The hand nodded knowingly. “Neither did I.” With his full hands, he waved her over.
A glance at Jarek, still focused on the book in front of him, and Lory withdrew from the threshold, marching down the hallway after the Medica Hand.
Nahrit led her to his office, where he set down the flask first, then the books, on a sideboard already overflowing with scrolls and vials, books and maps.
“Sit, Miss Vednis.”
There wasn’t really an option for her to say no, so she did as she was told and placed her backside in the carved chair, placing her hands on the armrests and studying the bookshelves behind the desk, filled to the ceiling with tome after tome.
She could have liked it here. In a different life, perhaps, she would have studied here, not as a criminal forced to serve her sentence. She might have adopted Medica as her specialization, and she’d have helped people—magic wielders and regular people all the same.
A dark cloud gathered above her head at the thought of the career track that had been chosen for her instead.
“It has come to my attention, Miss Vednis, that you have been spending a lot of time with Thornling Grivor today.” His gaze wandered to the wall on his left, the direction of Jarek’s room, as he sat heavily in the cushioned chair—perhaps theonlycushioned chair in all of Ashthorn. “Is there anything I should know?”
That it’s none of your business who I visit and how often,she wanted to say, but that would only get her killed … or would it?
His black eyes didn’t stray from her face as she wrangled an appropriate answer from herself, and he looked significantly older than his almost sixty years, when his forehead wrinkled in a stern expression. “Nothing, sir.”
“Are you sure?” Nahrit folded his hands on the edge of the table, waiting. “It seems there has been a lot of coming and going in Thornling Grivor’s room. A cluster of unusual attention for someone who should have died during trials … according to Ashthorn protocol,” he amended, and something in the way he said it told Lory he didn’t fully agree.
“He said he’ll be completely fine by tomorrow,” she repeated what Jarek had said, but that was only part of her musings.
Nahrit inclined his head, that stern look sticky on his features. “He will.”
And I? Will I be punished for helping him?She’d completely forgotten about it the moment Khayrivven had snuck up on her in front of his room, and the worry caughtup with her again now, as she faced one of Ashthorn’s most respected hands.
“Don’t you think someone would have already thrown you in the dungeons had that been the case?”
Or put a knife through my throat,Lory amended in her mind. Her mind?—
An exhale of shock hollowed out Lory’s lungs as she realized Nahrit had responded to her thoughts rather than her words.
Oh my fucking gods.
“You could say so.” A mischievous grin threatened to spread on the hand’s mouth, the groove between his brows smoothing over.
“You’re a mind reader?” Lory had believed that reading minds was a rare ability and one exclusive to Flame-born, if at all. She’d never thought that there could be two of those supposedly extinct mind-power wielders crammed into one and the same academy.
With a shake of his head, he measured Lory, waiting for her to comprehend. “I’m not the one possessing such powers, Miss Vednis.”
Holy fucking shit!
“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer you leave your gutter language on the streets.” The grin started to vanish, but only so much, a remainder of it ready to tell tales of a kindness an Ashthorn instructor could never show.
“You mean—” A muscle ticked in Lory’s jaw a moment before it dropped, and she nearly lost speech entirely. “You mean it’sme?”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously?”This time, she didn’t merely think it; she addressed him through her mind.
“Obviously, it’s not me, or I’d have figured it out in my fifty-eight years, don’t you think?”
“But—I can’t hear you.” Lory focused hard, listening for a whisper of Nahrit’s voice inside her head, then shook it. “Nothing.”
This time, Nahrit’s grin widened. “That’s because you’re notreadingmy mind. You’re projecting your thoughts.” He gestured at the door, and it swung shut on an invisible power. Not wind, or Lory would have felt it. “A talent that hasn’t been heard of in centuries. The ancient Flames had all sorts of mind powers. Reading, projecting, a combination of both. Usually, it was constricted to bloodlines, the path only open to family members or to their soul-bonded partners.”
The world spun even sitting down, and deep inside Lory’s chest, one single throb cried the name Khayrivven.
