She rose without another word, and we headed for the door together.
Cleaving herself from the life she'd built wouldn’t be an easy task. She wanted me to want to return to Erhfurt with her, as if nothing had changed. I couldn’t explain the hollow pit that opened in me at the thought.
“Are you ready for the lessons now?” I asked over my shoulder as we walked.
She didn’t reply.
“It is a little frightening,” I went on. “Don’t you think?”
Her fists clenched, her pace slowing by half a step. “I don’t want to discover more unsettling things about myself.”
I nodded. “The cat was unsettling.”
A reluctant smile formed on her lips. After a moment, she asked quietly, “Do you think Father knew?”
I drew a long breath. “I don’t know. I’ve been asking myself the same thing, and I can’t make sense of it.”
“You haven’t shown anything like my…episodes.” She hesitated, searching for the word. “Do you think that means something?”
My brows lifted. “Like we’re not sisters or something? No. Joy, we look alike.” I brushed my thumb over her freckles, mirrors of my own. It was a fair question, even if I refused to entertain it. “You’re my sister. And Caedmon believes I’ll be able to wield with time. Maybe not like you. Even he is afraid of you.”
Her mouth curved faintly, pride flickering briefly. “That is why I am open to the lessons,” she said, her gaze dropping to the floor. “If they can help me control this thing, I want that.”
“Maybe you could start by not calling it athing,” I suggested, my attention catching on the relic necklace on her neck. “Does it help to wear that?”
She nodded, but squeezed my hand, her grip tight with tension. “I want to learn to control it because… The healer wasn’t completely wrong.”
Chapter 12
Reagan
“Freddy has eyes on the room,” Heil said from the doorway.
The captain of Mountheim’s battle mages kept glancing to the floor below the railing, waiting for a signal from one of his squad.
Reagan paced the length of the room, acknowledging his own impatience. His access flooded his veins with a bitter promise.
“Did you leave the door unlocked?” he asked the captain again, who might as well have been a rock for all his deadly calm.
Heil had led his battle mages for over nine years now, since the previous captain died trying to protect the former rulers of Mountheim.
He inclined his head. “One of them’s suspicious, trying to convince the other two that they shouldn’t flee. I give it two minutes.” He crossed his arms and watched Reagan as if gauging his state. “You sure you don’t want two of us to go with you?”
Reagan smiled without warmth. “No. If it’s three against three, I can’t argue my disadvantage.” He stopped at the mantel, rolled his shoulders to burn off some of the tightness. “I’ll be just defending my lands, since they were stupid enough to cross.”
“I think they were heading to human territory,” Heil said, a sneer tracing his mouth.
His patrollers had finally spotted Caius, Dexter, and Goyle just outside Mountheim’s border. The three Scions who had been in the cabin were now held in a room inside the battle mage outpost. A few more minutes, and the Order’s minions would realise their cell was unlocked.
Reagan centred himself the way he always did before a hunt, drawing breath until his heartbeat was steady and his limbs thrummed with anticipation. In those moments he felt no real distance between himself and his familiar, both wanting to maim.
He couldn’t forget what he had seen in that cabin. Jane’s skin seared with boot marks, the recent bruises, the dried red stain crusted at her mouth. She had leaned her weight unevenly, as though favouring one side. He had seen the signs that night, and Hildegard had confirmed that a rib had been recently mended.
Each night the memory set his teeth on edge, just like the reminder of that last trial he’d nearly failed, when impulse urged him to kill Caius and Varian outright in that cabin. Had he not been so desperate, he would have seen the crucible for what it was.
Fate’s last trial to him.
So he waited and today, Heil had called from an outpost just east of the human borders.
