Gandrett felt her fear subsiding as anger at the impossible Fae male threw itself above it in layers woven of shame and annoyance. “You think I’m pretty,” she bit at him before she could stop herself, an attempt to hide any emotion.
But Nehelon’s face went blank at her words, and he shook his head as if he was trying to shake off a spider in his hair. “That’s beside the point,” he threw at her, crossed the space between them, and dropped the horse’s gear on top of the mare’s which was right beside Gandrett’s foot. “I think you’re pathetic.”
Gandrett had expected many things including torture and death at his hands, but what she hadn’t been prepared for was this: cold insults. And even less, that they would hit her right in the heart. He knew nothing about her, and just because he may have bought her from the order for a bag of coins, he didn’t have the right—
She turned slightly and assessed the protective walls he had created without even touching the soil and debated scowling, but she was too exhausted, her legs still sore and her bones aching from riding in the wind and cold all day long. Without another word, she stalked to the point farthest away from him and laid down on the ground, ready to ignore him.
Nehelon chuckled at the other side where he was laying out the horses’ gear to dry off from the mounts’ sweat. Then he lifted a pack from the ground and chucked it toward her.
It landed half a foot from Gandrett’s head, making her cringe back toward the reassuringly-solid wall, her hand reaching for the empty spot on her belt where her sword had been hanging this morning—the one which was now dangling from Nehelon’s hip like a toy copy of his jeweled blade. “Why don’t you just knock me over the head with it?” she barked, “At least then I’ll sleep.”
Nehelon roared with laughter—not the happy kind—and prowled to her side to pick up the pack and open it. “Here.” He extracted a blanket and dropped it on the ground before her, followed by digging deeper to pull out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. “You think I’d spend a fortune to get you out of there just to let you freeze and starve the first chance I get?”
His gaze made clear he didn’t expect an answer as he tossed her the bundle, one eyebrow rising in obvious surprise as she caught it with one shaky hand.
Close, he was too close. And the power, that brute strength, it enveloped him like a brewing storm. Gandrett sat back on her heel, praying that her fear wasn’t written plain on her face… Even if it wasn’t, the relentless thrumming of her heart was enough for his Fae ears to pick up on her rising panic as her eyes searched the earthen wall for a way out.
Not that running made any sense with someone like him. He’d have her in his grasp before she even reached an exit. Now Gandrett scowled. Not at him but at herself. She had been trained better than to flinch at the sight of a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. She wasn’t the best warrior in the priory for nothing.
Gandrett felt his gaze on her as she opened the bundle and pulled out a piece of dried meat, but she didn’t look up to give him the satisfaction of seeing her wonder if this was even edible for humans—or if it might even be human meat. Instead, she made her hand lead one chunky slice to her mouth and took a bite.
Nehelon chuckled again and leaned closer, lowering his head enough to look into her eyes. “I told you, poisoning you now would be a waste of money.”
For some reason, his words were not reassuring.
Chapter Nine
She looked pale in the morning sun, nestled into the rough blanket he’d offered her the night before, strands of chestnut hair that had slipped from her braid tangled around her head. Pale. The hard lines of fear and frustration had left her features the second exhaustion had swept her into a restless sleep. He had watched her all night, his Fae senses—even over the constant wind—allowing him to tell when her heartbeat had slowed enough to consider sleep himself, and he had turned his eyes on her the second she drifted off.
Gandrett. How little she was like he’d imagined her. Nothing like it. He had expected a raw diamond, and what he’d found was a bitter lump of coal. Intriguing in its own, dark way, but nothing like the bright crystal he had imagined. He had seen it in her face—pretty as it may be—as she had tried to hide her scowl from him. With all her skill and all her training, there was one thing she lacked: heart.
And now, for hours he had been studying her, spying on her while she’d been resting, not taking a minute to rest himself as he guarded the horses and his most treasured belonging—not his. That of Tyrem Brenheran. Something in his chest stirred, unfamiliar and unwelcome. He smothered it and decided it might be for the best. If fear, obedience, and discipline were the only things she knew—had known for a decade—trust might not be what he’d need to get her to work with him.
And yet, something was there on her features in her sleep that told him not to trust what she was letting on. She had been trained by the best, by the Meister himself—a training very few received. Even with his Fae senses, he couldn’t look inside her mind or inside her heart. While her thoughts he might be able to draw from her through torture, what was inside her heart she’d have to give willingly.
He got to his feet, pulled off his blanket, and flapped it over her shivering body instead. Then, with a last look at her, he strolled over to the horses, where he stretched out on the cool ground and closed his eyes, sensing the sounds of the desert night retreating before the climbing sun.
Nehelon was sitting on the ground, cross-legged, chewing absently, when Gandrett opened her eyes to find herself not half as freezing as when she had fallen asleep and was curled up under more weight than she remembered. Behind him, the horses were saddled, their noses in a heap of hay of a size that made it difficult to believe it had been transported in one of the packs.
With a groan, Gandrett sat up, her legs still sore and her back aching from lying on the hard ground. She couldn’t remember when she had fallen asleep, only that her dreams had been full of collapsing houses and men carrying leather pouches stuffed with coins. With a slow hand, she reached for her pounding head. Water, she needed water—
“Looking for this?” Nehelon held up a waterskin and let it dangle in his broad hand by way of saying good morning.
Gandrett observed him through squinting eyes as she tried to make out his features against the morning sun. He was fully dressed in his leathers, letting the sun warm his back, at least, that was what it looked like. He could have been praying to Shaelak himself, considering what he was.
Then, it came back to her, the fear, the unease, the legends and myths, and she cringed back against the wall until—
The weight on her, the blanket—two blankets. She’d only had one blanket when she fell asleep, and now…
“Thank you is the word you’re looking for.” He rose, graceful as a tree growing from the ground, and as solid, then prowled over to hand her the waterskin. “I thought I’d better deliver the goods unharmed,” he added in a whisper as he stopped and bent down close enough his breath touched her ear. With one hand, he grabbed the blankets and pulled them off her, leaving her sitting in her linen clothes.
Gandrett shivered. Which made Nehelon chuckle as he returned to the horses where he folded and packed the packs, leaving only a small bundle out. “You can have breakfast on horseback,” he explained, looking at the bay horse while gesturing at her.
To her surprise, the horse crossed the earthen circle in a trot and stopped by Gandrett’s feet.
“Up, up, up.” Nehelon clicked his tongue, and the horse stomped its foot beside her, making her bolt upright and fumble on her clothes.
It was embarrassing having to ask, but, “I don’t assume you will allow me enough time to…”
Nehelon just lifted a hand, and the wall crumbled in front of him and his mare, leaving a gap wide enough for them to stroll out.
“Let me know when you’re done,” was all Nehelon said when he was out. Then he snapped his fingers, and the wall reassembled, leaving Gandrett behind with the gelding.
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br /> Great. Gandrett looked at the horse, which was eyeing her expectantly.
“I can’t pee while you’re watching,” she whispered at the animal and walked a couple of steps away to an angle where she hoped neither the horse if it turned its neck, nor Nehelon, whose broad shoulders and black, wind-torn hair were visible, would see her.
She slipped down her pants and crouched to relieve herself—not an easy task considering the sensitivity of the Fae male’s senses. Gandrett swallowed her pride and thought of running water.
It was only when she was done that the horse stomped its hind leg impatiently enough to make her hurry back to her feet and climb into the saddle, not without releasing a low curse at her sore muscles.
“Done,” she called unnecessarily, for the moment she was in the saddle, Nehelon turned his head and asked over his shoulder, “Better?”
Then he held a hand out to the side, and the circle enclosing Gandrett and her horse crumbled to the ground, leaving nothing but a ruffled imprint of the arrangement.
“We have a lot of ground to cover today,” he informed her and held out the bundle in his hand—a loaf of bread. “You better start eating so we can talk.”
Gandrett gobbled down the bread until almost half the loaf was gone. Neither her protesting muscles nor Nehelon’s incredulous gaze allowed her to stop until her belly was full enough that she believed she could make it until nightfall without eating anything else.
She handed him the rest of the bread, bundled back into the cloth, and mentally prepared for a long, hot day, biting wind, and more insults that would strain her physically and mentally.
As they made their way north, Gandrett knew which way they were headed because the mountain range separating the continent in the middle appeared to their left, leading to Fae territory in the west and human territory in the east.
“Ithrylan?” She asked, almost yelling the name with relief. “You are taking us through Ithrylan.”
There were only two ways to get to Sives. The path west of the mountains led through Ulfray, Fae land, dangerous due to the possibility of running into one of them—Gandrett shuddered at the mere thought of meandering through the Fae forests then remembered that she no longer needed the Fae forests to run into one of them—while the east path led through Ithrylan, which was merely cursed land. Once the bright beacon between the human realms in the north and the south, it lay now rotting and whispering the stories of countless deaths—and yet, it was the safer options. At least the dead didn’t kill.
Nehelon measured her face, his own features like stone as he nodded and slowed his own horse just enough to ride beside her. Today he hadn’t taken the reins of her mount, but the bay had trotted after the mare without any effort on Gandrett’s side. If she had tried to get him to break away from its traveling companions, she didn’t believe the horse would obey.
“What do you remember of Sives?” His question came as unexpectedly as the sudden stillness of the air.
Gandrett inhaled the dry, clean air, buying herself time to consider if she should give him part of the truth. But as she turned to him, to her surprise, she found a thin line of concern pulling his perfectly-arched eyebrows together. He cocked his head and smoothed over his expression as if he was just realizing there was something readable on his face.
“So?” he prompted.
The small, wooden farmhouse in the heart of Sives popped into her head, the smell of grains in the summer, the scent of the air after it rained on the meadows, the blossoms of the fruit trees in spring, the buzzing of insects—
She closed her eyes—a brief blink, elongated by a fraction of a second, but enough to be immersed into childhood memories. Her father, as he bent over the plow, strapping the horses to the machine, his smile when he noticed she was watching, her mother’s call to return to the house for lunch, her brother—
“Nothing much.” Gandrett shrugged and swallowed the tune of the lullaby her mother had used to sing to them when they were little, the warmth of her embrace that seemed to envelop her now that the wind had for once subsided. As if the gods knew her thoughts and were mocking her, the wind started its endless howl and carried away the moment of comfort even if it had only been in Gandrett’s mind, replacing it with images of the men who had torn her out of her mother’s arms. “I was seven when they took me.” Her voice was stable. A trained habit, to speak without emotion, and despite the terror of being in the presence of a deadly creature, terror can hold someone captive only so long before it becomes the new norm and the mind adapts.
Nehelon didn’t comment, but something in his face changed. Not that it became warmer or gentler, maybe even understanding—no. There was a grim sort of relief written in his eyes that was about as appropriate as having to pee in his presence.
Gandrett directed her eyes at the sun-kissed mountain tops. Witnesses of the ages and almost untouched by men, they formed a barrier between the lands. She had seen them once before from up close: the journey to Everrun, the one and only journey in her life so far. She could almost feel the rattling of the carriage that had brought her into the green heart of the barren land they were now crossing, and again she was seven, heart pounding from fear, fingers reaching for her shaved-off hair—
“Ten years,” Nehelon commented, eyeing her hair-entwined hands. “It has grown out beautifully.”
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 r
uins 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.
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