Shan covered the distance between them in moments. He pulled her into his arms, too strong to fight against, but he didn’t hurt her. Instead, he cradled her against his body. His lips brushed her head and he held her close. His heart hammered against his ribs, so hard she could feel it in her own body.
“I will always come for you, my love. Always. Even if you don’t want me to.”
She nodded, and to her surprise the knot inside her eased a little. There was so much she needed to tell him, to explain, to say sorry for.
And then she saw it. Blood on his tunic. And all thoughts went away.
She pushed him back to see if better. Shan stepped away from her, his muscles stiffening in annoyance.
“What happened to you?” Jeren snapped “Are you hurt?”
Shan took another step back, his body hardening against her with lightning fast reflexes, honed for response to that sort of alarm. “No I— Nothing. Just a— I was careless.”
He released her and pulled the tunic off in one deft movement. She didn’t see where it fell. Jeren stepped back into his embrace, pressed her skin to his skin, her lips to his body.
“I’m sorry, Jeren,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry. I’m here now. I wish...” He sighed and the words slipped away. “I wish I’d never gone. But I’m no use to you here.”
Startled, Jeren looked up into his face. He looked so desolate, so very lost, towering over her. She touched his face, his sharp cheekbones, his sensuous mouth, tracing lines on his skin.
She wanted to feel the anger again, wanted to let him know how much he’d hurt her, how much she’d missed him. She wanted to rage at him, throw things. But she couldn’t. Not when he looked at her like that.
“Never believe that,” she said. Kissing him was easy. And yet it meant so much more. So very much more all of a sudden. “You’re my husband, my mate. You always will be.”
Shan gave a low groan of acceptance, of defeat, and returned her kiss, her touch, her love. And for a moment she believed once more that they could make this work. Somehow. That they could cheat the vision destiny seemed to be pushing them towards and win the other.
He was back. That was all that mattered right now. She’d just have to make sure he didn’t leave again.
Jeren woke with the morning light, asleep face down on Anala’s furs, her still clothed body aching and no sign of Shan anywhere. She shook her head, wrapped her arms around her and tried to make it not have been a dream. She failed.
But it had been so real, so very real. And why would she have dreamed of the blood on his clothes? Somewhere out there Shan was in danger. She knew it in her heart but there was no way to reach him.
If only he had really come back. Then she could protect him. Even if it meant protecting him from himself.
She fell uneasily in the pattern of the previous days—travelling in the morning, ushering her rag-bag troops south, dragging their pitiful supplies after them, camping come the afternoon and then, once she had eaten, training.
Fethan was not the teacher Jeren would have wished. There was none of the respect and sharing she had enjoyed with Indarin. Though a tough teacher, Indarin had always been fair. Fethan was petty, resentful and callous. When she failed he mocked her, when she succeeded it wasn’t enough. She hated him more with each sunset.
And yet, the magic grew and grew. From just a suggestion, she could heal wounds. Or reopen them.
She didn’t share the strange events of last night. For one thing they were too personal. For another... well... she recalled tales of ghosts who appeared to their loved ones at the moment of their deaths. And she had dreamed of blood.
Today Fethan seemed more urgent. His eyes flickered around the edges of the area set aside for them, as if watching for interruptions. But as everyone kept reminding her, there was nothing personal in this instruction. It had been born from necessity.
“You can take from the enemy what you need,” he suggested. “Weaken them, strengthen yourself. You’d do it with provisions, troops and any number of things in war. And do not doubt this is war. You must use everything at your disposal.”
His mouth twisted with disgust even as he suggested it. Oh yes, it was fine for her to do it. But not for him and his precious Seers. Yet he was the one suggesting it.
She studied the smooth-faced Feyna youth opposite her.
The Seers worked differently to Indarin. The main approach they favoured was to attack her all at once, armed and unarmed, with methods both magical and mundane. She was beginning to suspect it wasn’t so much a technique as a free for all with the objective of hurting her as much as possible. It was starting to feel like an enormous joke.
Jeren kept the sword with her all the times and her sect knife, identical to Shan’s. It made her think of him but that in turn made her long for him. But she couldn’t think about that now. Truth be told, the Seers toyed with her at the best of times and she knew it.
The first fireball roared towards her. She used the sword to deflect it, the magic imbued in the blade sizzling with the contact. The hairs on her arms stood up, bristling. She almost missed the knife in the second Seer’s hand, hidden by his long sleeve, but a tell-tale flash caught her eye at the last moment. She brought up her sect knife, twisting it against his, disarming him.
Breathing hard, they all paused, waited.
“Good.” Fethan clapped his hands slowly, almost in mocking, and the Seers backed off. “You’re improving. But there’s something else you can use to your advantage.”
Jeren struggled to bring her heaving chest and her emotions back under control. The proximity to their magic was making her own speed out of all control. It wanted loose, and if it managed to slip the bonds she kept on it, she wasn’t sure what it would do. More and more it seemed like a wild animal inside her, one she had to watch at all times. And there were two sides to the training. The more she used it, the stronger it got.
Control, she had to focus on control.
Silence surrounded her. She looked up and found them all staring at her with their silvery eyes, their expressions blank and loathsome.
“What?” she asked.
“Gracen,” called Fethan and the Seer nearest to her surged forwards. She knew him well—a bulky bully, vicious and unkind. His meaty hand closed around her throat and he propelled her back, slamming her against a tree. Jeren shuddered as his grip tightened but his spell wove around her, trapping her arms to her side, squeezing her tightly, holding the breath in her constricting lungs.
Fethan leaned in and a cruel smile danced across his lips. She could only stare at him. Had this been his plan all along? To persuade everyone he was training her and then “accidentally” kill her?
“Not so powerful now, Scion of Jern. Not so much in charge of all matters, even those that don’t concern you!”
Sparks of light burst before her eyes, dazzling her. Jeren opened her mouth wide, but no sound came. Instead a high-pitched whine filled her ears.
Was this it? The moment of dying? Was this burning, raging injustice what everyone felt? She tried to struggle but her strength slipped away, tried to lash out with nothing but her mind. Reached for the owl, for Shan, longed for him with every last instinct, recalled how he had once dropped out of the sky—or so it seemed—in answer to her desperate plea.
She reached for him. He wasn’t far. She could sense him out there, coming closer, desperate to reach her. He shuddered, his eyes growing wide in alarm as her peril slammed into him. And in her mind he called her name as he had last night in her dream. Oh god and goddess, had it just been a dream? Or some kind of vision sent to torment her in her final hours? Where the gods that cruel?