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“What?” I asked. “No secrets.”
“It might not be the best time, no.” He chose his words. “You’ve reached a sort of balance with this spirit. Trying to take back the ground it’s won might anger it.”
“So let her be angry.”
He smiled, almost despite himself, and tucked my hair behind my ear. “Even with all you’ve seen, you are so cavalier about matters that would terrify others.”
“Ignorance is a beautiful thing sometimes. Why should I be afraid of pissing off my big kitty within?”
“Because, foolish Gwynn, you might not be strong enough to win.”
Daunting thought. “Well, right now this does not feel like a workable détente to me. Are there things I can do to get stronger? Exercises or lessons or some such, to improve my odds?”
The questions seemed to take him aback. He considered. Then finally shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. The learning is in the doing.”
“Then there’s no time like the present.”
“Gwynn.” Rogue moved away from me, raking his hands through his hair. “You haven’t thought this through.”
“How can I when I don’t have all the information I need? This is about my body, Rogue. I need my hands. I should be able to make these choices for myself. If learning through experience is the key, then let me try it.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Then show me.”
“Not here.”
*
Rogue took meto another wing of the castle—toward the back, I thought, trying to orient myself on the walk there. We descended via the stairs this time, then traveled wide hallways lit with torches, the large windows all shuttered against the invasion he’d assured me was unlikely to occur. Along the way, we passed all sorts of people, fae and human alike.
They bowed in greeting, murmuring various felicitations on the upcoming wedding. Of course everyone would know by now.
We ended up in an interior chamber that reminded me of the indoor riding arenas we’d used for lessons and exercise during Wyoming’s harsh winters. Similar to the bathing chamber, stones lined the walls which curved into a domed ceiling. The mortar between these, however, gleamed silver in the sourceless light. The floor seemed to be packed dirt, reinforcing that riding-arena feel. A single door, barred behind us and also made of silver, led in and out.
“Silver boundaries and an earthen floor?” I voiced the observation as a question.
“Protects everyone else from magical errors,” Rogue replied, raising an eyebrow at me, as if daring me to object. “And us from certain kinds of eavesdropping. Had events worked so that I’d been in charge of your training, it would have been here and you would not have had to be bound in silver at all times.”
“Alas for that.” I managed to sound flippant, proud of myself for it. If only events had worked that way, instead of the nightmare I’d endured.
“Indeed,” he returned with feeling.
For the first time I considered how my torturous training had worked against Rogue. I’d been locked away, out of his reach, and when I emerged so embittered it had taken all this time for him to woo me into a bit of trust.Once again poisoning your heart against me.Had it worked out otherwise, I might have studied here with him, fallen hard for my devastatingly sexy professor, and our child might already have been born.
Sobering thought. One I didn’t care to entertain, for several reasons.
“Why not a silver floor?”
He gathered his hair at the nape of his neck, tying it back with a leather thong, doing it manually instead of by magic. “You asked me once how I drew from resources outside myself.”
“The ground—really?”
“Mother Earth is the font of all our life, magical and otherwise.”
“You say that like it’s a real person.”
“The earth is not real to you?”
