“Will you, though?” he asked. “Be fine,” he clarified at her confusion.
Oh!Her mind wasn’t working well at all. She could only think about the tingles and him holding her hand. Beyond the briar screen, the cottage looked empty and quite abandoned. Hard to believe it had been only a day and night since she’d departed.
“Looks like no one is home,” he said.
“No. I mean, yes, I agree.”
“I don’t see Nessie or the chickens, though.”
“They’re sleeping.” She realized too late how odd that sounded. “Jada puts us all to sleep when she leaves. Only I woke up.”
He waited a moment longer, then smiled ruefully when she didn’t continue. “One of those stories we’ll exchange someday?”
“Yes,” she agreed with relief—and a measure of hope.Someday.
“I can’t at least wait to see you safely inside?”
“No,” she said staunchly, being a better person. “You must leave me here.”
“I don’t like this, Thorn,” he said, an ominous darkness in his voice, but not directed at her.
“I really will be all right,” she reassured him, blazingly aware of how he gazed at her, seeming to care, still holding her hand.
“I wish I could be sure of that.”
“I’ll tell the birds,” she said on impulse. “All kinds of birds visit the garden. I’ll tell them to go find you and talk to you about what I’m doing.”
A wistful smile quirked his lips. “I would like that. Promise?”
“Yes. And I’m keeping promises now, so that will be good practice.”
He laughed that special laugh, the one she particularly liked. “Glad I could be of service.” He sobered again. “Iwillbe back, so I won’t say goodbye. How about until I see you again?”
“Until I see you again,” she breathed, hardly daring to hope what this might mean.
He bent and brushed his lips over the back of her hand. Dizziness swept through her, hot and even more tingly. The urge to tell him that she loved him hovered behind her teeth, and she caged in the words. Lifting his head again, green eyes warm, Sebastien smiled.
Then he called for Nonna and the two of them returned to the carriage, going off down the road. Thorn stood there awhile, watching after them, long after they’d disappeared from view.
15
In the days following her first Dream walk, Rose became more or less accustomed to Adsila’s near-constant presence.
At least, as much as one could become accustomed to acquiring a sharp-taloned, lethal-beaked raptor who did not fit into an indoor lifestyle at a magic academy where pretty much anyone with eyes in their head knew her for the avatar of a particularly vengeful goddess, if not at first, then as soon as someone else eagerly informed them. None of the annals listed the original name of the goddess now known as She Who Eats Bears, in no small part because even writing down her name—let alone speaking it aloud—risked invoking her presence.
To Rose’s amusement, the way they all reacted to Adsila reminded her strongly of how they treated her: from vaguely uncomfortable in her presence to wary of possible injury.
The morning after Adsila’s arrival, Madame Hendricks called Rose into her office. The moment Rose entered the room, the woman’s eyes fastened on the kestrel with reluctant fascination. She couldn’t seem to look away from where Adsila rode on Rose’s shoulder, which created the unsettling effect of Madame Hendricks addressing the side of Rose’s head.
“And you summoned this… avatar from the Dream, you say?” Madame Hendricks asked.
Rose had explained this already. She felt sure Master Zoltan had given a detailed rundown of the exact event also, so this had to be a deliberate pose on Madame’s part, an attempt to catch out Rose in some trickery.
“No, Madame,” Rose answered as deferentially as she couldwhile biting her tongue. “Adsila emerged from the Dream portal I opened, but I did not summon her. I haven’t learned the art of summoning avatars.”
“And well you won’t!” Madame Hendricks fired back. “Not at my academy. We are a respectable and respected institution. We do not instruct our students in the summoning of avatars, demons, nor any other entity of numinous origin. It’s bad business to mix with deities, which I would think a sorceress of your caliber, let alone one of my prize pupils, would understand by now.”
She seemed to be expecting a reply, but Rose had no idea what to say. She certainly wasn’t going to address any of the several logical fallacies in the woman’s argument. So she went with a meek “Yes, Madame,” which seemed to mollify the headmistress.
