*
I drag myself back to the North Tower that night, a dulled fear humming inside me. There’s a package for me there, Wynter handing it to me with no small amount of alarm.
“There was a soldier here,” she tells me in a small voice. “He almost saw her.” Her silver eyes dart toward Marina, who’s watching us intently, fear etched on her face.
I take the package into my hands and turn it over, concern spiking.
Another gift from Lukas. But small this time. I open the card first.
Elloren,
It seems our finest have misplaced a dragon. I’ll look for you when I arrive.
Lukas
I open the small package as Wynter watches with wary curiosity.
It’s a necklace, and I pull up the silver chain, letting the pendant dance in the air between us, glinting in the soft lantern light of the upstairs hallway.
A tree. Intricately carved in white wood.
I grasp the pendant in my hand and breathe in a deep, startled breath as a huge, branching Snow Oak bursts into view, caressing my mind, sending out branches through my limbs, clear down to my hands and feet.
It roots me right to the floor, this wood, steadying me, a pulsating echo of pleasure coursing through me.
I release the wood, breathing hard.
“Careful, Elloren Gardner,” Wynter cautions, eyeing the pendant in the same way I’ve seen her look at Ariel’s nilantyr.
“I know what I’m doing,” I tell her uneasily.
It’s the right thing to do, I reason with myself. To stay on Lukas’s good side and pretend that everything is fine and normal. I’ll wear it every day so that he finds it on me when he arrives.
I can picture him now, spotting the chain, sliding his pianist fingers along my neck to guide the necklace into the open, closing his palm around the tree pendant as he smiles at me.
A prickling flush heats my cheeks at the thought of him, and I’m instantly ashamed of my imaginings.
I slip the pendant’s chain around my head, drop the tree inside my tunic and attempt to push thoughts of Lukas out of my mind.
But I can feel the wood of the small tree pulsating against my skin, like a warm, unsettling heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Two Hundred and Fifty-Six
An icy wind rattles the diamond-paned windows as I sit with Tierney in Professor Kristian’s cluttered office.
It’s late evening, and a throbbing ache pulls at my temple like taut fishing line, the scar along my thigh tingling.
*
All day I’ve held my breath, waiting for an arrest that never came as my friends and I stolidly went about our usual lectures, work and tasks, all of us trying to blend in unobtrusively—nothing but harmless, hardworking scholars, the lot of us.
But I saw the Verpacian and Gardnerian soldiers questioning scholars and professors, the military presence growing throughout the day. It sent a cut-glass fear straight through me.
This is bigger than just us now. And we need help.
Tierney and her family need to get out of here.
Professor Kristian sits behind his desk, eyeing Tierney and me with somber concern. Tierney looks like a rabbit tensed for flight, her knuckles white as she sits forward, gripping at her chair, frozen in place.
“What’s the matter, Elloren?” Professor Kristian asks me, his eyes flitting to Tierney and back to me again.
Heart racing, nerves primed, I jump off the cliff. “Yvan Guriel. He told us...that you might be able to help someone who might be—” I take a deep breath “—glamoured Fae.”
Professor Kristian’s brow rises, and he’s silent for a long moment, frozen in place like Tierney.
“You know Yvan Guriel?” he finally asks.
I blink at him, surprised by the question.
A bit, I think, with wry hurt. He almost kissed me. I nod cagily.
Professor Kristian spits out a sound of amazement and narrows his eyes. “Surprising. Yvan hates Gardnerians. Quite a lot.”
It stings bitterly to hear it. I push the hurt aside.
“We have a common goal,” I tell him, straightening.
“Transporting glamoured Fae east, I would imagine,” he says matter-of-factly. “Is that what you’re getting at?”
Tierney and I glance at each other, and the jumped-up fear in her eyes jolts me into remembering what the stakes are for her and for her family.
“Yes,” I tell him definitively. “That’s exactly what I’m getting at.”
He takes a deep breath, nodding, lets it out and clasps his hands together, his forefingers steepled in thought. His lip lifts with amusement as he sets his eyes on me. “Flirting with the Resistance, are we?”
I let out a deep breath. “I’m afraid I’ve jumped clear into bed with them.”
A bark of surprised laughter bursts from his lips, and I can’t help but cough out a small laugh, as well. I massage my aching head and look back up at him, resigned to the wild path I’ve veered onto.
Laughter still swimming in his eyes, Professor Krisitan sits back in his chair and stares at me with amused incredulity. “That’s...not a very Gardnerian thing to say,” he says, still chuckling.
I let out a resigned sigh. “I’m feeling less and less Gardnerian every day.”
He nods with understanding, and then his expression goes odd, like he sees something in my face, something he finds troubling. He swallows audibly and then...his eyes sheen over with tears.
“What’s the matter?” I ask him, immediately concerned.
“Nothing,” he says with a shake of his head, his voice breaking. He clears his throat and leans forward to set out tea mugs for both Tierney and me from the chipped tea set ever-present on his desk. His eyes flick toward me, and there’s a raw pain there. “You...you reminded me of someone, just then,” he says, his tone still ragged. “Someone I used to know.”
“Who?” I ask, confused. “My grandmother?”
“No, someone else,” he says cryptically, now closed off. “It’s nothing.”
He shakes his head again and pours tea for us, the steam rising in the air.
It’s comforting, the familiar burble of the tea as it’s poured, the scent of minty steam on the cool air, a chill seeping in from a strong draft around the windows.
Professor Kristian eyes Tierney as he pushes a cup toward her. “You would be the glamoured Fae, I presume?”
Frightened, Tierney looks sharply toward me, eyes wide, and I nod encouragingly to her.
“I can help you,” he tells her, his voice low and kind. “You’ve come to the right place. You have nothing to fear.”
Tierney stares at him blankly for a long moment and then bursts into tears, her thin shoulders heaving, her body bunching up into a protective ball.
“Oh, my dear. It’s all right.” Professor Kristian gets up and comes around to lean against the front of his desk. He hands his handkerchief out to Tierney and places his hand gently on her arm.
Tierney takes the handkerchief with a shaking hand.
“What are you, dear?” he asks her. “What type of Fae?”
“Asrai,” she chokes out.
“That’s a lovely thing to be,” he says reassuringly. “Maybe not here, but it will be when you and your family get to Noi lands, hmm?”
Tierney chances a look up at him and starts crying harder, nodding her head in pained assent. She looks small and scared and so young.
“Have some tea,” he tells her with a pat to her arm.
“Thank you,” she manages. She roughly wipes at her eyes, gets hold of her staggered breathing and takes the mug he’s patiently holding out to her, sipping at it as Professor Kristian sits back against the desk.
His expression turns oddly amused as he turns his attention to me. “Well, you have been busy, haven’t you?”
“I don’t like to be idle,” I reply tartly.
“Hmm,” he says, eyeing me with friendly suspicion. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a missing dragon, would you, Elloren?”
My breath catches tight in my throat.
Professor Kristian looks to Tierney. “Or a freak snowstorm that fell only on the Gardnerian Fourth Division military base?”