The sisters insist on taking the male to the forest and I’m relieved when they decline my offer to send for a healer. I’m not sure where I would find Caden or how I’d convince him to assist the sprite. I assure myself theyknow much better than I how to go about healing him. I trust that if they need something, they will tell me.
Not long after the sisters depart, I answer a thundering knock. It isn’t unexpected but I’d hoped to avoid it until morning. If not forever. I smooth the nervous features of my face, ignoring the pit in my gut when I unlatch the door.
Awri shoves past me, scanning the room. “You brought him backhere?”
The general, Riesh, and Kishek crowd into the room behind her just as she’s made it into the washroom, checking behind the doors for any sign of the male.
“I did,” I say, calmly.
“Then where is he?” she demands, coming to a huffing halt in front of me.
“Gone,” I reply.
“Gone where?” she asks.
I grit my teeth, the tone of her voice calling to the warrior inside of me, when I say, “He’s safe.”
It’s all she needs to know.
Awri puffs out her annoyance upon my reply, and when the general snags her bicep, that annoyance trails along the length of his arm, landing firmly on his face.
“Leave it, Awri,” he demands, even as she balks at him.
Sneering, she says, “Aren’t you the least bit curious how amortalwho claims ignorance to the existence of the fea in our veil speaks the sprite tongue?”
Kishek steps up to her side and twines his fingers with hers. Her eyes soften when she looks down to their joined hands and back to his face.
“You are exhausted,” he says, “Let me take you to bed. We will talk tomorrow.”
She gives him a reluctant nod and leaves the room without meeting my eyes, pulling Kishek behind her. Her brother follows after them, lines of worry, and perhaps exhaustion, creasing his brow when he looks me over like he’s never seen me before.
“She shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” the general says from the doorway.
It takes everything I have to stifle my shock when he says it. He has every reason to be as angry as Awri, and I find that the lack of suspicion and condemnation from the male is more disturbing than anything I expected.
“She just needs time,” he adds.
“I’m not sure I have that kind of time,” I quip, understanding that time is relative to the immortal standing in front of me.
The general raises a brow at me before smoothing a loose piece of dark hair from his eyes.
“I only did what I thought was best to help him,” I say.
“She knows that. We all do,” he says calmly.
I feel my eyebrows hit my hairline in disbelief when I challenge, “Then why is she angry with me?”
He leans against the frame of the door. “Because, in teaching her a valuable lesson, you have made her feel vulnerable.”
“What lesson?” I ask.
“If someone doesn’t want to show you who they are, you will never truly know them.” He says it as if we are having a casual conversation over polite tea.
His voice holds no accusatory tone, there is no question in his eyes, no demand that I explain myself. His words wash over me, and I feel the gentle sway of a ship beneath my feet as memories of a woman I had once been are stirred by the current. I shake my head, warding them off before they take hold, tasting the bitterness of the lesson I know all too well.
“It’s a lesson we all learn,” he says matter-of-factly. “Though not all who teach it to us have nefarious intentions. Your motives were obviously well intended with the sprite.” Shifting his weight off the doorframe he adds, “When her mind has a chance to puzzle it out, she will see that too.”
Against my better judgment, I ask, “What makes you so sure?”
