Page 203 of The Black Witch

“Wynter, I...”

“Youdo notneed to fear this with me,” she says firmly, her hand still outstretched.

Yvan looks positively stricken. But then he surrenders and gives his hand to her. Wynter closes her eyes as she reads both Yvan’s thoughts and those of the dragon, her brow periodically tensing, her head nodding as if engaged in some private, hidden conversation. Finally, she opens her eyes, Yvan’s hand still in hers. “Empaths are the keepers of secrets,” she tells him.

I glance around in confusion. Jarod’s and Diana’s expressions are stern and unreadable, and Andras’s fist is tight on his ax handle. Trystan and Ariel are looking at Yvan with wary concern.

“I don’t mean to interrupt you,” Rafe tells Wynter, stepping forward, “but if there’s something we need to know about Yvan, I think you should tell us. If there’s some danger...”

“He is no danger to any of us,” Wynter states with calm certainty. “He can be trusted completely.”

Rafe looks hard at her and at Yvan, eyes narrowed, before relenting. “All right,” he says to Wynter, “what can you tell us about the odds of getting Naga out alive?”

Wynter concentrates once more on the dragon.

“Naga,” Yvan asks the dragon, anguish breaking through, “who did this to you?”

The dragon’s gaze tightens with pain. “A soldier,” Wynter translates for the dragon. “Their Dragon Master.” She winces sharply. “Mage Damion Bane.”

“Ancient One,” I fume, disgusted. “Of course it would be one of the Banes.”

“We’re going to get you out of here,” Yvan tells the dragon, his lip curling with white-hot resolve. “We’ll find a way.”

“There is no way,” Wynter translates. “He’s going to come back. He’s going to torture me until I break...or die.”

“We’ll stop him,” Rafe says.

“Then they will send another,” Wynter continues. “There is no stopping them.”

“No,” Trystan remarks as he runs his hands up and down the bars, studying them. “We’re going to find a way to break this cage and get you out.”

“Then you must find it soon, Gardnerian,” Wynter translates, the dragon’s eyes full of dark urgency. “Verysoon.”

* * *

We don’t see much of Trystan over the next few days. He’s careful to keep to his regular schedule, as we all are, all of us overstretched with exhausting work assignments and exam time looming. Even so, Trystan takes the time to disappear into the woods every evening to practice spells on the arrowhead with the white wand.

Ariel takes to pacing the room, her raven keeping a close eye on her from its perch on her bed. She’s angry, morose and more on edge than usual. We all are. The Selkie seems to sense this. Like the raven, she watches us closely with worried eyes, curling up with Diana at night, her greatest comfort.

And Yvan seems troubled and distant, his private focus as intense on me as ever, but fully at odds with how he’s holding himself back from me. He stays by the Keltic and Urisk kitchen workers, careful to pick tasks that don’t send him into close proximity with me. And he avoids the small opportunities for conversation that he was starting to take advantage of, even though I can sense our intensifying pull toward each other from clear across the room.

It’s upsetting and confusing, but I try to stuff the hurt down and focus on studying and remaining above suspicion.

I fall to brooding over what will happen if Marina is found, over whether or not Yvan’s dragon can possibly survive and what it is that Wynter now knows about Yvan. There are so many strange things about him, like his speed and strength in dealing with Damion when rescuing the Urisk girl. How he seems to be able to communicate with the dragon just by staring at her. How he appears to sense my thoughts. The unnatural heat of his skin.

What secret is he hiding?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Yvan

“Are you still mean?”

The small child’s voice coming from high above startles me. I strain in the darkness to make her out among the thick branches of the pine tree that stands outside the kitchen. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the little Urisk girl, Fern, in a long time. I’m surprised she’s still here.

“Where are you?” I call up, keeping my voice as low as possible, remembering that she’s illegally here, smuggled off the Fae Islands by her grandmother.

“But are you still mean?”

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