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I narrowed my eyes. I knew what he was talking about of course.
I raised my sword, blocking Noah’s half-hearted offensive move.
The Seelie spy had been put to death. Thankfully, not publically. But the death had been signed off on and performed somewhere within the castle walls.
Because of me.
Because I caught him and prevented his escape.
I twisted my body, bringing my sword across my body defensively, tensing slightly as the sound of our swords meeting vibrated in my chest.
“Yes and no.” My answer was cautious. Not because I didn’t trust Noah but because I was working through too many parts about life in Faerie at the moment.
I’d defended people who had technically enslaved me. Not because I was asked to but because I believed them to be home now. The people, the palace, the Unseelie. Everything was home in a way I hadn’t had before. But I was expendable, wasn’t I? A mere human slave.
Still, it hadn’t stopped me from putting my life at risk for all of them, especially for Noah.
The steamy kiss we’d shared had never been far from my mind. We hadn’t brought it up again, hadn’t had another one. He was distant romantically, save for the painful moments of tension that seemed like they’d always exist between us. We were getting closer day by day, our friendship developing into something I relied on more than I cared to admit. But it existed without mentioning our kiss.
“Yes, Nicole!” Captain Coltrain shouted, almost as loudly as he had with Noah and me, which was unusual for him toward partners outside of the prince.
Nicole smiled, bowing her head before touching the shoulder of Gabe, her fae. He didn’t look upset that she’d done well against him. The opposite in fact, he looked pleased. Just not as pleased as the captain.
I frowned watching the tough, “the fae are vapid” Nicole smiling at the captain. That was strange.
Noah’s blade came too close to my face and I gasped. He stopped it, but proved his point.
“Attention, Ms. Fray, is key in training.”
“You just hate when the attention isn’t on you, Your Majesty.” I flicked his sword to the side and turned, reengaging in our exercise.
“Yes and no?” Noah’s question hung in the air for a few paces before I could answer.
I put my sword down for a moment, standing with my hands on my hips. He leaned forward, balancing his weight on the tip of his weapon as it dug into the mat.
“If I hadn’t stopped him, who knows what he could have spread back to the Seelie. Or the damage he could do knowing the castle like he did.” I tapped my foot, anxious. I knew I’d done the right thing, but my actions meant that a man was dead. “But he’s dead because of me.”
Noah watched me before taking a step closer. He hesitated and then cleared his throat, looking down at me but not coming closer or touching me. “I felt the same way when I took my first life. War is ugly. It’s messy and the bloodshed sometimes seems useless. But the spy was here for almost a year. The amount of knowledge someone that well-trained probably garnered may have been enough to give the Seelie an edge and make the war last a mere day.”
He stepped back, swinging his sword at the ready for the beginning of the exercise once more. I nodded, though I shut my eyes as though I could unsee the man’s battered body the last time I saw him in the jail cells.
“Your actions have saved more people than we’ll ever know, Cora. And I am grateful for you.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly, raising my own sword to begin the exercise.
Had I not run after the spy, he would have jumped on the saddle of the dragon on the roof and flown away. A saddled dragon.
“Has there been any word from our warriors of dragon sightings?” I asked.
Noah’s huff was perfectly timed with our blades connecting, so I wasn’t sure if it was a frustrated noise at my prying or from the training. But I was moving down a road we’d had conversations about many times.
“No saddled or leashed dragons have been spotted being taken on strolls with the Seelie,” he laughed. A dry, forced sound that I knew was an effort to cover up more of his annoyance.
“The dragon had saddle, Noah. The spy was going to ride the beast away. Ride.” I hissed the last word.
“We’ve been over this. Training or taming dragons to have saddles is insane. To willingly let the fae control them like that? They’ve never done that before.”
“Well then we need to use that and see how the Seelie did it so that we can even up the war. If they have dragons, what will we do?”
