Page 130 of Secrets of Graves and Gold

“We didn’t come across anyone nearby,” he says to both of us. “Stavros is taking one of the horses to see what the royal soldiers might be doing now.”

The daimon fixes his gaze directly on Ivy. “He thought you might come out with me again in the direction we think the march went. You’d be able to sense when their magic is nearby without using your own, wouldn’t you?”

Ivy pushes to her feet but then stalls there. “I would. But…”

Seeing her so uncertain sends a stabbing sensation through my chest.

I get up beside her, touching her arm. “You should go. It’ll do you some good to have a task to carry out. Here, you can bring some of the mushrooms to eat on the way.”

As I remove them from the fire, Ivy still hesitates. “If we run into any Order members… I’m not sure it’d be safe for me to even conceal us…”

“You know how to be stealthy,” I say, putting all the confidence I have in her into my voice. “And Rheave can protect you both better than anyone if it comes to that.”

The daimon grins at my compliment and flicks his fingers together with a brief spark.

A different sort of confidence fills my chest.

I did what I could for Ivy, but she needs Rheave too. He can talk to her from a perspective none of the rest of us have—as a being dealing with unpredictable magic that’s sometimes worked in ways he’d rather it didn’t.

Our woman is something extraordinary. She could use someone who’s more than human in her life, now and in the future as well.

“See what you can find,” I say, giving her a handful of roasted mushrooms and a nudge, and this time she goes. The smile that crosses her face as she joins Rheave tells me I was right to insist.

May she find her way back to the woman she’s meant to be before the looming war finds us all.

Thirty-Six

Ivy

Rheave moves through the forest like a wolf, weaving between the trees, his eyes alert and his stance wary.

He makes a particularly stunning wolf, but anyone who misjudges him as an easy target for his beauty would be in for an immense surprise.

Despite all my practice at stealth, right now I feel like an oaf next to him. My body goes through the motions, but as if I’m slogging through water rather than air.

The weight of everything that happened yesterday is still pressing down on me.

My magic doesn’t clamor against my rejection of all the ways it’d like to “help” me. It simmers in my chest as if biding its time.

And all the while, somewhere nearby, the scourge sorcerers are rallying their troops for their assault on the royal family.

If you can just get a whiff of their magic… Julita murmurs, but she doesn’t sound all that much more hopeful than I feel.

Rheave mostly scans the forest around us, watching for any approaching threats, but here and there he shoots glances my way. He lets me walk in silence for several minutes before he breaks it, in a low tone to avoid his voice carrying.

“Stavros looked at the area where the march stopped last night. They cleared most signs of their presence, but he saw a little evidence that they headed southeast.”

Based on the angle of the rising sun, that’s the direction we’re going in now. I force myself to speak. “How far did you two travel without stumbling on them?”

He considers. “Three or four times farther than you and I have at this point. But we might have passed them without realizing it. We knew it wouldn’t be safe to leave the shelter of the forest.”

I hum in agreement. He and Stavros wouldn’t have had any way to see where the march moved to unless they got lucky enough to stumble on another scout the Order of the Wild sent beyond the concealment spell.

I should have gone with them from the start, but I was still sleeping when they left. I guess they assumed I needed it—that I had more recovering to do after yesterday.

Even while unconscious, I let them down.

The daimon-man looks at me again, with a small furrow in his brow. “Are you upset that we kissed?”

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