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A rush of cold spread through Sirus’s blood. The same rush he felt anytime he thought of Gwendolyn, which was constantly.
“Yes.” Gwendolyn remained hidden, but she hadn’t awoken. He’d barely left her bedside in the last three days since the attack.
“I feared I was making a mistake when I left this forest last,” Marcus admitted. “To put my faith in a vampire.”
Sirus tensed at his words. They both knew the truth. Sirus had not been bound by magick to honor the blood debt between them. He’d agreed because he’d felt the weight of the debt. Had felt honor bound to repay it.
Marcus turned to look over the mist of the forest, leaving his side vulnerable to Sirus. It was the most exposed the zephyr had ever been in his presence. “I’d fought countless battles,” Marcus told him. “Cut down more than I could count. But I was jealous of your fearlessness all those years ago. The way you looked into my eyes, as if I were death and you’d known me all your life. I didn’t kill you because I’d felt unequal to the privilege.”
A time not long ago, Sirus might have found Marcus’s confession a display of weakness. But things had changed. He’d changed.
“Your Goddess was testing you?” he posed to the zephyr.
“Perhaps,” Marcus replied, turning to face him again. “Perhaps the gods have been testing us all.”
Perhaps, but Sirus doubted it. The same had been spoken after Merlin was imprisoned. He’d doubted it then too.
Sirus had been ready to die that day, under Marcus’s blade. Had thought his salvation would only come with an honorable death. It was Marcus’s choice to spare him that had ultimately led Sirus to taste what it was to truly live.
Soft snow began to fall as night descended. Sirus was anxious to return to Gwendolyn. He’d been away too long.
Marcus approached him and held out his hand. Sirus hesitated. So much had changed. Only time would tell if it would hold true. For now, he would have to have faith.
“Thank you,” Marcus said as they gripped each other’s hands.
Sirus gave only a small nod. He wasn’t the one who deserved thanks.
Sirus took his usual seat near the fire in his study as the witching hour approached. Levian plopped down onto the couch across from him and threw her head back to stare at the ceiling.
“You should’ve ignored them,” Barith grumbled from the edge of the room as he fiddled with the fresh scar over his right eye. A remnant left by one of Nestra’s paladins.
Levian lifted her head, a scowl already settled over her face. “Ignoring them would only leave room for more wild speculation.”
After Levian had unceremoniously dumped the dead and living zephyr paladins on the doorstep of the Council of Mages, they’d naturally had some questions. She’d been summoned to give a statement a mere hour after the incident.
Levian ignored their requests for a week but felt compelled to deal with it before too much time passed.
“So, it was all peaches, then?” Barith asked with a sarcastic snort.
Levian narrowed her eyes. Of course it wasn’t. She took in a breath to throw out a barb but let the air fall from her lungs instead. The mage rubbed her temple. “Better than I expected,” she admitted. “Niah’s presence helped to add some validity to my version of events.”
“What do they know?” Sirus asked.
“Little, thankfully,” Levian answered. “The zephyrs have been rather tight-lipped about the whole affair, which works in our favor. They only knew what they were able to cobble together from the few spies they had in Strye. As far as they’re aware, Nestra finally attempted to overthrow Thurin, failed, and was killed as a result.”
Barith laughed bitterly. “And they believed that horse shite?”
“It’s better that they do,” Levian pointed out sharply. “The truth would only bring questions. Questions we don’t need.”
“So they think we just went around rounding up paladins for the fun of it?” the dragon huffed.
Levian rolled her eyes. “Don’t you have a drink to fill your trap with?” she snapped.
Barith scowled at her dismissal but stalked over to pour himself a drink, cursing her under his breath.
“I confessed that the reason for my last audience was to warn them about my suspicions that Nestra was hunting ancient Dökk artifacts to add to her collection,” the mage went on. “Council already knew about her interests, of course, but they seemed to buy my explanation. They were also quite quick to believe that the zephyr High Priestess sent paladins here in a misguided attempt to steal some of those rare Dökk items she believed the Clan of Wolves possessed.
“I told them it just so happened that when Nestra’s paladins arrived, they found Volkov wasn’t the desolate wasteland they’d expected. Barith and I happened to be visiting at the time of the attack. I merely dropped the paladins on their doorstep to make a point that they needed to deal with the problem firsthand.”
