Setting my jaw, I wished for Evera’s easy way with the boy. She had connected with him and always knew what to say. She was like that with me as well.
“Calix,” I said as a thought came to me, “you can control your magic, to some level at least. Could you raise just a note of it to the surface? Not enough to darken your eyes.”
The boy drew his brows. “Now?”
“Yes.”
Lowering his gaze back to the coin, Calix’s chest rose and fell as he let out a breath. The hum in the air, the charge, did not come. Yet his eyes darkened, and from his chest a glow of light formed, faint but steady.
“Evera was right,” I said, the words leaving on a gasp. I could sense magic.
Calix turned his head to the side, puzzlement crooking his lips as his irises returned to their bold blue.
I flexed my fists at my sides. There would be time later to muse over the implications, the possibilities of this new ability.
“Stay out of sight,” I told Calix and crossed to the split doors.
Pushing them open a crack, I scanned what I could see of the inn’s main room. Nox sat at the bar, talking with Maerel as she poured him a drink. Otherwise, the large entry room remained empty, the hearth unlit.
“Stealth does not suit you,” Nox said, his voice raised a note.
I released a breath to steady myself and pushed the doors open to join Maerel behind the bar.
“It is not my strong suit,” I responded flatly.
“No.” His lips turned up in a friendly gesture. “It is not.”
“Timeliness is not yours,” I retorted. “A fortnight to the day.”
Setting his glass down, Nox patted the barstool beside his own, an easy smile broadening across his face. “Come, sit, I have a response for you. A letter from the King himself.”
My heart flipped. “The word is good?”
“That is for you to tell me, friend,” Nox said. He withdrew an ivory letter, sealed with red wax and embossed with the royal crest, from his jacket. “Another drink, please,” he said to Maerel as I skirted the bar to take a seat two down from the huntsman.
Taking note of my gesture, he laughed. “Do you always keep people at sword’s length?”
“What kept you? The trip should not have taken as long as it did.” I refused to give weight to his jeer.
“Life.” Nox held his hand out to Maerel, and she passed him the drink. Placing the letter atop it, he slid both across the bar to me. “The journey is short but beautiful this time of year. To rush would be to miss things.”
“To perform your task should be your priority.” I held the letter up and examined the seal. The truth of my brother’s state hung within the parchment. How he fared and if any new threats had been detected. Perhaps, too, why more guards had not yet been sent to Elrune after Cyan’s death. That, in itself, gave me hope. Perhaps Harlan had heard of how Cyan was killed, took my action as the penance for his ill deeds, and, having read my note, called off further searches. It would explain, too, why the Queen sent huntsmen herself.
Nerves fluttered in my belly, and I set the letter down, taking a deep drink of the whiskey. It warmed my throat if nothing else.
“You have a shadow.”
I placed the glass on the bar top and drew my brows together, but before I could question Nox, the split doors opened and Calix set me with an apologetic look.
“Typically, he is prone to stealth,” I said, annoyance leaking into my tone. “Perhaps it is only that you are very perceptive.”
“And you are not?” Nox asked, a quirk to his lips.
I am. Normally.
Was I letting my unease hinder my observation skills? The thought displeased me, but I brushed it aside. It was unimportant. “Come, sit,” I told Calix.
He skirted the bar and took the barstool beside me, at my left, leaving the space between Nox and I.
