Page 113 of Enchanted Shadows
By the time I made it back over to the other ship, compliments of Fern again, though I could have easily done it myself, I was left wondering if that had been the correct decision or not. Team One had volunteered for this, as had the Slay Sisters, but I wasn’t done training the latter.
I guess they’d have to learn on the ground, real life experience.
I found Miles standing at Kessara’s back, his sword drawn as Calix stood ten feet off.
“Am I seeing this correctly?” she asked me.
She could have used her shadows to take her over there, but she hadn’t. And I somewhat wondered if she was testing Calix or something.
“Yeah. Your team snuck onto that ship. That ship which was to follow us to return us back to Wylan in a few days. I had to decide if we are allowing them to come along or if we’re sending them back to Wylan.”
“And?” Calix asked.
“And Amos thinks that the queen might need proof of the fact that Kessara is on this team of women, so what better proof than their presence?”
Calix’s head went back. “So all of them are coming?”
I looked into Kessara’s eyes as I said, “They took me telling them that protecting you was their first mission seriously.”
She smiled.
A derisive snort. “And you expect Agria to just put up rooms for all of them? Take care of all of them?”
“Calix,” Kessara argued, “they’re my friends. There’s plenty of space at the castle and you know it.”
He tried to reason with her. “It’s just an inconvenience to bring so many extra people with us.”
She tipped her head up to look at the sky. “Can you stop pretending like you really care if the staff has to make up a few extra rooms? You’re just mad it will make it harder for you to kill my husband. Which, by the way, as loyal as the team is to me, they are also loyal to him.”
Miles shot Calix a guilty grin and wiggled his fingers at him.
“Killing him isn’t the only way to make this—” he gestured between the two of us, “arrangement end.”
“Whatever you are planning, I’m never going to agree to it,” she told him.
He took a step toward her, but Miles sidestepped betweenthem. “We need to talk,” Calix told her from around Miles. “Privately.”
“Whatever web of lies you are about to spin to me, I truly don’t want to hear it,” she snapped. “I’m married. There is no ‘we’.”
“Kess,” I said gently.
Her eyes immediately found mine.
“He is going to corner you eventually. I’ll put up a sound barrier and the two of you can talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to him,” she snapped again, this time at me.
“You might as well get it over with,” I argued. “And I’d rather it be here out in the open where I can trust he won’t be fool enough to hurt you.”
She inhaled deeply and looked again to the skies before agreeing.
As they walked toward the middle of the deck, I readied my magic. “If I see her under any sort of distress, if I see any sort of shadows, I will drop this barrier and take it from your skin.”
He put his arms out defensively. “I haven’t ever hurt her.”
“Physically,” Kessara clarified. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Despite it going against my every urge, I put up the barrier and let them talk. I had no doubt Calix was back to sucking up to her, complimenting her, trying to get her to remember what they had and all the times he had swooped in to save the day.
