“How’s the training going?” Alix asks.
“Fine,” I reply. Then, when I realize everyone is expecting me to elaborate, I add: “It’s harder than I expected.”
“I don’t fucking doubt it,” Daemon says with a chuckle. “You decided to ask Fox to help you after all?”
“No,” I say, feeling the back of my neck heat. “He offered.”
Daemon raises an eyebrow. “Did he? Huh.”
“I wasn’t cut out for the job, apparently,” Jett says cheerfully, winking at me. “Too bad, since as you pointed out I have nothing better to do with my time.”
“Actually,” Daemon says, putting his wine down and angling his body toward Jett. “Now that you mention it, I do have a job for you.”
Jett raises an interested brow. “Yeah? What?”
Daemon and Jett put their heads together, drawn into conversation about whatever job Daemon wants Jett to do. I don’t bother listening, and go back to pushing my dinner around my plate with the side of my fork.
“Can you pass the pheasant?” Kastian asks, nodding toward the large dish in front of me. I slide it over to him and he grins. “Thanks. Too bad Fox missed dinner, he loves pheasant.”
My heartbeat picks up, but I try to keep my tone even. “Where is he?”
“He got injured earlier.”
My eyes widen with alarm, and my tone comes out more shrill than I meant it to. “What! How?”
Kas stops adding more pheasant to his plate and looks up at me, startled. “He’s fine. It wasn’t serious.”
“What happened? He wasn’t injured when I saw him earlier, and not for nothing, but I don’t know how he could be when I still haven’t managed to actually hit him with my sword.”
“He’s been drilling the new recruits in the evenings so he can train you during the day,” Kas explains. “I guess some of them are getting good, because Fox got hit pretty hard in the head.”
“So you healed him, right?” I demand, blinking rapidly.
To my surprise, Kas snorts a laugh. “No. Fox would never let me heal him with magic. He’d have to be dying, and even then he’d probably argue about it.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Why?”
“He just doesn’t like magic, he?—”
But whatever else Kastian was going to say about Fox I never find out, because at that moment Odessa laughs at something Alix must have said, and Kastian gets distracted, completely losing his train of thought.
Back in my tower room that evening, I brew myself a quick reviving potion. It helps considerably to banish any lingering soreness in my arms, but has the unfortunate side effect of making me feel extremely awake well into the night.
For several hours I chat with Eugene—now happily back in his golden bird cage—while I make notes in my enormous recipe books about some new spells and potions I’ve been meaning to try. Eventually, I climb into my bed with a book I’ve already read at least two dozen times and try to get lost in the story. Unfortunately, my mind keeps wandering and I can’t seem to focus. I put down my book, blowing out a frustrated huff of breath.
“I wonder why Fox would turn down Kastian’s healing ability,” I say to Eugene, as if picking up a conversation we’d already been having.
The squirrel is curled up in a ball, seemingly asleep, but he opens one dark eye and looks over at me warily.
“I could easily fix whatever it is,” I continue. “Fae heal quicker than most other species, but not instantly. A serious injury could still take several days to heal, and if Fox was injured enough not to come to dinner then it must be bad, right? Then again, no one seemed concerned…but still…”
The squirrel makes an annoyed chittering sound, which I interpret to mean:“Be quiet, I was sleeping.”
I ignore him, my mind still racing as I stand up from my bed and descend the ladder down from my loft into the main room of my tower.
The bottle of healing potion I made with the frost troll hairs the other day sits innocently on my workbench. I tested italready on myself after I managed to slash my hand open while cutting up some herbs, and it works perfectly.
“Maybe Fox just doesn’t want to be healed directly by magic,” I muse. “A potion isn’t really magic—not exactly—it’s more like medicine. I could at least offer, the worst he can say is no…”
