“Yes, I know you would, but this is an informal chat rather than a formal one. So sit.”
As I reluctantly did so, he pressed a button on the table next to his chair. A few seconds later, a woman appeared. She was comely and young, with blonde hair and blue eyes—and wanted to be far more than just a handmaiden if the look she gave the commander was anything to go by.
“Mari, two glasses of red, please.”
She curtseyed and disappeared before I could protest. “What is going on, Commander? What do you want of me?”
“What do I want?” He pressed his fingers together and considered me. “The truth would be a good start.”
“The truth of what?”
“Of what really happened out there.”
I frowned. “I told the truth in the troop carrier. I’m not sure what else you want.”
“I want to know why those Adlin were so bloody determined to capture one or both of you.”
I half smiled. “I bear the scars of their determination to kill, Commander. It’s certainly not me they’re after.”
“Perhaps.”
It was the second time a man of power had said that, and it sat as uneasily with me this time as it had the first. I leaned forward and splayed my fingers wide to capture the fire’s heat, although I was far from cold. That heat came not just from the discomfort of questions I could not—dare not—answer, but from a fierce, raw wash of energy emanating from the man sitting entirely too close. It was both earthy and sexual, and it ensnared my senses and made them hunger.
I made a vague attempt to shake such thoughts and desires from my mind and said, “The questions that should be asked here is, how did a woman who has been missing for twelve years come to be alone and lost in the Tenterra wasteland? And why was she in possession of an Adlin beacon?”
“Oh, they’re questions that will undoubtedly be asked, and by more than me and you.” He crossed his legs, the movement casual and elegant. “But I very much suspect that there are other questions only you can answer.”
“Such as?”
Mari returned with two glasses and a bottle of wine. She poured us both a drink then said, “Is there anything else, my lord?”
“Not tonight, Mari. Thank you.”
She bowed and disappeared, but not before I’d caught the brief flash of annoyance she cast my way. My guess about her desires had been right.
I swirled the red around in the glass. It was rich in color and full in body, and teased my nostrils with the smell of blueberries and violets. But it could not overpower the raw scent of masculinity coming from the man in the other chair.
Whatever this awareness was, I wanted it gone. Quickly.
He was watching me, I knew, but not really in the way of a man who was attracted to a woman. It was more like hunter and prey. He wanted something from me, but that something wasn’t sex. I took a sip of wine and tried to ignore both my hyper-awareness of him and the growing uneasiness. The silence ran on. And on.
Whatever his reasons for me being here, he wasn’t in a hurry to reveal them.
“This wine,” I said eventually, “is far better than anything they serve at the base canteen.”
He snorted. “It should be, given the price the merchants charge for the stuff. Tell me about that earth shelter, March.”
“Neve,” I said automatically, and then cursed inwardly. I didn’t need to be on intimate terms with this man, not even when it came to something as simple as being on a first-name basis. “And there’s really nothing much to tell.”
“Lady Saska is a woman of some power, but even the most powerful air witch alive has no authority over the earth. The wind couldn’t have dug that trench and cave for her.”
My gaze met his. “So Lord Kiro said. That does not alter the fact of what happened.”
“Lord Kiro happens to believe you are not telling the truth.”
And he would be right. I raised an eyebrow and hoped the inner agitation didn’t show. “And what lies does he think I’m telling?”
“He, like me, believes that it was you who dug the trench.”
I raised the wine to my lips and somehow resisted the urge to gulp it down and ask for more. I sipped it, licked the sweetness from my lips, and then said, “So he thinks I somehow snatched the ability to control the earth from some hereto unseen and unknown place that harbors such magic, and used it to save us?”
Amusement touched his expression, and it softened his aristocratic features. While he couldn’t be classified as captivatingly handsome—as so many of those in the ruling houses were—there was still something about this man’s features that drew the eye.
“There are no places of wild magic left in this misbegotten land,” he said. “So no, he does not think that.”
“He’s foolish to think anything else,” I replied bluntly. “I’m unlit, Commander, and that can never change.”
He drank some wine, the green of his gaze filled with shadows and questions. “The auditors have been known to get it wrong.”
My smile held little in the way of amusement. “But I’m also stained. Have you ever known—ever heard—of one such as I possessing such power?”
His gaze drifted to the stain on my cheek. I half expected a slither of distaste to appear, but again, he surprised me.
“No. Not the ability to command interaction between earth and air, at any rate.”
“Then I don’t know what else to say, Commander. I can only repeat the truth of what happened, and if that is not believed then—” I stopped and shrugged.
“Lord Kiro is arranging for Lady Saska to be re-audited once she’s back at Winterborne and recovered. I expect we’ll have our answers then.”
Those answers, I knew, would only lead to more questions—questions that would involve my part in doing the impossible. But even if the auditors were assigned to me and did detect the sliver of magic I now possessed, it wouldn’t provide them with answers. Although I had to wonder, if an air witch had no power or control over the earth itself, why had I been able to do just that? It was certainly the air I’d called for help, not the earth.
“I hope so, Commander.” I drained the rest of the wine, placed the glass on the small table between our chairs, and then rose. “If that’s all, I should return to the hospital ward.”
“Yes, I think perhaps you should.” He pressed a second button and then stood.
Though there was still a good five feet between us, something flared. Something that was once again earthy and base, sexual and yet not. It echoed not only through me, but the rough stone under my feet. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before, and it left me both breathless and frightened. Because whatever it was, it was not only powerful but also very dangerous.
And he felt it, even if it was only evident by the slight narrowing of his eyes.
I took a step back but the movement didn’t shatter the power of whatever that surge was.
“Rogers?” he said, his gaze not wavering from mine. “Can you escort March back to the hospital, please?”
“That’s not necessary—”
“I disagree.” His voice was mild even if his gaze was still too watchful, too wary. “And a guard will be placed on your door should you decide to go wandering again without clearance.”
“I’m not dangerous—”
“Oh, I think you are, Neve March.” The small smile that briefly tugged his lips did little to ease the darkness in his eyes. “Few others could do what you have done. Few others could even survive it.”
He wasn’t, I suspected, talking so much about our escape from the Adlin, but the means by which we’d done it. Trouble had indeed stepped into my path the minute I’d decided to meld with the wind, and it obviously wasn’t stepping away. “Then you misjudge the training and skill of the Nightwatch, Commander.”
“Perhaps.”
As footsteps warned of the approaching guard, I spun on my heel and walked across to the stairs. A brown-clad figure appeared down the bottom. I motioned him to stop, then glanced back at Stone.
“I hope you get your answers, Commander.”