“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.
Nehelon’s grin widened as if he found something indescribably amusing and pushed away from the windowsill, eyes never blinking. Not even once.
Gandrett’s hand strained to reach for her sword, but the invisible grasp didn’t allow so much as a quarter of an inch. Sweat was plastering her hair to her neck and was trickling down her back and chest, leaving stains on the pale fabric.
“You’re afraid,” he mused as if that was something to ponder rather than the effect of his involuntary revelation.
He took a stride toward her, then another, and another, pushing Gandrett’s heart to its limits as it raced in fear, until he stopped one short step away, towering over her by over one head and glancing down at her as if he had just discovered a very pleasant dish.
Had her chest not started to ache, her eardrums not throbbed from the thundering of her weak, human heart, she might have noticed to a full extent how different Nehelon looked compared to what she had seen that first time she had laid eyes on him. His face was smooth planes and sharp angles, sun-kissed. And heart-wrenchingly beautiful. With eyes, cold and calculating, that had nothing to do with the smile on his full lips. He was Fae, and it was obvious on every inch of his gods-damned, chiseled features. As if someone had pulled off a layer of disguise, a veil to conceal the damning reality.
“Good,” he said as if to himself, making Gandrett’s eyes shutter as she realized she wasn’t only staring from fear, but with a kind of morbid fascination.
“Here is what will happen, Gandrett Brayton.” His voice was a symphony of shimmering velvet. And lethal like a butchering knife. Gandrett shrank back against the wall of magic enclosing her, finding herself in the exact same position. “You didn’t see what I am. You were never in here. You missed me in my chambers and went right to the citadel to see the Meister and meet me there.” He flashed his teeth as he leaned closer, staring her down. “You will go upstairs, pack your things, then meet me at the citadel. When we step in front of the Meister, I will do the talking. And you will agree to everything I say. Every demand, every condition of my bargain with the Meister, you will nod your consent.” His face was an inch from hers, breath hot on her cheeks, gaze hard and deep like blue diamond. “Understood?”
Gandrett nodded, finding her head to be the only part of her body capable of moving. There was nothing not to understand in his words.
“If you linger, if you speak to anyone, if you try to make a run for it,” he added, voice low and clear. “If you try, I will know. I will come find you. And you will regret you ever met me.”
Again, Gandrett’s head bobbed as if compelled by his words. Not that she needed another reason to regret having met
him. It was already ingrained in her system to hate him, to fear him, to put as much distance between him and whatever was dear to her. But that didn’t matter now, did it?
As if he suddenly lost interest, Nehelon turned around and strode to the armchair by the bedroom door, leaving her standing like a petrified doll. “Now is the time to swing your pretty legs and run upstairs,” he said, flinging himself into the chair, and watched her with mild amusement as he crossed one ankle over a knee. And when Gandrett didn’t react, he barked, “Now.”
Like a bolt of lightning, his voice tore through her core, almost making her fall forward as he lifted the spell on her. Nehelon bestowed on her a mocking grin before he gestured at the door and cocked his head, not needing to say anything else prior to Gandrett’s survival instinct kicking in again, and she reached for the doorknob behind her, never taking her eyes off the Fae male lounging in a chair across the room as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Chapter Six
Gandrett ran, ran, ran, not looking left or right as she climbed up the stairs to her room. She prayed to Vala that Surel wasn’t there for fear she would ask questions. Questions which cost time to evade when she wasn’t allowed to give answers.
She might have grown up away from the world, but she was no fool, understanding that the Fae could hear through walls, that they could smite humans at a whim without lifting as much as a finger. If she talked, Nehelon would know. She was certain of it. He was probably down there, straining his Fae ears to pick up every step of hers.
Gandrett quickened her pace as she made it to the dim corridor, out of breath, not from the physical strain but fear, from the feeling that she was being watched. Only a couple more steps, and she’d be able to fulfill Nehelon’s first order. Pack her things.
She ditched a girl who had a room at the other end of the corridor, noting her curious glance from the corner of her eyes—no one ever saw Gandrett out of breath. She had become so much a master of her own strength and stamina that no one at the order was able to engage her into fighting long enough to push her to her limits. Not even the Meister. Not anymore.
But Gandrett didn’t give any sign she had seen the girl, instead rushing on to her room and slipping inside, closing the door and leaning against it, taking a deep breath.
Thank Vala, the room was empty.
Another breath. This couldn’t be happening. The Fae were banned. They were bound to their own lands, to the shades of their trees, to their forests. How had Nehelon gotten out?
Then it hit her that that wasn’t really the question she should be asking herself. The one that begged an answer: What did he want with her?
Unable to gather a clear thought, other than she needed to hurry, Gandrett pulled out her spare set of clothes, what few toiletries she possessed, bundled them up in her worn nightgown, and stowed them in her satchel. She grabbed her narrow, leather vambraces from the shelf—the only piece of armor they were allowed in the priory, and slipped them over her hands then pulled her sleeves over them so no one would notice them.
When she had hidden them, she halted and sat on the bed. What was she doing? She couldn’t just sneak out of the priory with the Fae male. What if he was just on the lookout for his next snack? And what if she ran? How fast would he catch up with her? Would she even make it through the night?
The scars spread on her back and arms spoke volumes about how much she could handle—whether they were from sparring accidents or from the frequent occasions the Meister got dissatisfied. But could her body endure the brute strength of a Fae?
She shuddered and rested her head in her palms for a short while—just a couple of breaths, she told herself. But the shrill tweeting of the fat, gray bird on her windowsill made her jerk upright.
“Shoo, shoo.” She fanned her arms at the creature. The same bird Nehelon had been talking to. Nehelon’s messenger.
The feathered beast cocked its head at her and clicked its beak as if telling her to follow through with her promise.
Promise. Gandrett snorted and threw the strap of the satchel over her shoulder. It hadn’t been a promise, but she had been threatened. Vala help her. That Fae had intimidated her into submission and now had sure sent his fat, feathered spy to know if she was talking to anyone.
Gandrett’s gaze fell on the desk where her prayer book was sitting, still opened to the page she’d been reading when the messenger had summoned her. Not the book but the pen behind it. If only she could leave a note for Surel to tell her what had happened. But she had to get away from the bird first—
With a glimpse over her shoulder, she made sure the creature hadn’t moved, and finding it still round and curious on the windowsill, she stepped closer to the desk, hiding both book and pen from its view, then snuck the pen into the book and closed it before she turned back to the room and stowed the book—its inconspicuous spine turned toward the bird—into her satchel.
The bird chirped and seemed to jerk its head toward the door, beckoning for her to hurry.
Gandrett’s fear was sparked once more by the thought of the Meister’s disapproval.
There was only one more thing she wanted to bring. The only thing worth bringing if she really thought about it: the thin necklace her mother had slipped into her hands as the men had come to take her. She had hidden it in her fist all the way through the consecration and then to the priory. And unlike the rest of her belongings, nobody had found it and taken it away before she had been able to hide it in a small hole in the wall behind the edge of the desk. Every night, for the first two years, she had held it in her hands so she could fall asleep. And every morning, she had put it back into its hiding place. Today, for the first time, she slid it over her head and hid it under her tunic. She wouldn’t leave behind the only possession of her mother’s. Not if she could help it.
The bird chirped again. But Gandrett was already out the door and stomping down the stairs.
There was nothing she could do. Just go and put her fate into Vala’s hands. Except—
She stopped at the kitchen doors and found the room empty. There was a small space under the counter where Nahir normally stowed her footstool that was out of view from the window and in the blind spot of the door. Gandrett darted through the kitchen, eyes on the window, half expecting to find the fat bird spying, and sought cover under the ledge. She pulled out the prayer book, the pen almost slipping from her fingers as she tried to scribble a note, then ripped out the page and folded it into a tiny square before she let it disappear in her fist—just like the necklace—and crawled out into the open.
The bird landed on the windowsill as she half-straightened, and she dropped the pen, hands still close enough to the floor so the bird wouldn’t see them, then shrugged at it. “At least let me get some provisions.” With all the confidence she could muster, she reached for the top shelf and pulled out the cookie box, holding it out for the bird as if mocking it by offering a cookie through the glass.
The bird screeched in response.
But Gandrett’s hands had already pulled the box back and were now replacing the cookies inside with the note she’d written for Nahir, the only one who’d find her message.
On the windowsill, with the sun on its dark feathers, the bird was chirping angrily as she wrapped the cookies in a dishcloth and shoved them into her satchel.
Gandrett didn’t care. All she cared about was that someone knew that she was in trouble.
The gravel crunched under his boots, loudly and violently, as Nehelon crossed the back of the yard. He filtered out the noise of the waterfall and focused on the few acolytes whose chores took them to this part of the priory. They were young—way too young to be working so hard. At least they weren’t carrying heavy buckets of water. The Vala-blessed were taking care of that by simply having threads of liquid floating alongside them as they marched up and down the fields.
Different from Fae magic, Vala’s magic was designed to aid her people with planting and maintaining crops. Water, the
element of life. He stopped pacing for a heartbeat and let his senses test for the girl’s footsteps—or her heartbeat; he would hear her heartbeat long before her footsteps if it kept hammering violently the way it had in his chambers. The shock in her eyes would have been enough to alarm anyone. An expression like that on a fighter like her… it was even worse than the occasional shriek of fear when someone spotted his obvious Fae-traits. Rarely. It happened so rarely. Usually, his glamours held up, but with Gandrett… he couldn’t tell what it had been that had him letting his control slip...
No one heeded him a look, probably afraid of the ire in his face and rolling off him in idle waves as he paced the side of the building.
Where was she? The tenth hour, the Meister had said in his note. She had little time to make it.
Nehelon wasn’t certain how he would feel if he held up his end of the promise—the threat. He had threatened her like a brutalizing bastard. Had tapped deeply into his Fae instincts and let them take over, caught by surprise as she’d broken through his glamour.
How he had hoped he could use the time at the priory to get to know her a little, to understand what kind of human she was so he could slowly build her trust until she was ready.
Yet, now—
Now there was no going back. Not until they were safely away from all civilization, until he could even attempt to release her from the leash he’d put on her by his threat. He had made her see him as a monster—and for good reason. Now there was no way she’d ever trust him. Especially not if she knew all the legends about his people.
He kicked a stone in frustration.
The bird-messenger zoomed into view, aiming toward him, before he spotted her emerging from the residential building, carrying nothing more than a leather satchel. He gulped down the urge to wrap her in his magic and force her motions to be faster. He knew just how unaccommodating the Meister could become when he felt behavior wasn’t up to his standards. But he stopped and straightened his spine, shoulders back and chin up, giving her a lazy smile as she approached, sweat beading her forehead.
Shattered Kingdom Page 5