“Why?”
And how for that matter.
“Our Seer died many years ago and we haven’t found another one as promising as you. Even if you are human.”
Lily’s eyes narrowed of their own volition. She made an effort to look calm and composed instead of bristly and insulted.
Aryana laughed, the sound like the tinkling of broken glass. “My, my. For a human you have a temper. Now, now, don’t be insulted. I’m not meaning to insult you. I want to ask you to stay here at the Temple and become our Seer. You might be human, but you have a gift and we’d like your help.”
She must have hit her head hard when she fell in the healing room, because this had to be a dream. A really odd, totally weird dream, but a dream nonetheless. Lily closed her eyes.
When I open my eyes, I’ll be in the healing room.
Aryana remained standing in front of her.
She tried again.
When I open my eyes, I’ll be in the healing room.
Aryana occupied her view. So much for the dream theory. It appeared the real Aryana wanted her to use her cursed visions to help the Draconi. Maybe the High Priestess suffered from a knock on the head too.
“I can’t control the visions. I can’t help the people who I see in my visions. I can’t do anything but watch scenes unfold. It’s a cursed gift. I wouldn’t even call it a gift. Why do you want it?”
“We can teach you how to use it. How to focus it. It is not cursed. It is only untrained. When you learn to use it correctly, you will not mind the possession of such a gift.”
“I am Enar’s claim. I wish to stay with him.”
Aryana nodded once. “As you wish. But my offer remains open. If you find you would rather work here with us, you are welcome to return herein.”
“All right. I thank you for your,”
really bizarre
, “offer. If I change my mind, I will let you know.”
“Until we meet again, Lily.”
Aryana touched Lily’s cheek, her fingers cool, and everything vanished in a wave of darkness. Lily opened her mouth to scream, but the wave swept the sound away, leaving her floating in the depths of unconsciousness.
Chapter 16
Enar popped a slice of apple into his mouth and stared at Thoren, who sat across the table from him in the Temple’s dining room. Ari had invited him to partake of the meal, and he didn’t need to be asked twice. Thoren’s brows met his hairline and decided to hang out with the follicles upon Ari’s invite. Apparently Thoren’s mind was trying to catch up with his sight and drawing a picture his friend didn’t want to see. A picture of Enar and Aryana. Together.
Previous history. The only reason it crept into the present was due to him being here at the Temple. Once he left with Lily, the whole romantic interlude would disappear back where it belonged: in the past.
He looked forward to that moment.
For now, he needed to pull Thoren’s brows back to their normal resting spot. Needed to convince his friend he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Thoren wouldn’t turn him in to be sentenced to death for bedding the High Priestess, but he didn’t want to see anger in his friend’s eyes when Thoren realized what happened.
It was bad enough he hid the affair from Lily. He didn’t need to add Thoren to the hiding-and-lying list.
“Jamie is more trouble than he’s worth. Climbing trees, disappearing, reappearing in places he’s not supposed to be, falling out of trees.” He stuck another slice of apple in and proceeded to show good manners by speaking around the bite of fruit. Hunger beat out manners any day. “Surely we weren’t that much trouble as boys.”
After all, they never broke bones falling out of trees.
Thoren grinned. “Of course not. We never got in trouble.”
“That’s what I thought. But I did learn how he came to be in River’s Run.”
“You did? How?”
“Well, it was really Lily who learned it from Fafnir, who Jamie confided in...”
“Listening to gossip, now?”
Enar shook his head and proceeded to tell Thoren about how Jamie’s parents died, including his suspicions that the soldiers possessed a titanium sword.
What else could it have been? Somehow, humans discovered the bane of the Draconi, the one thing guaranteed to drop a dragon. The words “security threat” didn’t begin to describe the matter. One Draconi had already suffered, how many more would follow?
How did humans discover our poison?
The words drifted into Enar’s mind. At least Thoren’s puzzlement focused on things other than illicit affairs.
“I don’t know, but it seems odd Fafnir was in a titanium cell. Especially when combined with Jamie’s father being killed by titanium-wielding soldiers.”
“Why did the soldiers come to his house?”
“He heard them say something about ‘the boy,’ who he assumed to be himself. It seems like the soldiers were after Jamie. If the rogue Draconi worked with the lord in River’s Run, then maybe they tried to get Jamie first and settled on Keara when Jamie escaped.”
“We need to report this to the Council.” Thoren’s face twisted as he slammed his hands over his ears.
Since Enar didn’t have a splitting headache, he could only assume Keara called Thoren using mind-speak.
“I need to go. Keara needs me. I’ll come back and find you.”
With those words, Thoren disappeared. Well, that was one way to distract his friend. Lily remained with Keara and apparently Thoren was joining their happy little party in the healing room.
He remained stuck in a dining room with a horde of fawning acolytes and no Lily and too much time to think. His thoughts bounced like leather balls. First on Lily, then to his father, then back to Lily.
The Council would call Thoren and him soon for the report on their mission. By the time the thirteen males who comprised the Council finished pulling details out of the two, the day would be over, which meant it would be too late to journey to his village. Therefore he and Lily would leave on the morrow.
Tomorrow he’d present Lily to his father, prove to all the Watchers he was a real man by bringing a claim—and their ideal one at that—and gain his father’s acceptance.
Why did he bother? Being around his father caused his lip to relocate to his cheekbone in a permanent snarl and he swore smoke boiled in the back of his throat. Thinking of the man elicited almost the same reaction. The echoes of Viktor’s taunts still rang in his mind. Taunts he wasn’t good enough. Taunts he would never live up to his father’s expectations.
“Sir?” An acolyte stood before him, holding a plate of meat. “Would you care for the noon meal of venison?”
Enar inhaled, drawing the rich aroma of roasted venison into his lungs. “I would. Thank you.”
With a blush and a smile she placed the plate in front of him and scurried off, leaving him alone with his meal.
And his thoughts. Can’t forget about those.
He stabbed a piece of meat with his knife and popped it into his mouth. The juices cascaded over his tongue, the taste an explosion of flavor. Much better than the direction his mind traveled.
His father might be a lost cause, but he wanted to give the man one more chance. And Lily was his opportunity.
Of course, by taking Lily home and introducing her to life in the Watcher’s village, he risked losing her forever. Risked alienating her. Risked the kindness in her voice turning to shards of ice.
He could stay at the Temple with Thoren. Didn’t know what he would do, but he could stay. Lily wouldn’t hate him then, but the Watchers wouldn’t see his perfect woman. None would know that he, Enar, the one they laughed at, found the epitome of perfection. Through Lily he would be vindicated.
Her happiness for his father’s approval. A chill snuck down his spine and he shook the guilt off.
Taking her home was a necessary risk.
Perhaps Lily would like living there.
Stranger things had happened.
He munched his meal in silence, while listening to bird song drift through the open windows. Good meal. If only he possessed the birds’ attitude of happy and carefree instead of brooding and morose.
Enar gestured to one of the acolytes to take his plate. She scurried over like he held a catch of glittering stones, right in time to see him clasp both hands over his ears as pain ripped through his skull.
“Sir? Sir? Are you all right?”
Not unless she considered all right to include having one’s brains shattered from the Council’s call. It felt like the top of his skull would explode. And as soon as it came, the pain left.
“Sir?” The acolyte had the shoulder-patting routine going on.
He waved her hand away. “I’m fine. It’s the Council’s call.”
“Ah. Why do they call in such a way to generate pain?”
Now wasn’t that the question of the day? “I have no idea. Thank you for the meal. I must attend to their call.”
Before round two of the brain splitting occurs.
He strode out of the Temple, wanting to do anything but stand in front of the thirteen who comprised the Council. Anything. Maybe his feelings had something to do with his father sitting on the Council. Or maybe they had to do with the way the males called, with the pain that split through his mind.
Or maybe he just wanted to spend his day with Lily before she started hating him.
He strode down the path, which led from the Temple to the circular stone building housing the Council, his long legs leaving eddies of dirt in their wake. By the time he arrived at the Council’s Chamber, his fists were cranked into tight balls and the tasty venison served at the noon meal turned sour in his stomach.
Viktor sat behind those twenty-foot-tall wooden doors. Sat on his arse in his carved wooden chair and snarled at Enar. Sat and did nothing but jeer at his only son.
If only Lily stood beside him. Then Viktor would cease his jeers, his taunts, and show some respect.
For now, Enar must walk through those doors and endure the angry rhetoric. The sooner he finished with this meeting, the sooner he could return to Lily.
Enar shoved open the heavy doors and glared at the thirteen males sitting on carved wooden chairs in a semi-circle and felt an unwanted and unwarrior-like chill slide down his spine. The priestesses might hold the true power of the Goddess, but these males possessed a bone-chilling amount of magic.
Thirteen males sat on the Council, six Draconi and six Watchers led by Alviss, the oldest and most powerful male Draconi. Another chill crept toward his feet. What kind of Watcher was he to get chills?
A poor excuse for a warrior, that’s what.
Grabbing a door in each hand, he slammed them shut behind him.
“Instead of summoning me, why not just kill me? It’s bound to hurt less.” Enar stalked into the room, nodding to Thoren who stood in front of the males.
“You still live, Aylasson? Thought you would be dead by now.” The man two chairs to the left of center grasped the arms of his chair, knuckles white, as he stared at Enar, his dislike a palpable throb in the stone chamber.
And so it starts.
Enar snarled at his father’s insult of calling him by his mother’s name, insinuating he wasn’t Viktor’s son. “It’s nice to see you too, Father. Give my regards to the demon that set you free for today’s meeting.” Enar stood feet shoulder-width apart, arms crossed, hoping the position stopped him from doing something stupid. Like putting his hands around his father’s throat and squeezing.
Why had he even thought his father would see Lily and be proud of him? After all these years, why did he even care?
Hope lives eternal despite evidence showing otherwise.
Viktor pointed a finger at Enar. “You ungrateful whelp! I-”
“Silence!” The male seated in the middle of the semi-circle spoke, his words echoing off the high stone ceiling, before settling like a shroud across the assembly.
Enar shuddered as the spell slammed into him. Alviss was the most powerful Draconi who sat on the Council. And the oldest. His white hair hung in long locks over his shoulders, his face a map of lines. He walked with a cane, from all appearances a frail, withered man. Despite the frail appearance, his magic ran strong, through his veins and the veins of his only surviving child Annaliese, the primary Temple Healer.
And the spell had the benefit of knocking his angry attitude away while thrusting him into mission-reporting mode.
“We are gathered today to hear the reports of Thoren and Enar, not to bicker with them,” Alviss spoke quietly; even so, the words reverberated throughout the room, creeping under Enar’s skin. “Did you locate the Halfling we sent you to find?”
“Yes sir. Along with others,” Thoren said.
Of course, the Council wouldn’t have been told about Thoren’s arrival days past. He forgot that despite the close proximity of The High Chamber of the Council to the Temple of the Goddess, Ari refused to discuss most of the happenings of the Temple to the Council members. Some disagreement years ago sparked tension between Aryana and Alviss and she refused to discuss certain things with the Council’s leader.
As a result, despite Thoren’s being back for several days, the Council would not have known about it until Enar’s return. Both members of a spy pair were required to return in order to alert the Council.
Quizzical looks greeted Thoren’s news.
“Others?” Alviss white-knuckled the chair arm.
“There was a mature Halfling female and a captured male Draconi locked in dragon form.”