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They both looked to Sirus.
“So, which is it?” Barith asked.
In the hour he’d sat there, it was the first either of them had looked to him to confirm anything. “Neither. It was two men dressed as one ox,” he clarified.
Both Levian and Barith made the same twisted expression of distaste.
“You know, I think he’s right,” Levian admitted sheepishly.
Barith shrugged. “Either way, it didn’t look natural.”
Sirus watched Gwendolyn as she giggled. This was why he’d agreed to come at the start. To see her at ease like this. To hear her laugh. See her happy. His chest tightened when she turned her amused eyes squarely on him, as if to say, Aren’t they both ridiculous? He was tempted to smirk in response. She did not know the half of it.
“So you were there too?” she asked him through her smile.
He nodded. “I was.”
“Did you dress up as well?” Niah questioned.
“I did.”
Gwen’s eyes widened with interest. “As?”
“A skeleton!” Levian blurted, as if it had finally come back to her. “That mask was rather well-made too.”
“Really?” Gwen prodded with a smirk, cocking a brow. “A skeleton?”
“When in Rome,” he said coolly. Which was where they’d happened to be at the time.
Barith barked a laugh. “You must be drunk, vamp, if you’re making jokes.”
He was far from drunk—he could not get drunk without significant effort—but the jest had fallen into the conversation relatively easily. His dry humor had not gone unnoticed. Gwendolyn smiled again, the effect reaching her eyes. Heat rose inside him seeing that smile, and Sirus shifted his focus to his wine. He cherished drawing out her smiles, even if they did unsettle him to his icy core.
Tonight. Come find me. His blood heated. He took a hard swig of the merlot.
“I think that mask is in your study still,” Rath added. Sirus realized he’d been gripping the arm of his chair so hard, he’d dug his nails into the wood.
“It is,” Niah confirmed.
“Perhaps you can model it for us one evening?” Levian proposed with a wicked glint in her eye.
Sirus didn’t need to say no for the room to decipher his stoic expression.
Barith and Gwendolyn chuckled together, as if they’d been friends for centuries and not weeks. A bond akin to that of siblings seemed to have bloomed between them since the mirrors. Sirus was glad of it. Though he’d not appreciated the dragon’s glare of warning this morning in the hall. Even if it had been warranted.
He finished his wine in one gulp and glanced at Gwendolyn’s smiling face as she and Barith whispered some joke to each other. Levian rolled her eyes, overhearing them.
Would she stay? Sirus wondered. He pushed the thought from his head, angry that he’d let it come at all. No. She wouldn’t. More importantly, he would never ask her to. A flutter of something filled his chest, followed by a hollowness at knowing she would soon be gone.
“Shall we get to the matter at hand then?” Rath questioned, his knitting needles clacking away in his giant, clawed hands.
A weight fell over the room in an instant. Rath was right. They needed to discuss what Levian had learned during her audience with the Council of Mages, but Sirus had not necessarily planned it to be now. This moment.
“I suppose now will do,” Levian agreed, albeit a tad bit reluctantly. She smiled widely. “The good news is the Council doesn’t know anything about you,” she told Gwendolyn. “Not directly, anyway. However, they do know Nestra is hunting something.
“The Council has been watching the zephyrs,” she continued. “They’ve had a particular interest in their High Priestess for many years. As I suspected, Nestra has guarded her secrets well. For a time, she spun her webs without drawing attention, like a spider beneath a table.” Her face grew pensive. “But soon the bodies of flies will fall to the floor, and the spider can no longer be ignored.”
Barith twisted in his seat, and Sirus could see the worry in his face. When Levian spoke in such metaphors, it never boded well. “And they don’t know anything about Gwen?” the dragon pressed, to be sure.
