Gandrett didn’t dare to object, to voice that it felt like quite the opposite. That ever since she had been torn from her mother’s arms, she felt like Vala had forsaken her.
“The chancellor informed you that you are to make your journey to Eedwood by the end of the week?” Lady Crystal returned to the sofa, the skirts of her dress sighing as she settled down.
Gandrett shook her head. “Was he supposed to?”
Her response put a smile on Lady Crystal’s lips. “He might have been otherwise occupied.”
Even if Gandrett couldn’t pin down what it was, something was off about the way the lady was speaking. “I am certain the chancellor is too busy to inform me about everything in person.” She couldn’t explain either why it hurt that he hadn’t told her. Or why it bothered her that when he had shown up that evening Mckenzie and Brax had taken turns instructing her how to dance, he had turned on the doorstep and stalked into the dark hallways of the palace.
“The House of Denderlain will have their Spring Hunt in honor of Demea this weekend.” She glanced at Gandrett over the book she was now fanning before her. “You know how to handle a bow, don’t you?”
Gandrett nodded.
“Then it’s a good thing, Miss Brayton, that you are planning to go on a hunt in the forests of Eedwood. And too bad your bow will break just as you are planning to bring down the wolf the Denderlains are hunting.” Lady Crystal’s eyes flashed at her. “Just make sure Armand is there to see it.” A devious smile graced her cunning face. “You can hurt your ankle right there in the forests too, just so you won’t need to dance that night.”
So that was the plan, to plant her in Denderlain court. Make her a damsel in distress and let the tyrant’s son rescue her. Gandrett frowned.
“Lose that expression,” Lady Crystal ordered. “It doesn’t suit a lady.”
Gandrett trudged from the room with little regard for how it made her look. Three days, Lady Crystal had said. Three days before she would go into enemy territory as a spy on a rescue mission. She preferred to see it that way rather than to submit to the suggestion Lord Tyrem had made. Seduce the enemy.
The guard who had escorted her to the lady’s chambers was gone, but Gandrett didn’t stop to wait and see if someone might take her back to her own rooms. After almost a month, she knew her way around well enough.
Her footsteps echoed in the stone hallways, the sound a mockery of the light steps she was supposed to make with her stupid silk slippers. It didn’t take long until hers weren’t the only footsteps that bounced off the walls. She didn’t care to lift her head and glance over her shoulder to know it was Nehelon who was behind her. The soft clicking of his sword on his belt had given him away.
“I will help you prepare,” he spoke so softly it made Gandrett look up.
His eyes, diamond-blue and flickering with something other than fury or mockery, were on her face. She turned away before she could figure out what it was that was shaping a crooked line between his eyebrows.
“You have helped me prepare for the past month.” And if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t be in a situation where she even had to prepare.
“You need to study the castle layout, the floor plans, the exits.” Nehelon didn’t raise his voice but spoke with quiet urgency as he followed her down the stairs past a row of stained glass windows in crimson and blue. “I am not going to send you in there without knowing you’ll find your way out.”
Gandrett turned the last corner and walked up to her chamber doors, nodding at Kyle, who smiled back, before she stepped inside, not bothering to close the doors behind her. People came and went in her room as they pleased, it seemed, and there was no door strong enough to keep the Fae male out.
Eugina had left dinner on the table. A meal that wasn’t fish, judging by the delicious smell of it.
When she turned around, Nehelon had shut the doors and was sauntering toward her with lazy strides.
“I haven’t bought you out of Everrun to let you recklessly throw away your life at Eedwood.” He planted himself before her at arm’s length, staring her down.
“You were just a messenger, delivering the goods.” Gandrett waited. Waited for the fury to take over his face, for the anger to flare in his eyes, for his temper to take him over.
All he did was look at her, eyes probing. Until he finally said, “We don’t have much time left. I don’t want to waste it slandering each other.”
His words—
Gandrett loosed a breath, the tight bodice of her dress letting it rush from her lungs the second she freed it. If she hadn’t known better, she would have said the Fae male was concerned.
“Wasting time is nothing I enjoy,” she eventually said after a pause that let her wonder if this was the same male before her who had mercilessly battered his sword down on her a couple of days ago. “What do you suggest we do?”
His features suddenly softened, and his glamour slowly faded as they eyed each other, both cautious, both careful, as if that sudden truce between them might burst into thin air if they as much as blinked.
Nehelon’s face changed, and it wasn’t only the hardness of his features that slipped but the glamour, too, allowing Gandrett to see it, all of it. The flawlessness of his skin, a sun-kissed, golden tan, glowed from up close as he took a step forward. His eyes, all facets of blue shone in the depth of diamonds. His eyebrows arched in two dark lines, leading her gaze to the side, to the waves of his hair, to what was hidden beneath it.
Gandrett held her breath as she lifted a shaky hand and reached for what she had seen and still had difficulties believing. But when he stood before her, un-glamoured, a Fae, a real Fae, and for once not growling at her—
He didn’t move as her fingers brushed aside his hair, exposing a pointed ear, and let the tip of her index finger graze along the miraculous arch that was evidence he truly was a different species. And she could swear his heart was pounding in the silence that filled the space between them.
Nehelon didn’t back away as she explored the tip of his ear. He didn’t speak—
But the look in his eyes gave away that it took him everything he had not to attack her, not to scold her—or run away.
“How—?” Gandrett breathed as she studied Nehelon’s face, her fingers moving down the angle of his cheekbone. His skin was like silk, like flower petals, yet rough from the wind and dirt he was exposed to every day in those training rings. From the many years he had been walking this earth. She didn’t even know how old he was. In his human glamour, he looked in the prime of his years. But in his Fae form—
Gandrett had no words that could describe what she saw, what she tried to understand. His eyes held the wisdom of centuries and yet—yet his face was as youthful as if the goddess herself had blessed him with eternal spring.
As her fingers reached the end of his cheekbone and traced down toward his strong jaw, Nehelon’s hand caught hers as if he had suddenly awoken from a trance. It hurt as he pulled her hand away with a rough grasp. “This,” he noted, eyes solidifying as he spoke, “is exactly what I call a waste of time.”
Then, he dropped her hand as if it burned him and headed for the door, hair swooshing back over his ear as he spun away from her.
Gandrett couldn’t even take a steadying breath before he reached the threshold and said over his shoulder, “I should know better, Gandrett Brayton, than to try to change the course of history.”
And then he was out the door.
Chapter Twenty
Touch him. He had let her touch him. What had gotten into him? If it weren’t for his promise to Lord Tyrem, to save his son, Gandrett’s door wouldn’t be the only one he’d shut behind him. What was he thinking, allowing to let her glimpse even a hint of him? To let her break that glamour over and over again? He should have killed her that first day she had seen his ears, when she had realized what he was. The horror in her eyes—
And yet… he needed her. He needed her to safely retrieve Joshua. To get to Eedw
ood and back in one piece. To return so he could prove she was who he thought she was.
His hands shook as he ripped all maps of Eedwood he owned from the shelves of his study and dumped them in a heap at the center of the room. He didn’t bother to light a candle, Fae eyes allowing him to see just as well as in bright daylight, his fingers already sorting through everything that would help Gandrett prepare her escape routes. He knew she would know what to do with the maps and plans. She had been trained by the best—
Nehelon didn’t show up for training the next day, leaving Gandrett’s nerves to lay bare as she kept staring at the door he emerged from like a clockwork every morning at first light.
Instead, Mckenzie met her with her arms full of scrolls of parchment.
“He says it’s best you take some time to look at those on your own,” she said by way of greeting, a half-hearted smile tugging on her lips.
Gandrett didn’t feel like taking a look at anything. Or smiling, for that matter.
Sleep had eluded her all night, and the meager breakfast Eugina had brought didn’t change much about her energy levels, nor did the fact that it would be hours before she would force down some fish dish she’d rather never have known existed.
“He is going to great lengths to make sure you are prepared,” Mckenzie noted, beckoning with her chin for Gandrett to follow her to the small bench near the training ring where Nehelon sometimes sat when he had her try movements.
Gandrett shrugged, the leathers on her shoulder shifting up to her ears. “He went to great lengths to get me from Everrun,” she pointed out. “Why would he not make sure his prize pony lives up to his promises?”
Mckenzie gave her a sideways glance as she flattened one of the scrolls between them on the bench. “You are not his prize pony,” she said and picked up another scroll, opening it just enough to peek inside. “He really wants you to succeed.” She dropped the scroll she was holding and looked at Gandrett instead. “He cares.”
Gandrett avoided showing any of the conflicted emotions that welled up inside her chest. All night long she had tried to understand what had happened. Why she had followed that impulse to touch him. Why she had felt as if a wall had broken down between them.
And then he had pulled it up again—iron and stone and ice—and had left her with a cryptic statement which made even less sense than anything else about him.
“How well do you know Nehelon?” Gandrett asked instead of responding to Mckenzie’s words.
The young woman adjusted her sleeves with sudden interest. “Well enough to know that he cares.” There was a hint of discomfort in her voice. If Gandrett didn’t see the smile on Mckenzie’s face widen into a real fake smile, she would have passed it off as embarrassment. But there was more to it.
So she asked, “Did he say anything?” It was a stupid thing to ask. Why would he be talking to Mckenzie about her? And why did it suddenly matter to Gandrett if he did?
She remembered that first encounter in her chambers, how Nehelon had shrunk from Mckenzie’s taunting. “You and he—”
She didn’t need to finish her thought with Mckenzie’s sudden tomato-like skin tone speaking for itself.
“It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me.” Gandrett didn’t need to know. It didn’t change anything. He didn’t mean anything.
Mckenzie’s hand landed on hers with her usual lightness. “I want to tell you. Friends tell friends about such things.”
“Friends?” Gandrett looked up. Surel was her friend along with Kaleb. Mckenzie was the daughter of the man who had damned her to a lifetime of servitude to a goddess who forbade Gandrett from sharing her life with anyone but her. Of the man who had bought her to retrieve his abducted son, using means that would damn her in the eyes of Vala. And yet, when Gandrett looked at Mckenzie, she saw more than that. She saw a brave and witty woman who had spent her life navigating through an existence damned to a different type of servitude. A life of not having a voice, of being the pretty, dressed-up accessory for the men who surrounded her. A life that Gandrett didn’t envy her for. A prison so like the one Gandrett had been pushed into.
“Friend,” Mckenzie smiled and nodded at her. “I didn’t believe it when Nehelon told me a girl was going to save my brother. But if anyone can do it, it’s you.”
“Let’s see about that when I return from my mission.” Light words. But their meaning too heavy to bear. So soon, a life would depend on her. And Gandrett didn’t know if she was ready. To wield a sword, to fight, yes. But to ensnare Armand Denderlain’s heart so she could sneak around Eedwood castle and find Joshua Brenheran—
“I used to believe Nehelon and I could be a thing,” Mckenzie interrupted Gandrett’s thoughts. “We had some moments, I thought, but then he left to get you from the priory and—”
Gandrett didn’t dare ask what could have changed.
“It was I who had some moments,” Mckenzie admitted. “And he might have needed a distraction.” She gave Gandrett a knowing look. “It’s a lonely life being a man of power. And he isn’t even a lord. Just a chancellor.” She pretended to be serious.
Gandrett said nothing. Couldn’t.
“Joshua is different…” Mckenzie’s eyes grew distant as if she was looking at her brother in her mind. “He used to prefer my company over everyone else’s. He taught me how to fight when I was little—not that I am any good.” She giggled. “He is my friend as much as he is my brother.”
Gandrett sighed through her nose, her fingers playing with the edges of the parchment between them. Her brother… She wished she’d been around to show him how to fight.
“You will bring him back, Gandrett.” Mckenzie sounded convinced.
Gandrett didn’t agree or decline. She didn’t speak her doubts, that when even a Fae male had failed to retrieve Joshua—
“This is Eedwood castle.” Mckenzie ran her finger over the inked lines on the open scroll. The layout of the castle grounds. “I might have been brought up to smile and nod like a lady—” She looked at the lines down her nose. “—but I know how to read plans and plot as well of any of the men here in court.”
They spent the rest of the morning going over the floor plans of Eedwood castle’s square layout, and Gandrett spent the major part of her energy on memorizing every entrance and every exit. On the arrangement of the chambers of the Denderlain family on the second floor, on the barracks where the guards slept, where weapons were kept, the location of the stables, the gates—
“Isn’t it a bit late to join?” Mckenzie said, making Gandrett break her focus. She had been so busy memorizing every stairwell, every door, that she hadn’t noticed they had company. “We were just finishing up.”
Nehelon’s shadow hit the bench and crossed Gandrett’s lap as she bothered to look up, her face bored as she glanced at him through the intensity of the spring sun. Gandrett harrumphed by way of greeting and returned her attention to the maps she’d been studying. Good.
“Why didn’t you take a hostage in return?” she asked out of the blue but didn’t give him any time to answer. “You could have taken anyone close enough to Lord Hamyn and exchanged them for Joshua.”
Nehelon lifted a brow, trying to ignore Mckenzie’s sideways glance. Gandrett hadn’t told her what had happened between them. Not that anything had happened, really—
Anything. He had expected rage, hurt, or even that Gandrett would mock him for running out on her, but this—
It was as if last night hadn’t occurred. “We considered the option and deemed it unsuitable for a situation of such importance.” Hadn’t she felt it? The tingling at her touch. How her fingertips had made his buried Fae soul sing? “He is Lord Tyrem’s heir and the only worthy one—” He gave Mckenzie a look, hoping he wouldn’t come across as condescending. “—the only worthy male heir,” he added for her benefit. The laws at the courts of Sives dated back to ancient times when women were not recognized as successors. Mckenzie, with her fierce heart and her sharp mind, would make f
or an outstanding Lady of Ackwood.
“Hold your breath, chancellor.” She gave him a brief, poison-sweet smile. “I have made my peace with remaining a pearl-laden accessory for the rulers.” She didn’t seem even half at ease.
The young woman shook out her fair waves in the sunlight as she closed her eyes for a long second, a gesture he had observed made the courtiers’ eyes spark. And from an objective point of view, Mckenzie Brenheran was the epitome of beauty, with supple curves and depthless, emerald eyes and a smile that could bring kingdoms down. That’s why he had entertained the thought of seeking distraction in her arms. Why he had lingered in the hallway that night when she had asked him to. Why he hadn’t pulled away when she had laid her hands on his arms and stood on her toes to kiss him. Once. Just once. And with many regrets, not half-worth the trouble of having a noblewoman set her eyes on him.
Gandrett studied him as if he were a book she’d dropped when it couldn’t spark her interest. He didn’t turn away from Gandrett, who seemed intent on pretending she hadn’t felt how his heart had beat in his chest, simply because she hadn’t shied away from him—from what lay beneath the glamour. He hadn’t had that sensation since—
“Just make sure Gandrett gets to Denderlain court safely,” Mckenzie added when none of them spoke. He could feel the noblewoman roll her eyes. “And when all this is over, why don’t you disappear already?” Her words sounded annoyed, but he saw it in the small details of the way her eyes tightened and her throat bobbed as if she wanted to take back the words she had just spoken, that his rejection had hurt her.
He didn’t respond but said to Gandrett, “My apologies for ditching you this morning. I had important matters to attend to.” My apologies for running away last night. And, it’s better you don’t know the matters until the time comes. He took a steadying breath when her face showed as little emotion as a polished iron. So he turned to the woman who was as beautiful as a masterpiece painted by the masters of Ackwood and couldn’t find anything on her lovely face that would hold his interest. “Thank you, Mckenzie, for keeping Miss Brayton company.”
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