KELTANIA
Ice pelts our North Tower window, the rhythmic tapping nearly drowning out the quiet knock at the door. Startled that someone is visiting at this late hour, I pull myself away from the pile of Apothecary, Chemistrie and Mathematics texts on my desk to go answer it.
“Who’s there?” I ask cautiously.
“Yvan,” comes the tentative reply.
A wave of surprise washes through me. Yvan hardly ever comes here, and things between us have been awkward ever since we latched hold of each other’s fire so wantonly back at Naga’s cave.
I open the door, my heartbeat kicking up a notch. The golden glow from the hallway lantern flickers over the hard planes of Yvan’s handsome face. He swallows, and I can sense his fire give a sudden flare, as if my very presence unnerves him.
“May I speak with you privately?” he asks with a measured politeness that’s at odds with his chaotic fire.
“We could speak here in the hall,” I offer, struggling to tamp down the heat that’s suddenly kindling along my own lines. I step out of my lodging and shut the door behind me.
Flustered, I sit down on the stone bench, and he takes a seat beside me as I futilely try to ignore the effect his proximity has on me.
“I know someone who can help Marina and the other Selkies,” he says, meeting my gaze.
“Who?” I ask, surprise breaking through my unsettling haze of attraction toward him. “That would involve an armed militia, and Jules told me that only the Keltic Resistance has an organized force...”
Yvan smiles wryly. “Have you forgotten where I’m from?”
I blush and return his smile. Of course. If anyone in our small group has a connection to the Keltic Resistance, it would be Yvan.
“A friend of my mother’s is one of the Resistance leaders,” he tells me. “I’ve known him since I was a boy. The Keltic Resistance was willing to help both the Fae and the Urisk during the Realm War. Perhaps they’ll help the Selkies, too, once they know how horribly they’re being treated. And...how they’re running out of time.”
“Can we send word to him?”
Yvan shakes his head. “We can’t send a rune-hawk. It’s too risky. They’re intercepted regularly. We need to speak with him in person. He lives in Lyndon, my home village.”
I’m thrown by this. “What do you mean, ‘we’? You think I should come with you?”
Yvan’s answering smile sends a tremor of heat shivering through me. “I don’t think he’ll believe the story if you don’t come with me. And—” his green eyes glint with humor “—you’re persuasive.”
I laugh at this and eye him teasingly. “Am I? Perhaps that’s my secret power.”
“I think it might be,” Yvan says, his tone unexpectedly flirtatious. His gaze lingers on mine, and I have to fight a sudden, restless urge to move closer to him.
“Marina would be the best person for him to talk to,” I say, flustered.
Yvan shakes his head. “The trip is taxing, and Marina’s not well enough to make it in the form she’s in. And it would be nearly impossible to disguise her.”
I lean back against the cold stone, silently contemplating.Traveling to Keltania. With Yvan.It’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea of it.
“What’s your friend’s name?” I ask.
“Clive Soren. He’s a surgeon. He used to work with my father, years back. I apprentice with him during the summers.”
“I could get someone to cover for me in the kitchens,” I consider, my mind awhirl with the bold idea. “And we have a few days off from classes for the winter break.”
A troubled thought occurs to me. “Yvan, I can’t leave Verpacia. There’s an Icaral who attacked me back in Valgard before I came to University, and if I travel over the border—”
“I’ll protect you.”
His statement is so unwaveringly firm, it stops me short.
“The border crossing will be a problem,” I remind him. “The Verpacian Guard is allied too closely with the Gardnerians. They’ll want my aunt’s permission before they’ll let me through, and she’ll certainly never give it.”