“Lavanié?” Sean asked, still confused by the lingo.
“It’s what we call anyone with mortal blood,” Isobel murmured.
“Right,” Sean said, then offered the guy a smile because what else was he supposed to do?
“He’s like a baby,” Isobel said, patting Sean’s cheek. “Knows nothing. He’ll have to start with the basics.”
Cathaire stepped back and gestured toward the girl. “This is Anna Ainslan, my Apprentice. She was raised in Viterra like you. Arrived from the mist, how long ago?” He looked at Anna.
“Almost five years, now.” Her English was also accented, but it sounded more…Scottish? Irish? “No idea this place even existed before that.”
A flare of something like relief spread hot and fast through Sean’s nervous system. Here was a person who was just like him—non-native, raised mortal. He fought the urge to ask her how she coped. Had she been just as clueless as him?
She stepped closer to Sean and grasped his wrist the same way Cathaire had, sending a similar shock through his nervous system. As she touched her lips to his temple, Sean began to suspect it was an expected greeting.
Temple kissing.
Would he ever get used to that?
The girl was a full head shorter than Sean, and her black hair was plaited to the side, the rope of it ending at her waist. She had the clearest eyes Sean had ever seen, like morning skies with rays of sunlight.
“So you just found the mist one day?” Sean asked, giving in to his curiosity.
She shook her head. “More like, one day I felt an overwhelming urge to run into the moors, and when I stopped, it hurt so bad that I kept running until I wound up here.”
“And you’ve never gone home?”
Something in her expression softened, almost as if she understood the mountain of anxiety he was currently scaling. “This is home now, but I’ve not visited my dad. It’s forbidden to leave the realm until you’ve finished your Apprenticeship and joined the Honor Guard.”
Oh.
“You’ll get used to it,” she said. “It didn’t take me long.”
An awkwardness settled on Sean’s shoulders that he hid behind another smile. “Of course.”
“Only a few months to go before I rank up,” Anna said, shooting a playful glare at Cathaire.
He raised submissive hands. “Five years is not so long to train for such a dangerous mission.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Anna gave him a lighthearted shove, and he laughed.
Were theytogether, these two?
“Your father is a Blademaster himself,” Cathaire said. “He no longer requires my help. Anna is the only other pixie with mortal blood in the realm. I’ve trained her alone for years. She’s quite good. You took down Tatya just last week, didn’t you?”
Anna shrugged and studied the fingerless leather bracers strapped to her wrists. “She took iteasy on me.”
He threw her a fond smile. “Tatya takes it easy on no one.”
“There are only two of us?” Sean turned toward the other groups, dozens of dryads and devas in each.
A knowing glance passed between the two.
“Pixies stay with pixies,” Cathaire said. “There are very few with mortal blood.”
“And why’s that?” Sean asked.
Anna shrugged. “It’s a tribal thing.”
