Page 54 of Enchanted Shadows
Warrick was also supposed to be sleeping, but I had seen him eavesdropping around the corner not all that long ago.
“Yeah?”
“How’s the training going?”
I made sure to look him in the eyes as I took a drink of my ice-cold water. I didn’t understand people who liked water warm. I wanted it to chill me. “The maze, the final trial, is coming up quick, so we are almost done with the first round. They are annoying and infuriating. So, a typical team.”
“But not a typical team,” Esta butted in.
I looked from one to the other. They had been awfully quiet a few moments ago. Which I knew being around another soul bound couple meant that they were speaking but not out loud.
Keir confessed, “Yes, she made me wait to ask until she was back in here.”
I turned to Esta. “You mean you were also hoping that me training a group of women would be my own personal Assemblage to choose a wife from?”
“Also?”Esta asked, not even trying to deny it.
I pointed to Jorah from around my water. “I was certain she set it all up exactly for that purpose.”
“But Wylan was misogynistic for long enough, don’t you think?” Esta defended Jorah without delay.
Who the hell was I to think I could stand up and argue with these two hardheaded women? “Well, I am here to report that I have not fallen head over heels in love as of yet.”
Emric gestured with his hand wildly, inserting himself into our side conversation. “But a few of the women are...tenebrous.”
“Em,” I groaned. “I don’t think that word means what you think it does.”
“I have found that I use it when I’m not sure what to say. As a filler. Works like a charm.”
Krew snorted. “For you maybe. What about for those like John here who actually know the meaning of the word?”
“I humor him,” John supplied. “He and his tenebrous vocabulary.”
I started laughing at the look on Emric’s face and then just couldn’t stop. We were all sitting there busting up.
So of course, a knock on the door had to ruin in.
Krew used his magic to head two rooms over and open the door for whoever it was. Only a select few people were allowed in this portion of the castle, so we both knew it was one of five people.
It was one of Krew’s personal guards. Which I’d handpicked for him.
“Sorry, Your Highness,” he said with a slight bow. “Miles Rook sent me.”
Dread traveled from my shoulders, down my spine, and plummeted to my feet.
“There’s a fire at the barracks.”
CHAPTER 17
Using an active tendril of my Enchantment to light my way, I ran with everything in me along the path, past the fork in the trail which would take me to The Dead Lake, and barreled toward the barracks.
I had snapped at Krew and Keir to stay put, and knowing I was right, Emric had refused to leave me alone. Thus, he ran behind me, unable to keep my pace.
I wasn’t slowing down for him.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I couldn’t see smoke around the trees of the forest, but I could smell it. An acrid fire in these woods? In the dark? Memories flashed into my mind, one after another. Krew, Jorah, Keir, and me putting out that fire in the forest, just to weaken us, so the dead king could try to kill Krew in the early hours of the next morning. The two men sent to put iron gauntlets on me that had broken my collarbone in the effort before I killed them both.
Just that smell in this place was enough to send me reeling, gripping for the fact that the dead king was gone. History could not, would not, repeat itself.
