I don’t look at him. “When I got to my room yesterday . . . Breck was . . . scrubbing blood off the floor. I think it was her own blood, and something was wrong with her—like she’d been beaten. Adora made it clear she’d had something to do with it. Because of me.”
“Adora hurt her? In your room? Why didn’t you tell me? What was she trying to do—threaten you?”
I open my eyes and look miserably at the ground.
“Nym,” he growls, “did Adora threaten you?”
“Everyone threatens everyone.” My voice is a tired wisp.
He catches my chin and tips it up, anger pasted across his features. “Who’s everyone?”
I blink tears away and start to shrug him off, but those emerald eyes filet me one piece at a time until I’m naked and exposed. And it hurts like litches because I’m starving to tell him all of it but terrified of the ramifications. Not just that they’ll be hurt—that he’ll be hurt—but knowing that two hours from now Eogan will be back to his mode of pretending that I don’t exist as anything more than a tool for war.
I clear my throat and force a casualness I don’t feel. “Adora ordered me to stay away from you except when training, or else she’ll hurt Colin. And Lord Myles, he . . .”
Eogan raises an eyebrow. Waiting. His gaze darkening. “Myles what?”
I shake my head.
His fingers slip from my chin as his eyes slit into pure, unadulterated ferocity. “Myles threatened you how, Nym?”
His expression instantly smoothes. He straightens. “Look . . .” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m not going to force it out of you, Nym, but if there’s something I need to know—you have to tell me. I’ve been at this a lot longer than you, and I don’t want you worrying, and I certainly don’t want you doing anything about it. I’ll take care of it.”
I want to argue, but his expression says I’ll only make it worse. So I just nod. But all I see are Breck’s puffy eyes and Eogan’s slit throat.
He leans in until his bangs sweep my forehead. “Promise me.”
I don’t say anything. Because I won’t—I can’t—promise not to try. Because I’ll not have him getting hurt because of me.
He tips his head back and sighs, then studies me. Until that appealing half smile emerges. “So Adora told you to stay away from me, eh?” His gaze slides slowly down my body, then back to my face. “And how’s that working for you?”
My mouth drops open. Fine. Good. None of your business. I’m failing miserably. But none of my answers come because my throat has just collapsed. Stupid bolcrane.
He chuckles and makes some unnecessary comment about me blushing. I twitch my hand and send a single hailstone through the air to slap his head. He lurches and laughs harder.
I start to smirk, then frown as I look from him, to my hand, to the hail remnants in his hair.
His expression turns quizzical.
“How come your block didn’t stop that from hitting you just now?”
He shrugs. “Lucky aim.”
Daft answer. “Why?”
“I told you—it works differently with different people.”
“Okay.” I bite my lip, examining him. “So you can use it to calm me, but . . . it doesn’t protect you from me?”
His expression turns careful. “Like any ability, my block has its weaknesses.”
Against my will, the edge of my heart ripples. Am I a weakness for him? “What, like it only protects you from certain people? What about the avalanche—does it work against anything trying to kill you?” My relief soars. Maybe it will protect him from Lord Myles.
“It’s usually more an issue of when than who. It doesn’t guard me permanently.”
“Usually?”
The look on his face shuts me down. Then he’s grabbing my arm and tugging my sleeve up and sliding his fingers along my deformed hand. “So how about we do this thing?”
“What thing?”
He smirks. “Close your eyes.”
He presses down as I comply, and there’s an immediate thickening in the air as the damp, magic-soaked atmosphere rushes into my lungs. The next thing I know, it’s launched through my veins, singing through my blood and muscles, infusing them with that ancient melody I swear I know and yet have never heard. That feeling of homesickness returns, and if I concentrate hard enough, I can almost hum the enchanted refrain from another time, another spectrum, as it blends earth and sky and water into a heartbeat that is pulsing with my own.
“Feel that?” he murmurs.
I hardly nod. With my eyes shut, I’ve come from this ancient time, this ancient place. I was created out of its elements, and now those elements have returned to awaken everything around us—the ground, the valley, the lake—they’re in my mind and in my breath, as if they’re the original version of me. The thing I was intended to be.
“What’s it doing?” I gasp.