“Big Deep,” he muttered. “My home there. The house is big enough to shelter all of us, and well situated—easy to defend, difficult to attack. And I know those canyons like the back of my hand.”
Gemma pulled one of the many maps on the table closer to her. Talan peered over her shoulder.
“The southern front is a good deal north of there,” he pointed out. “At least we wouldn’t have to worry about fighting that battle as well.”
“How will we even fightthisbattle?” Gemma said. “Both times we’ve faced Kilraith, he’s managed to survive.”
Ankaret plopped down in a chair beside Farrin with a soft puff of flame and started scribbling eagerly on a piece of paper. “She has—Ihave some ideas about that very thing.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off Gareth. His face was completely closed off to me. While everyone else buzzed around him, looking over mapsand papers, their voices overlapping, he sat very still, staring blankly at the table. I longed to go to him. Returning to his hated childhood home was a brilliant idea from a strategic perspective and a terrible one otherwise. My mind raced, searching for an alternative, desperate to spare him this. But I could think of nowhere safer.
“So the question remains,” Talan said, pushing back from the table with a frown, “how in the name of the gods will we find someone willing to undergo the transference and be Neave’s new host?”
“Do not worry,” Ankaret said, still writing furiously on her paper. “I have thought of everything. She is nearly here. I sent for her just a little while ago.”
An instant later, the doors flew open, and Alastrina Bask strode in, wearing a long, loose black tunic, unlaced boots, and a highly annoyed expression. Even in her disarray, she was as formidable a sight as ever—pale as winter, raven-black hair swinging over her shoulders, blue eyes bright and furious. Just behind her was Gemma’s best friend, Illaria Farrow, who wore a more than slightly rumpled dressing gown and was trying unsuccessfully to stifle a smile. Her warm brown skin glistened with a delicate sheen of sweat.
“This had better be good,” Alastrina muttered, glaring around at us all. “Your message interrupted averypleasant lunch.”
Chapter 34
For the next three days, everyone prepared to move ourbase of operations—as Talan called it quite seriously and Gareth referred to it with a glint of dark humor—to the Fontaine estate in the network of canyons known as Big Deep.
Alastrina and Ankaret spent the time holed up in the university laboratories with Gareth’s team, preparing for the transference of Neave into Alastrina’s body. Ryder, furious about this part of our plan, stayed at Alastrina’s side in a futile attempt to dissuade her from participating—which, predictably, seemed only to solidify her decision even more.
“Once this is done,” she told Ryder, grinning mischievously after a particularly loud shouting match at a particularly awkward dinner, “you’ll never again be able to pretend that you’re better at wilding than I am.”
Smiling grimly at the memory, I spun around on my left leg and kicked out with my right. My foot made clean, hard contact with the leather punching bag hanging from the ceiling. I bounced back, ducking cleanly under an imaginary attacker’s sword. Then I darted forward, leapt up, and pounded the punching bag once more, this timewith my fists—one, two, one-two—until I had to step back, catch my breath, and wipe the sweat from my eyes. The sensation ofmovingagain, finally being able to make use of my body instead of being trapped in a bed, felt almost as good as sex.
Gemma had taken it upon herself to find training equipment for me and an unused space large enough to accommodate my routine, and she had succeeded beautifully. Now I spent every moment I could in an empty ballroom conditioning my body, interrupted in two-hour intervals by Welma and her team of healers for quick examinations. They were astonished by the rate of my recovery.
“I’ve treated many sentinels, my lady,” Welma had murmured to me during her most recent assessment. She’d rested my leg in her lap and run her fingers over it as if searching for any sign that it had recently been shattered. “But never once have I seen one heal from such extreme injuries so quickly.”
Well, you’ve never treated a demigod before.Outwardly I managed a modest smile. “They train us well in the Order. Easier to heal when your body is in peak condition.”
But it seemed that no amount of training could quiet my mind.
I’d been working for an hour straight with only fleeting seconds of rest. Several rounds with the punching bag, aerobic exercises that got my blood pumping, agility work, sparring sessions with phantom hostiles—through all of this, my body perfectly obeyed my commands, but still I couldn’t shake the thousand worst-case scenarios brewing in the back of my head.
What if, during the transference, something terrible happened to Lily? Or to Ankaret, or to Alastrina? The former would destroy Farrin, the latter Ryder. What if Ankaret’s power was not enough to fuel the procedure? She had only just been reborn, and though she seemed stronger and more lucid every day, none of us knew what would happen once the transference began. And if it didn’t workand anyone was hurt—or, gods forbid,killed—Gareth would take the blame.
What if all of our powers and those of the soldiers at our command weren’t enough to destroy Kilraith—trulydestroy him? And what would happen to the Mist, the Knotwood, the Crescent of Storms if wedidsucceed?
And when I returned to Rosewarren, what would I find? I was set to depart the next day and plead our case to the Warden for Order reinforcements. I couldn’t stop thinking about the demon who had possessed Gareth there. Had other Oldens managed to breach the priory’s protections? What did Brigid and Cira think of me being gone for so long?
What did the Warden think?
Her face floated through my thoughts like a nightmare I couldn’t quite forget. That I’d heard nothing from her during my prolonged absence felt more and more like a warning.
I tossed aside my gloves and knee pads, which I’d worn only to appease Welma, stripped off the tunic I wore over my sleeveless undershirt, and began a series of slow stretches on the floor. As I shifted through each position, I tried to focus solely on my breathing. If rigorous movement couldn’t soothe my nerves, maybe this would.
Just as I lowered myself parallel to the floor, supporting my weight on my arms alone, footsteps sounded outside in the hallway. I knew their quick rhythm at once and smiled as the door opened.
Gareth entered in a huff, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his professor’s tie hanging loose about his neck. But once he caught sight of me in the middle of the room, his breath caught, and my senses, stoked by my training, allowed me to hear his heartbeat roar into a gallop. He deposited his armful of books on the table by the door with airy indifference.
“I was going to find somewhere to enjoy a stiff drink,” he said, “but I think I’ll just watch you instead.”
I looked up with a grin to see him leaning against the doorframeand watching me with obvious, unabashed desire. The look in his eyes made me shiver with want. Even seeing him just standing there, so reverently focused on me, cleared my mind more effectively than any of my exercises had—cleared it of everything but him.
