“I am,” I replied, gesturing around us.
“With your words rather than on me,” he huffed, rolling out his neck and shoulders. But he dropped into a fighting stance again anyway.
“Maybe later,” I growled, launching a flurry of attacks.
Maelsar met my intensity and—finally—my mind hushed. Block, strike, kick. That became my storm. Duck, punch, parry. Those became my tide.
For a few stolen moments, I didn’t craveher—I craved blood. The battlefield in my chest went quiet where rage once burned.
By the time we surrendered to our begging lungs, my mind was clearer than it had been in weeks. Ever since I caught a glimpse of Sylaira.
Hobbling to the side, I found a waterskin and drained its contents. Maelsar joined me, wiping his face with a rough cloth. I snatched one for myself and dried my skin. Not that it helped much. The sheer amount of humidity in the cloud forest brought fresh dew to my flesh simply by standing among the lush.
Is Sylaira in the Seer garden now?
The thought gripped me and wouldn’t let me go. If she was, I could slip through the palms and corner her. Make her listen to reason. Make her understand me.
“I need you to distract the Sightkeepers,” I told my friend once I’d caught my breath.
Maelsar lifted a brow. “So you can sneak into their private space and speak to Sylaira without Iaoth knowing?”
This was why he was the only person in all the worlds I trusted. He knew me better than anyone else. And I him. So before I’d even opened my mouth to speak, he was rolling his eyes.
“Exactly,” I said.
“That’s a stupid plan,” he sighed, throwing his arms across the bench and letting his head fall back.
“Do you have a better one?” I growled. Now that I wasn’t fighting, the bond had awakened in my chest, tightening in an attempt to drag me to Sylaira.
A sick, twisted part of me wanted her to hurt too—if only so we were on an even field again.
Why couldn’t she have listened to me for one fucking minute? I would have explained everything.
“Well, she’s injured right? At some point she’ll have to see the healers. They’re in a different feather of the palace. And they’re much easier to pay off than those sentries and Seers who would do anything to win further favor with Iaoth,” he grumbled, looking up at the sky like he could ask the Goddess to put reason back into my skull.
There was no peace, no sanity left, not when the walls closed in on me from all sides. Not when Sylaira wouldn’t lower the barricade around her mind.
And her heart.
“I’ll go to the Sightkeepers and tell them I’m there to escort her to the healers then.” It would also double as my duty to her, as I was so compelled to do. As her mate, I had to take care of her. Whether she wanted it or not. “And if Iaoth gets suspicious of my motives, I’ll come up with some explanation.”
Maelsar snorted. We both knew how prickly she could be. “Goddess save you if that happens, brother. You could just tell her.”
A snarl rumbled in my chest. “Not until I gauge Iaoth’s headspace more. There’s no telling how she will react since she’s already so on edge about Ishim’s failure to penetrate the Paks Desert. And I am not putting Sylaira in further danger. For all I know, Iaoth would use it against me, to force me into more things I do not want to do.”
I gathered the mess of my hair and rearranged the knot at the back of my head.
“Or maybe she’d be ecstatic and I’d be relieved of my duties.”
That pulled a belly-shaking laugh from my second-in-command. He finally lifted his gaze, aquamarine irises dancing with amusement. “The Demons will beat us before that happens.”
“Aye,” I deadpanned because there was no world where my sister would wish me all the best for discovering a mate she didn’t design. Our father was likely fighting his way back to this world in sheer protest of how it had ruined all his plans for us.
Maelsar leaned in and took a long sniff. “Better wash up first, though. You smell like you were left in the woods for months, rolling around in rotten fruit, before someone took you to civilization again.”
I threw my towel in his face and walked away, the sound of his laughter assaulting my backside. Let him stay outside and sweat. I had half a mind to challenge him to another round.
Instead, I glared at the marble exterior of Thalvireth like I could crumble each wall with my mind alone. A Telekinetic could, but they’d be stopped before one slab fell.
