering of squirrels. She touched his cheek, and her palm was like ice. With a solemn expression, she said something else, and Kane saw a small round bruise appear on the inside of her wrist. More appeared, forming two neat rows of dark circles. As he watched, the bruises opened into sores, and dripped with blood.
“This is a nightmare, isn’t it?” he said, as he watched more holes open up along the line of her collarbone, down into the crevice of her sternum.
Her expression became pained, and she said one word. Through the noise of cats and chickens, he read her lips.
No.
She squirmed, restrained by invisible bonds, her arms stuck to her side and her head pulled back. Her eyes grew wide with panic, and she screamed, wordless sounds of bells and hawks and whistles taking the place of her voice.
She began to slide away, out of the dim circle of light, and Kane grabbed her wrist to keep her there. Her mouth was moving, the same two shapes over and over again, and the blood from her wrists made his grip slippery. His hand slipped, and he rocked backwards, off-balance. When he righted himself, she was gone.
He opened his eyes with a start, and immediately winced as the stiffness in his neck made itself known. The room was dark, lit only by moonlight, and Eder lay asleep on his bed still.
Looking down at his hand, it seemed at first to still be slick with Cahaya’s blood. Not blood, only sweat. Nothing to worry about. He got up, stretched his cold muscles, and left the room.
He wandered through the hallways with no clear sense of where he was going, occasionally taking a left or right turn based on a gut feeling. After half an hour of these useless meanderings, he walked through an archway and found himself in what was unmistakably a laboratory, ringed with complicated looking equipment, jars of mysterious substances, and chalkboards covered with inexplicable numbers, the central and most prominent one headed with the text: Subject 215.
Unusually for a place of learning, this lab had been set up with a bed, and in the bed lay Cahaya. Her face was pale, and she was covered in sheets up to the neck. Kane thought she looked like a corpse, and started forward.
“Excuse me,” a voice said from the shadows. “You can’t be in here now.”
The vague dark figure resolved itself into the clean shaven Academic from earlier, either Aqil or Baqir. Kane was not impressed at having his way barred.
“I’m her friend.”
“That’s as may be, but the subject is resting. She has had a long day of trials and there is more data to be recorded tomorrow.”
“She doesn’t look well,” Kane said. He couldn’t see Cahaya’s chest moving, and panic gripped him.
“She is recovering her strength for tomorrow. She won’t be able to do that if you’re in here keeping her awake," the academic said tartly, still gesturing for Kane to return through the archway.
Kane wanted to shove him out of the way, and go to check on Cahaya, to make sure she was whole and safe and not suffering from the horrible wounds he had seen in his dream. He had an inkling that was why she was covered with the sheet, and he knew even though it might have been academically necessary, he would have laid waste to the lab had he seen those neat, regimented holes in her skin for real.
He finally saw her chest move, the steady rise and fall of someone sleeping deeply, and he relaxed, just barely.
“I will come and see her tomorrow morning.”
“She may be busy.”
“I will come and see her anyway,” Kane said, and turned on his heel to leave the room, before he was drawn inexorably over to examine Cahaya’s potential injuries.
He looked back, once, at her sleeping face, so pale and still, and a shudder ran through him as he remembered the vision of her screaming over and over again.
Help me.
✽✽✽
Kane and the Child Guard will return in Book 2: The Sidhe Queen
✽✽✽
Pronunciation Guide
Auris - OR-is
Aurian - OR-ee-an
Avila - a-VEE-la
Cahaya - ka-HAY-a
Caron - KA-ron
Cruach - KRU-akh
Dathanna - da-THAN-a
Davena - DA-ve-na
Eachann - AY-khan
Eder - AY-der
Ederne - ee-DERN
Elixir Innocentiae - e-LIX-ir in-o-CENT-i-eye
(Forest of) Ciaradh - kee-RATH
Immaculatii - im-ak-u-LART-ee-eye
Immaculata - im-ak-u-LART-a
Immaculatus - im-ak-u-LART-us
Kallistrate - kal-is-TRART-ee
Kane - KAYN
Oriya - or-EYE-a
Piaras - py-AR-as
(River) Piuthar - py-OO-thar
Sampson - SAMP-son
Sidhe - SHEE
Sophia - sof-EE-a
Terrell - TER-rell
Acknowledgements
There are many people without whom this book wouldn't be here today. To all those who read this book in its embryonic stages, thank you for your time, your feedback, your encouragement and your critique.
To my husband Chris, for cinematic thinking and helping me springboard my ideas, and for helping me turn a fun little story into a novel series.
To the rest of my chosen family and friends, for being there, for drinking tea and watching me flail my hands and try to express all of the things when I couldn't quite put them into words, for talking me down off my mental ledge when I spiral into 'what if' overthinking, I love you all.
About The Author
Lorcan E Montgomery
Lorcan 'Lor' Montgomery is a queer, Liverpool-based fantasy author, mostly writing novels centred around LGBT characters; queer people often don't get represented in books or other media so ey enjoys writing a diverse line-up of characters to hopefully give young (and not so young) LGBT people characters they can easily identify with.
Lor is a writer, activist, artist and self-described Jack-of-all-trades who lives with three troublesome cats, two nesting partners (who are more trouble than said cats) and bakes far more cakes than the family can possibly eat.
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The Child Guard Page 26