“It was stupid.”
I frowned. “Recklessas it was, I couldn’t stand doing nothing, not when my craft could’ve been useful.”
I did not make choices for Skul Drek, but I spoke to him in secret. He came to me first. We had somehow fashioned an eerie connection, and it was risking lives I loved.
We fell into a thick silence as herb healers and Stonegate bone crafters worked with bone tonics and herb pastes and draughts for the wounded.
While a mousy woman worked on a gash across Kael’s shoulder, I scanned the nearby nooks. There was a face I didn’t see.
“Kael—”
“I know what you’re going to ask.” He frowned. “Last I saw of Sentry Ashwood, he refused a healer’s touch and abandoned the hall. I doubt the king will allow him in with the prince, so since he isyour guard, he very well might be searching for you.”
There was an accusation in his tone, but I did not have the strength, nor desire, to give up any secrets tonight.
“I ought to inform him I’m alive before the palace is under siege with a new search.”
Kael’s mouth tightened. “Right. You’d better.”
“Are you…will you be all right?”
“I’m fine.” He pinched my cheek in the way he used to when we were young, all to irritate me. “Go.”
I kissed the side of his head, but felt his gaze on my neck with each step from the healer’s wing.
My chamber was free ofthe Sentry, but more than one Stav Guard stood watch outside the door. I kept low, never giving up they guarded an empty room.
After searching the great hall, the gardens, and the sparring field, I found my first glimpse of Roark Ashwood on the balcony of his chamber. Moonlight kissed his bare shoulders, and he was inspecting something on his waist.
Without signaling I was there, I entered the Stav Wing.
Rooms were bare. Few guards were in their beds, most still under the care of healers or too much ale in other rooms of the fortress. I slipped into the stairwell, winding around the tower, until I reached the upper floors where officers and the Sentry kept their personal rooms.
Roark’s door was unlocked. I snorted. For a man who was on the brink of drawing a blade at the slightest threat, he was rather unconcerned with his own security.
As the Sentry he had a small sitting room with a hearth, a table, and fur-covered benches. I paused at the table and looked at the scatter of books on the surface. Lore and myths and a few children’s tales with painted pages. My lips curled. All his violence and Roark read tales of heroes and villains and quests of the gods.
One hand covered my mouth when I stepped into his bedchamber.
The bed was unkempt and smelled of the fresh rain and oakmoss of his skin. A wardrobe was opened, and inside his uniforms and tunics and cloaks were arranged neatly, but that was the extent of it. In one corner were pairs of sloughed-off boots and a few unsheathed blades.
Roark was collected and pulled taut in the face of everyone, but here, he could simply be; he was free to be messy and at ease.
He was a beautiful conundrum.
I leaned against the door of the balcony. He was tending to a wound on his side. A discolored gash that looked almost deadaround the edges, but if there had been a great deal of blood, it had stopped flowing.
His hair was glistening and damp. His skin had more than one bruise, but looked freshly scrubbed. His trousers were without a belt, and hung seductively low on his hips, revealing the two dimples on his lower back.
The man was a sight I never anticipated needing.
I knocked on the edge of the doorway. He spun around with a start.
“Good to see you alive, Sentry.” My voice was strained, heavy with emotion.
Roark had my face trapped in his palms in a breath, and in the next, his mouth was on mine.
Unexpected, but welcome. For a moment I forgot about battle, blood, and assassins.
