Rafe looks hard at her and at Yvan, eyes narrowed, before relenting. “All right,” he says to Wynter, “what can you tell us about the odds of getting Naga out alive?”
Wynter concentrates once more on the dragon.
“Naga,” Yvan asks the dragon, anguish breaking through, “who did this to you?”
The dragon’s gaze tightens with pain. “A soldier,” Wynter translates for the dragon. “Their Dragon Master.” She winces sharply. “Mage Damion Bane.”
“Ancient One,” I fume, disgusted. “Of course it would be one of the Banes.”
“We’re going to get you out of here,” Yvan tells the dragon, his lip curling with white-hot resolve. “We’ll find a way.”
“There is no way,” Wynter translates. “He’s going to come back. He’s going to torture me until I break...or die.”
“We’ll stop him,” Rafe says.
“Then they will send another,” Wynter continues. “There is no stopping them.”
“No,” Trystan remarks as he runs his hands up and down the bars, studying them. “We’re going to find a way to break this cage and get you out.”
“Then you must find it soon, Gardnerian,” Wynter translates, the dragon’s eyes full of dark urgency. “Very soon.”
*
We don’t see much of Trystan over the next few days. He’s careful to keep to his regular schedule, as we all are, all of us overstretched with exhausting work assignments and exam time looming. Even so, Trystan takes the time to disappear into the woods every evening to practice spells on the arrowhead with the white wand.
Ariel takes to pacing the room, her raven keeping a close eye on her from its perch on her bed. She’s angry, morose and more on edge than usual. We all are. The Selkie seems to sense this. Like the raven, she watches us closely with worried eyes, curling up with Diana at night, her greatest comfort.
And Yvan seems troubled and distant, his private focus as intense on me as ever, but fully at odds with how he’s holding himself back from me. He stays by the Keltic and Urisk kitchen workers, careful to pick tasks that don’t send him into close proximity with me. And he avoids the small opportunities for conversation that he was starting to take advantage of, even though I can sense our intensifying pull toward each other from clear across the room.
It’s upsetting and confusing, but I try to stuff the hurt down and focus on studying and remaining above suspicion.
I fall to brooding over what will happen if Marina is found, over whether or not Yvan’s dragon can possibly survive and what it is that Wynter now knows about Yvan. There are so many strange things about him, like his speed and strength in dealing with Damion when rescuing the Urisk girl. How he seems to be able to communicate with the dragon just by staring at her. How he appears to sense my thoughts. The unnatural heat of his skin.
What secret is he hiding?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Yvan
“Are you still mean?”
The small child’s voice coming from high above startles me. I strain in the darkness to make her out among the thick branches of the pine tree that stands outside the kitchen. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the little Urisk girl, Fern, in a long time. I’m surprised she’s still here.
“Where are you?” I call up, keeping my voice as low as possible, remembering that she’s illegally here, smuggled off the Fae Islands by her grandmother.
“But are you still mean?”
I think back, with no small amount of shame, to that day when Lukas came into the kitchen with me and threatened everyone so coolly, reducing little Fern to terrified tears.
“Iris and Bleddyn say you’re still mean,” she muses, her voice tiny, “but Yvan says you’re not. Not anymore.”
“Did he really?” A warm, pleasant flush prickles through me.
“Grandma says she doesn’t know. And I don’t know, either.”
I consider this. “I was mean, but I didn’t want to be. And I’m sorry. I’m not mean anymore. At least I hope I’m not.”
“Oh, okay.”
Everything is quiet for a moment.
“Fern?”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you up in a tree? It’s not safe to be so high.”
“I’m playing Black Witch.”
My eyes widen with surprise. “Black Witch?”
“All the kids used to play it on the Islands. When the overseers weren’t looking. Someone gets to be the Black Witch, and everyone else has to hide.”
“What happens if she catches you?” I ask.
“She kills you, of course.”
I freeze in place. “That...sounds like a scary game,” I say, shame seeping through me.
This is my grandmother’s legacy? A child’s game where she’s the evil monster out to kill them?
“You’re pretty,” the little voice says.
“Thank you,” I reply, and I can hear her giggling through the leaves.
“Yvan thinks you’re pretty, too.”
“He does?” My cheeks grow warm with surprised delight.
“I told him you look like a princess, and he thought so, too.”
“Oh,” I say, charmed and lit up by this.
“He’s my friend,” she prattles on. “He plays with me sometimes.”
“Does he, now?”
I try to picture it. Serious, intense Yvan playing with a child. But then I remember that time I saw him with little Fern when she spilled the bubbles all over his shirt. I remember the smile on his face. How patient he was.
“He makes me toys, too.”
“Really?”
“Yup. He made me a bubble wand and a duck puzzle out of wood.”
“That’s nice.”
“He’s nice.”
When it happens, it’s so fast I don’t have time to react. There’s a loud crack, a high-pitched shriek and a sickening thump.
And then the screaming begins.
I drop my book bag and leap toward her small form, crumpled on the ground in front of me. She’s fallen from the top of the tree, all the way down to land on the sharp end of a hoe that lies at the base of the tree. It’s so dark, I can’t make out much, but I can see that her right leg is very broken and that blood gushes from the wound.
“Oh, Ancient One,” I breathe, my heart racing as Fern writhes and screams at the top of her lungs. Panicked, I look wildly around for help and see Yvan running toward us from the livestock barns.
“She fell. From the top of the tree. She fell on the hoe. She’s bleeding. Her leg’s broken.” My words come out in a tangled rush as he kneels down and takes quick stock of the situation. His head darts around. Fern isn’t supposed to be here. If anyone finds her here...
“Keep her quiet!” he orders.
“How?”
“Just do it!”
I sit down behind Fern, grab her head and cover her mouth firmly, her screams quickly and effectively muffled, and start to feel immediately sick to my stomach at having to do this. Her little body bucks and tenses against me as her hands claw at my arms and at the air. I try harder to restrain her. Yvan pulls up her pant leg and I can make out a shard of bone sticking clear out of her leg.
“Elloren,” Yvan orders me sharply. “Hold her steady.”
I keep one hand wrapped around Fern’s head and covering her mouth, and grasp her arms with the other. Yvan takes her leg in his hands and feels around with dexterous fingers. Then, out of the blue, he jerks her leg back into position. Fern convulses and she moans with terror and pain.
“What are you doing?” I cry, wildly confused.
Now he’s grabbing the newly straightened leg with both hands, completely covering the wound. He closes his eyes, as if in meditation, and holds the leg steady.
“Yvan!” I cry. “Why are you doing this? We need a real physician! Right now!”
But Fern’s screaming begins to lessen, and her muscles go slack, her arms falling limply to her sides. She whimpers softly, and then even that begins to subside. Yvan stays where he is, eyes closed as if he’s concentrating all his energy on her leg.
Fern is quietly trembling now, and I see the familiar figure of her grandmother hurrying over to us.
Fernyllia drops the scrap buckets in her arms when she catches sight of her granddaughter lying on the ground.
Yvan opens his eyes and looks over at me. “Release her, Elloren,” he says.
Wildly unsure, I take my hands off the child and sit back, Fern’s head limp in my lap.