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He’s shed the fancy jacket he was wearing at the ball, his white dress shirt partly unbuttoned down his sculpted chest. I’d admire the view if my wits hadn’t scattered.
His much larger hand closes around my own where it’s gripping the knife. The knife that’s dug into his neck deep enough to produce a droplet of blood against the light brown skin.
“Hello to you too,” he says dryly. “I see you made it through the onslaught of daimon with your impressive fighting instincts intact.”
I gape at him for a few seconds longer than is strictly polite, my mind shaking off the dregs of sleep. I’m sprawled out on the sofa but still wearing my silk dress, no blanket over me.
I must have drifted off while I was waiting for him to get back.
And wandered into that awful dream.
I pull my hand back, and Stavros lets it go. Inhaling sharply, I scoot toward the sofa’s arm to pull my stance upright and tuck the knife back into its hidden sheath. “Sorry. I— Old habits.”
Stavros shrugs and sits down on the far end of the sofa, now vacated by my feet. “If it’d been anyone other than me prodding you here in the middle of the night, it’d have been a perfectly valid response.”
He pauses, his dark eyes going momentarily somber as they search mine. “I’d have left you to your sleep, but you sounded as though you weren’t enjoying it very much.”
Damn, was I acting out my anguish in real life? And of course the former general had to be the one to see it.
“Bad dream,” I say shortly, and swipe quickly at my eyes to make sure no tears leaked out. I seem to be okay there. “I wanted to talk to you as soon as you got back anyway. Is everyone else okay?”
“I managed to get confirmation that Casimir, Aleksi, and Benedikt are all in decent shape. I’d have been able to tell you that sooner, but I went to speak to the king.”
I blink at him one more time, even though my eyes have totally adjusted now. “You just walked over to the palace and demanded an audience with King Konram in the middle of the night?”
The corners of Stavros’s mouth twitch upward. “Having until very recently been his very favorite general comes with a few benefits. I thought— Clearly the daimon are escalating their distress faster than we can unravel the problem. I had a duty to warn him even if I didn’t have much to warn him with.”
My pulse hitches. He didn’t just have a chat with the king—he told him about the scourge sorcerers. “And what did he say?”
Stavros’s grimace comes back. “That I didn’t have much. He can’t stamp out sorcerers we haven’t identified. He didn’t even sound totally convinced that thereisscourge sorcery being practiced at the college based on the little I could tell him.”
I scowl. “What does he think the daimon are riled up about, then? It’s not like they typically trash the college balls, is it?”
“No.” Stavros rubs his brow, ruffling the fringe of his ruddy hair. “Apparently there are rumors going around that the disturbances are a sign that the godlen themselves are unhappy with Silana on a broader scale. That they’re giving us a chance to reform.”
“Reform how? What are they pissed off about if it’s not scourge sorcery?”
“Obviously, no one knows. I pointed out to him that it being a reaction to a small group of miscreants makes much more sense than there being some horrible wrong we’re all doing that we don’t even know about, but he wasn’t fully swayed. I think he was annoyed that I hadn’t mentioned the sorcery concern earlier.”
Which Stavros obviously realized was likely. But he put himself out there anyway.
He doesn’t look as if he regrets the decision, but I roll my eyes toward the ceiling on his behalf. “So he was peeved that you didn’t have enough information, but also peeved that you didn’t come to him when you had even less.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“What a knob.”
A startled guffaw sputters out of Stavros. “Yes, I suppose he can be.”
He peers at me again, with the head-twitch to refocus his vision, and his gaze darkens. He lifts his hand to hover his fingers by my forehead. “You’re injured.”
At the protective growl that’s come into his voice, my heart skips a beat for a very different reason.
I put on a breezy tone. “It’s just a couple of scratches.”
“Acouple?”
I raise my wrist with its thin line of dried blood before he insists on conducting his own search. “I’ve had worse papercuts.”
