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I wouldn’t let him send me away. I belonged here. This had become my home, and I wanted to do what I could to protect it. Nylah was a dear friend, and Dex, albeit perpetually grumpy, had become endearing. I was close to Ren, too—more so now that Lucia was gone. Although he was harder to understand than the rest of them.
After I’d just arrived, I would have fought tooth and nail to prove that I deserved to be here, that it hadn’t been a mistake. That had changed to me wanting to fight tooth and nail to save what had become mine.
Ren couldn’t send me away. Where would I go? I didn’t belong anywhere else. I’d never really belonged anywhere. And now that I finally did, I wouldn’t sit down and watch the carnage from the sidelines. I wanted to get into the fray and do what they had trained me to do.
22
Ren and I were in the training arena. It had been a few days since we’d learned of the hunter’s presence, and nothing had happened. Ren had been on edge, and the guards had been wide awake, looking for something—anything—that might be out of place.
As the days passed and nothing happened, the Fae at the palace relaxed. Ren started focusing on other business again, and the guards weren’t as vigilant as before.
The advisors had gone out again and again, but they’d found no Conjurite.
“Maybe the Conjurite hunter isn’t a hunter at all, but just a Conjurite, passing through,” I’d suggested to Nylah last night, when I’d visited her in the cathedral.
“Conjurites don’t ‘pass through’ places like Jasfin, where they are enemies,” Nylah had said, but she hadn’t had a better reason for the hunter to have just disappeared.
Whatever it was, I was glad Ren hadn’t me sent away. It seemed like he had decided not to do that, after all. It meant something to me.
Ren and I were going through hand-to-hand drills, working on blocking and countering, over and over. I enjoyed working with him. He was focused and just as dedicated to working hard as the rest of his warriors. When he asked me to push hard, he pushed harder. When we fought and he expected me to do things that were beyond what I’d thought I could do, he did them first.
We hadn’t connected again like we had during that first training session. I’d stopped fretting about what we could be, and what we weren’t, and everything in between. I had to accept that nothing would ever change between us, and that was how things were going to be. Ren saw me as a friend, someone he could trust, but he would never see me the way he’d seen any Fae female.
“Your mind is somewhere else,” Ren said and made to punch me in the gut. I blocked him just in time and countered, which he blocked, too.
“I’m tired,” I said. “I had a rough night.”
Lately, I’d been struggling to sleep. When I closed my eyes, I saw images, like thoughts, like memories. Like dreams. I didn’t know what I saw—the flashes were so vivid. They came when I was almost asleep, and when I jerked awake, I couldn’t remember what I’d seen.
“Really?” he asked and grinned. “Someone keeping you up?”
“Someone?” I asked with a laugh. “Yeah, sure. Dex and his routine ofneversleeping after our training sessions.”
“It’s a tough routine, I’ll admit,” Ren said. “I thought you were made of better stuff than that.”
His jab surprised me, but he laughed. He was still joking.
“I thought I was too fragile.” I stuck my tongue out at him, and it was his turn to be surprised at my joke. But it was just a joke; we were messing with each other.
And it wasnice.He was so handsome when he laughed and joked like that. Much more handsome than when he was so serious about everything, mourning the past and nervous about the future.
Ren lunged at me and tackled me. I rolled the way Dex had taught me so that I would end up on top of him. But he countered that, and we both ended up on our feet, facing off to each other.
“Nearly had you there,” I said.
“But you didn’t,” he laughed.
I shook my head and stood upright. Without warning, Ren tackled me down, and this time, I couldn’t counter in time. I ended up pinned to the ground with him on top of me, a smug grin on his face.
He leaned lower, his face close to mine, and the atmosphere shifted from playful to sensual in a heartbeat. I looked up to his lips. I wanted him to kiss me. Even if it confused the shit out of me because I never knew what he wanted. I wanted him to kiss me at least one more time. Then, I promised myself, I would stop thinking about him.
The arena shifted and changed, and the light had a distinct quality to it. I stared into Ren’s eyes, but something crawled along my skin. Magic, dark and dangerous. Something waswrong.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“What do you—” He jumped up abruptly. “He’s here,” he said.
“Who?” I asked, pushing up, too.
