“Don’t worry, they’re not dead. Just passed out,” Vade said over his shoulder with a voice all too at ease.
Orelia checked the other woman just in case, then hurried to catch up to him. The temple ceilings must have been a hundred feet tall, decorated in carvings of a multitude of animals, but she didn’t have time to appreciate the architecture as another pair of guards appeared up ahead.
“Someone’s going to notice two incapacitated guards,” she whispered.
“Hey! What are you doing in here? This temple is off limits,” one of the men said.
Vade choked out the two batalins and left them lying in an unconscious pile outside an arched wooden door. He tried the handle to the door, but it was locked. He combed through their pockets looking for a key while Orelia frantically looked around, expecting more guards to rush around the corner at any moment.
Vade unlocked the door, and they climbed a wide flight of marble stairs.
“We’re going to get caught!” Orelia said. “You can’t just leave a pile of bodies wherever you go!”
“Then we better hurry,” he said lightheartedly.
Orelia huffed. “You are so damn frustrating sometimes.”
Vade’s chuckle echoed in the staircase as they wound up the spiral steps, passing open-air windows until a single door appeared covered in ivy.Head Druid’s Quarterswas carved into the wooden plate on the wall.
Surprisingly, it was unlocked, so Vade pushed the creaky oak door open, and the two of them stepped inside.
The earthy scent of incense immediately transported her back to Beron’s, but this room was nothing like the brothel. The ceilings were just as high as the ones in the foyer, and there were plants of every kind everywhere she looked. Ivy covered the stone walls, and a redwood tree grew out from a hole in the floor. It must have been hundreds of years old, and it looked like the room had been built around the red-toned giant, allowing holes in the roof where thick branches had breached their confinements and reached the outside world.
A small waterfall feature sat on the backside of the tree, trickling down the dark stones and into a large pool, the water babbling in a soothing tone.
Orelia was too busy watching all the colorful birds chirping in the tree that she didn’t notice Vade incapacitating a young druid woman in cream-colored robes. When she passed out, he laid her on the ground, then made for the bed in the corner.
The druid was fast asleep. His lips were too pale against his moon white skin. Frizzy salt and pepper hair went past his shoulders, brown feathers were woven into the thin braids, and his white beard bobbed with each croak of a breath. Orelia couldn’t believe the size of his antlers—at least four feet tall, with many points, and bone white, signaling that he was very, very old.
Vade nudged his shoulder.
Orelia smacked him on the arm. “Don’t do that!” she whispered. “You’ll scare the poor man half to death.”
“He’s already close to death, and I need him alive.” Vade nudged him again.
The druid’s eyes opened, the whites of his eyes greeting Orelia before they rolled forward and his gaze met hers. He didn’t seem surprised to see two strangers staring down at him.
“Come to finish me off?” he asked in a scratchy voice.
Vade started to speak, but Orelia grabbed his arm and leveled him with a look saying she should be the one to talk.
To her surprise, the fae conceded and took a step back.
Orelia gave the druid a reassuring smile. “I’m so sorry to disturb you Mr. Devlin, but my friend and I are in desperate need of your help.”
Devlin tried to sit up and immediately began coughing. Orelia set Bute’s jar down and helped ease the man into a sitting position, adding more pillows behind his back.
“Thank you,” he grumbled as he adjusted his lime-colored robes. Yellow-green eyes blinked a few times, then slid to Vade.
“A fae,” he said before taking a sip from a drinking horn on his bedside table. “Ugh.” Devlin looked into the horn. “Tea’s gone cold. Be a dear and fetch me a new cup, will you, miss?”
She was surprised at how polite he was being for having just been startled awake by two people who weren’t supposed to be there. Orelia took the white and black horn she suspected once belonged to a batalin and made her way to a hearth across the room.
“It was a gift,” the druid said. “I pulled a young batalin out of some wreckage in Soulbright after a fight broke out many, many years ago between the city Watchers and a band of stiv insurgents.”
She pulled a kettle off the hook above the fire and poured water into the horn. Orelia searched the crowded table for honey and found a jar hidden between stacks of books. She added a spoonful of the thick amber liquid to the tea and stirred it in with a spoon.
“The batalins in Soulbright couldn’t keep the insurgents out, and apparently mine couldn’t keep the two of you out, either.”
