Chapter 14
The sound of the door slamming echoed like a gunshot. Izzy stomped across the yard behind the boarding house, ignoring the stable hands who looked at her in surprise as she kicked open the door of the stable and stepped inside.
The second she did, she was greeted by an excited ‘woof’ and Snaffles was there, jumping all over her in his excitement and showering her with slobbery kisses. She sank down into the straw, her back against the wall of a stall, and threw her arms around the dog’s huge shoulders. Delighted at the attention, Snaffles flopped down across her thighs, nearly knocking the wind out of her.
“Well, at least you’re pleased to see me,” she muttered.
Anger coursed through her veins like molten metal. She’d only come downstairs to see if Mistress Kearnan could lend her a hairbrush and she’d walked into that! Into overhearing Magnus and Emeric discussing her as though she was a child! Who did Magnus think he was, deciding her fate without even discussing it with her first? Without even asking if shewantedto be handed over to Emeric like some piece of baggage Magnus couldn’t wait to be rid of?
Tomorrow, she would be going to Dun Saith. From Dun Saith she would—hopefully—find a way home. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted all along? So why then was she seething like a kicked ants’ nest?
She laid her head back against the wooden wall of the stall and stared up at the rafters. A spider was busy constructingits web in the corner, making its steady way round and round, content with where it was and what it was doing.
But unlike the spider, unlike the horses in the stalls behind her, unlike the stable hands in the yard outside, she didn’t have a place here. This wasn’t where she belonged. So why was she so unsettled by the thought of traveling to Dun Saith and the possibility of going home?
It was, she realized, nothing to do with going to Dun Saith and everything to do with Magnus. She had made a fool of herself by kissing him, and now he was sending her away. Bloody hell. This wasnothow she wanted things to go. She’d thought...she’d thought... Damn it. She didn’t know what she’d thought. She only knew that the idea of being sent away from Magnus made her stomach churn with dread.
Snaffles suddenly lifted his head and gave a soft grunt of greeting. Izzy looked around and saw a silhouette outlined in the doorway. There was no mistaking who it was. Nobody else was that tall or that broad.
“Isabelle,” he said softly, his voice a deep bass that seemed to rumble right through her body.
Pushing Snaffles off her lap, Izzy climbed to her feet, lifted her chin, and faced Magnus squarely. His figure was dark against the weak moonlight leaking in from the door, his face obscured by shadows.
“What do you want, Magnus?” she asked, unable to keep the anger from her voice.
There was a pause in which only the soft whispering sounds of the wind outside and the restless shuffling of the horses in their stalls could be heard. Then he stepped forward into the light spilling from a lantern hung on a post.
“I wanted to explain,” he said quietly, reaching a hand towards her. It hovered mid-air between them for a moment before he let it drop to his side again. “And to apologize.”
Izzy crossed her arms over her chest, tucking her hands under her armpits. She felt her jaw tighten, anger and hurt bubbling inside. “For what? For making decisions for me? For deciding I’m not strong enough for this?”
For not feeling the same way about me as I do you?
Magnus winced and took another step towards her. “I’m sorry that ye heard my conversation with Emeric,” he said. “And I’m sorry that I didnae discuss it with ye first—”
“Was it true what Emeric said?” she demanded, cutting him off.
He blinked. “What?”
“He said you were absent without leave from the Order of the Osprey but you told me you were here on a missionforthe Order. Which is it, Magnus?”
He chewed the inside of his cheek, a troubled expression crossing his features. At last, he sighed. “The truth is that my captain, Kai Stewart, forbade me from coming on this mission.”
“Yet you came anyway.”
