He chuckles and reaches out to play with a strand of my hair. I bat his hand away, too frustrated to find him cute.
“I’ve been drinking longer than you have, Beasty. The blood speaks to me differently after all these years than it did when I was young. You’ll get there. I’ll help you.”
“Can you taste thura?” I question, wondering if there are more uses for this ability than I realized.
“I can taste power levels—which fae are stronger, things like that—but I can’t tell what kind of thura someone has simply by drinking from them.”
I nod, but my mind is back on what happened, as renewed anger and disappointment settle through me. I need to fight something. I need to move and react and work through what the fuck just happened.
“Training room,” I snap out as I move for the door.
Let the corpse rot. We’ll deal with it tomorrow, but right now I need to hit something before I implode.
“For what?” Riall demands.
“So I can put you on your ass for stepping in like that.”
“Good, then I can put you on your ass for putting yourself at risk,” he calls to me, but I’m already out the door and stomping up the stairs.
Fucking Scorpions.
* * *
My staff comes down hard on Riall’s, and he grins as the hit vibrates up his arms. I knew I felt stronger after we bonded, but this is incredible. I look down at my hands in awe. I’ve already broken two bow staffs, this is my third, and I can see it starting to splinter. Riall swings for me, and I flip back to avoid his staff despite the annoying fact that he’s softening his hits, and his attacks are annoyingly lazy.
I charge him, sliding on the ground to go at his legs, but he vaults himself over me and backs away.
“Come on, Riall, I thought you were going to put me on my ass?” I taunt, frustrated with thechase the Scorpiongame he’s playing.
Tarek chuckles from the bench he’s commandeered on the far wall, but his focus is on the several sheets of parchment he’s laid out next to him, each covered in notes trying to piece together everything we know.
“Tell me again what he said after you both switched out of Common?” Tarek asks, his ice-blue eyes flitting from one scrawled detail to the next, deep in thought.
I notice Riall is looking down at his hands as though there’s something about them that’s perplexing him. I ignore the strange way he’s examining his palms and try to recall Verus’s exact words.
“He said, ‘One Igeeyin to another, you have to release me. My clan will offer a life debt, but it’s for The Cause.’”
“I’m linking the Moon’s army and The Cause. I don’t know that they’re connected, but it seems more likely than not, given everything he said,” Tarek announces absently, and I turn back to Riall.
“I think you’re right about Igeeyin being a designation for a type of fae versus a title,” I agree, picking up what we were talking about before.
Riall starts to circle me, and my stomach dips with excitement.
“It makes sense with the way we look,” I note. “I’ve never met a fae who looks like me. Then again, I don’t get around much. But you three haven’t either, and Hatus certainly never came across any ghostsbefore that night in Lord Daeral’s stables.”
I get tired of waiting for Riall to engage, so I charge him. It’s almost as though he’s distracted, because he doesn’t lift his bow to deflect, and I clip him hard on the shoulder.
I huff out an irritated breath.
“Seriously, what’s going on? You were looking right at me that time; why aren’t you defending yourself? Why are you letting me kick your ass?”
Riall throws his head back and growls. “I’m trying, I swear I am, but I can’t seem to hurt you.”
“I’m aware. That’s the problem,” I snark.
“No, I mean Iphysicallycan’t,” he explains, once again looking down at his arms as though he doesn’t control them anymore.
My brow furrows with confusion.
