But I couldn’t be there for a single second longer. I turned away from the sight of Brigid’s bloody face and fled.
Chapter 10
Fenwood wasn’t an option for me that day. What if I lost control of myself in bed, as I had just done with Brigid, and killed my unlucky lover?
I laughed to myself at the thought, though it wasn’t funny. None of this was funny.
Getting to the Old Country from Rosewarren was easier now than it had ever been. The Mist was pocked with holes, many of them patrolled by Roses, and many others stitched haphazardly back together by the beguilers among our ranks. But those reinforcements would hold for only so long before the breach bells would ring again and we would have to start all over.
Until, of course, there was no Mist left to reinforce.
The entry point I chose that day was a thin patch of Mist two miles from the priory. It wasn’t particularly dangerous since Rosewarren was so close; few Olden beings would take the risk. The Mist here swirled with darkness, as if a great storm was brewing just beyond its shimmering veil. Every few seconds, a violent flash of blue light illuminated the crisscross pattern of spells spanning the spot—a net of magical buttresses that kept this rift from getting worse.
Four Roses were on duty at the site. Gods only knew what they saw on my face, but it was enough to send them scurrying out of my way. They would probably report me to the Warden, but at the moment I didn’t care.
I cared only about finding something to fight. Something big, something I could hurt with abandon. Something that wouldn’t hesitate to hurtme.
But before I could enter the greenway’s twisting spellwork, a familiar cry pierced the air, and Freyda swooped down to block my path. She landed on my arm, making no attempt to be gentle with her talons, and glared up at me, shrieking.
I felt the curious gazes of the four nearby Roses upon me.
“Freyda,” I said sternly, ignoring them. “Leave me. Go to the aviary. Now.”
Freyda, of course, knew what I intended to do, and she didn’t budge, even though as my familiar she was meant to obey me, not the other way around.
I felt so desperate that I barely resisted the urge to shake her off me.
“Lady Mara!” a voice called out, followed by hurried footsteps through the grass.
Swallowing down a burst of irrational anger, I turned to see one of the pages who worked for Gareth’s team—a serious teenage boy who always seemed to be in a hurry.
“Professor Fontaine requests that you join him in the laboratory,” he said with a quick bow.
“Why?”
The boy quailed when he saw my face. “I don’t know, my lady.” Then he gave another quick bow, as if in apology, and hurried back toward the priory.
For a moment I stood in burning silence, reminding myself thatneither Freyda nor this page nor the four Roses watching us deserved my ire.
Without a word I returned to Rosewarren. Each step was an effort; the greenway sizzling behind me, and the tendrils of broken Mist roiling at its edges, seemed to be calling my name.
***
By the time I reached the laboratory, I’d achieved a fragile calm. Freyda moved to my shoulder, her customary perch, and began cleaning her feathers. It was as if the little scene by the greenway had never happened.
But my throat was as tight as a fist, and my thoughts kept straying to the greenway and what lay beyond. Maybe I’d have found a chimaera to fight. Maybe the beast would have killed me.
I stopped in the open doorway of the laboratory, keeping my face impassive. Naturally, the first thing that met my eyes was Gareth, who stood at the front of the room. He was leaning back against his desk, one leg crossed over the other, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his gold, black, and blue professor’s tie hanging loose at his collar. He insisted that his team dress in their university robes and ties here, just as they would in Fairhaven. Something about morale and institutional dignity.
Incredibly, the sight of him wiped my mind clean. His forearms were slender, his gesturing hands eloquent. Later, I decided, I would examine how concerning it was that I found the sight of an unremarkable rumpled tie so attractive.
“All right,” Gareth was saying, “to remind everyone of tomorrow’s agenda: Katra, Blaise, and Geddings will accompany the Order’s eastern dawn patrol and set up a tracking station in Section Thirty-One, which will bring us to how many operational stations, Tarek?”
Tarek, who sat at a nearby desk taking notes, answered smoothly without looking up. “Three, out of a projected twenty-five.”
The room deflated a bit at that number, but Gareth remained undeterred. “Right, so quite a lot of work left to do,” he said cheerfully, “but I know you’ll all rise to the occasion beautifully, as you’ve always done. And Loudon, what’s your team’s status?”
Loudon Barnes sat filing papers in a series of leather packets. “We’ve gotten through about one quarter of the notes we brought with us from Fairhaven,” he replied distractedly.
