Page 79 of Keldori By Daybreak

“Dammit!” I was yelling before my eyes were fully open. The air of the bathhouse felt heavy after being at the center of Gams’s storm, and I fought against it in an effort to sit up.

Wet hair slapped against my back, and a gentle hand on my shoulder lowered me back down before the cloak covering my body could slip off.

“Careful,” Orla hissed. “You’re not decent.”

I growled at the ceiling and held the hem of the cloak against my collar bone with one hand as I flung my other arm over my eyes.

Gams couldn’t stop me. I would do what I wanted. I would do what I could. But I needed her to stop talking as if this was the end for her. She’d lived four hundred years. She could spare to live a few decades more for my sake.

“Was it your grandmother?” Orla asked. “Ciarán said you’d said her name. She summoned you again, didn’t she?”

I groaned and pulled my arm away from my face to stare at the ceiling’s low barrel vault through the thick steam of the bathhouse.

“Where’s Ciarán?”

“Lurking in the stairwell, I think.” Orla lowered her voice. “I know you and your people are shy about bathing, so you’ll be happy to know he didn’t see anything. He kept your head above the water and called for help.”

It was a small relief.

“Thank you, Orla.” I held the damp cloak against myself as I sat and looked around the room, searching for my clothes. “My grandma said some of Ferrin’s troops have left the Bay of Teeth, including Caitria. He knows we’re looking for a back way into Keldori. You’re positive he won’t come here?”

“There’s always a chance,” she conceded, “but I don’t think he’ll check unless he has reason to do so. For all he knows, we could be anywhere.”

I’d been hoping for something more reassuring than that, but I nodded, and gestured for my clothes. She looked away as I pulled them on.

Ciarán was, in fact, lurking in the stairwell. He cast his eyes down when Orla and I rounded the corner.

“My Lady.” The tight bow of his head felt too formal after the bath we’d shared before Gams had interrupted. “Sorry for eavesdropping, but the others will want an update.”

He turned to retreat up the stairs before I had the chance to so much as nod, and a strange embarrassment rose in my gut. Yes, there were bigger things to worry about—much bigger, Earth-shattering things—but why couldn’t Ciarán look at me when we’d been so close just minutes before?

Fine.

If he wanted to be weird, I could be weird too. I spent the climb up the stairs running Gams’s words back over in my head, pushing thoughts of Ciarán to the furthest recesses of my mind, which was just as well, because that’s where he liked to lurk anyway.

Fana, Iseult, and Tiernan waited in the main chamber. Iseult paced in front of the copper wall plate while Tiernan tapped his foot listlessly against the stone floor.

Fana’s head jerked up from where she held Jonquil in her lap.

“Did you drown?” she blurted.

“Don’t worry,” Orla assured her. “Just-Wren is just fine.”

She flashed me a grin, but I couldn’t find the energy to return it.

“What did the Saergrim want?” Iseult demanded. “Your Grimguard said she’s the one who summoned you.”

I recounted most of what Gams had said, leaving out the parts about dying grandmothers.

“They probably went back to the Second Sentinel,” Orla offered. “Maybe to get supplies.”

She glanced at Tiernan, as if hoping he could somehow confirm his sister was just on a prolonged snack run and not coming our way.

“Ferrin knows we have a plan,” I said. “And he knows Gams isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He’s going to try to stop us or figure out this secret door himself.”

“And the Saergrim said they left two days ago?” Iseult repeated softly. “How far can Caitria have gotten in two days?”

“Far,” Ciarán said.