Page 25

T his time, I’m faster.

No sooner do I taste the barest hint of Tennet’s coppery-salt kiss than I pivot away, which should result in him pitching forward to the floor.

It doesn’t, which proves my instant suspicion that Miriam’s brutal healing practices did exactly what they were supposed to do, and Tennet is back to his usual, irritating self.

I smirk in satisfaction—but keep the expression buried, since I regain my feet under Fortiss’s stormy gaze.

Tennet also hauls himself upright, taking the tunic Nazar hands him but making no move to put it on.

“I have never looked so forward to a report,” Fortiss says dryly, but Miriam is already on her feet, saving me from having to speak.

I blow out a tight breath as I focus on her.

Even as she begins to speak, the taste of Tennet’s lips lingers—copper and something darker—and though I pull away, something inside me flickers like struck flint.

I shouldn’t want the taste of him, by the Light. I don’t want it.

I don’t.

“I think you’ll find this report very instructive, Lord Protector Fortiss,” Miriam announces crisply.

“Lord Tennet, perhaps without fully realizing it, sustained a personal attack from the skrill, much like Balthazar of the Second House and Grennel of the Seventh. Unlike them, he didn’t receive attention for his wounds right away.

Whether sustained by his racing heart or his close connection with his Divh, he didn’t begin to feel the effects until this past quarter hour.

Lady Talia removed him from your receiving room when she noticed he was failing, but she and warrior Caleb were startled to see he was still carrying one of the skrill on his person. ”

“Carrying it?” Fortiss’s grimace betrays his horror. “Carrying it how?”

“In my back,” Tennet supplies. He turns and presents his newly seared skin to Fortiss, and I have to admit, it’s an impressive sight.

Caleb’s long downward slash hooks to the left, but the skin is fully sealed now, the imprint of a flat blade coming to a tip just below Tennet’s neck, between his shoulder blades.

It’s not just the scar that grabs me. It’s the curve of muscle, the way the torchlight glances off Tennet’s skin. And for one reckless moment, I remember the heat of his body pinning mine to the floor—and the weight of that kiss I didn’t see coming.

Focus , I implore myself, all too aware of Fortiss’s keen attention on me.

“When I first encountered the creatures, they were clustered together in a tight ball,” Tennet says.

“Ayne burst through them, and several tried to attack me directly. Most of them I flung off, but a few apparently took refuge beneath the collar of my tunic. I thought there was only one and when I wrenched it free, and felt nothing else, I turned my attention outward again. I honestly didn’t think of it again until Lady Talia and Caleb discovered it.

It didn’t cause me any pain, not after the first shock. I didn’t know it was there.”

He says these last words to Miriam, and she nods.

“That part at least is consistent with the attacks on the House lords. Once the initial puncture is made, the poison serves as a sedative, calming the victim and limiting any inflammation at the point of the wound. You saw this as well, Lord Protector.”

“I saw bite wounds that weren’t inflamed, not an entire creature buried in someone’s back ,” Fortiss corrected.

“Are you saying that if we hadn’t gotten to the House lords in time, if you and the others were not already there, this would have happened to them?

Some of those skrill were small. No bigger than the size of a hand. Would they even have noticed?”

Tennet grimaces. “I noticed that I didn’t feel well, I just didn’t know why. And I had no memory or even reason to think that it might be one of these what did you call them? Skrill? Attaching to me.”

“And now?”

He crosses his arms more tightly across his body, then spreads his arms wide. “I feel like I have an old wound down my back. It hurts, but it doesn’t hurt as much as I think it should, considering the fact that councilor Miriam branded me with a flat blade.”

He glances at her. “Is this more of that sedative effect from the poison? If so, this skrill poison could be useful—assuming it doesn’t eventually kill me.”

“We haven’t had a live specimen of skrill to study, and we still don’t,” she says pointedly.

“That’s not my fault,” Caleb protests, gesturing wildly with his right hand. “That thing was buried inside Lord Tennet’s back. It was still alive when we pulled it out and writhing around like mad. I didn’t think we were going to want to keep it as a pet.”

“No, you were quite right in killing it,” she agrees, waving off his dismay.

“These things are too dangerous to cultivate, especially when we don’t yet have an understanding of how we may trap them alive without exposing ourselves to danger.

Nevertheless, if we do manage to keep one of them alive for long enough to harvest their poison?—”

“You think there’s going to be more of them, more attacks? Is that what we’re looking at now?” Fortiss asks.

The words pound in my head so violently, there’s no way I can’t say them aloud.

“Grounding stones,” I blurt out, and everyone in the room turns to me.

I lift my hands as if to ward them off. “Did none of the rest of you hear what he was saying? He was loud, and he wouldn’t shut up.

He also mentioned a formal name—Sahktar, I think. ”

“I couldn’t make out a word of it,” Caleb says. “I mean yes, I could hear him muttering at you, but it sounded like gibberish. You were closer, councilor Miriam. Could you make any of it out?”

“To me, I didn’t even hear words, just harsh and guttural breathing, the sound of a man trying to overcome his pain. But I don’t possess a band, I am not connected to the Divhs. I don’t know their language.”

I make a face. “You can’t tell me that those snakes were Divhs. Divhs don’t ravage the Protectorate without a warrior to guide them. They don’t simply drop into our land unasked.”

“Who says they weren’t summoned?” she counters.

“Lord Rihad hasn’t regained consciousness since he fell on the battlefield fully a month ago, but his body isn’t deteriorating.

He doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink, and he makes no waste, and yet his skin is warm and dry to the touch his breathing is easy.

Something is sustaining him, and if he could be sustained, he arguably could summon a Divh to do his bidding. ”

“Then you should kill him,” Tennet says flatly. “There’s no other possibility. That thing that he summoned, if he summoned it, attacked the lords of the Protectorate, incapacitated them.”

“And they tried to eat your spine,” Caleb points out.

“And that,” Tennet agrees with a grimace. “And apparently had me speaking in tongues, with only Lady Talia able to interpret. I certainly didn’t know what I was saying, I was simply reacting to councilor Miriam here attempting to heal me.”

“Not just attempting,” she comments drily, but her gaze is on me. “Can you remember anything else he said?”

“I can’t,” I say with what I think is a credible grimace.

“Just pieces of it, but one of them was grounding stones. As I received that information, I received the image of small, colorful curved stones buried in a cornerstone of some enormous structure, which I took to mean one of the great houses of the Protectorate. It’s a beacon, I think.

A beacon that any skrill can use to light its way.

If those grounding stones have been placed at the great houses throughout the Protectorate every time Rihad ventured out—or if they were always there, somehow—and if the skrill are now on the loose and can use them as guides, it’s just a matter of time before they attack the lords and their houses. They have to be ready for it.”

“We handled it here, and with very short notice. They burned and self-consumed in that fire, and it was ordinary flame, right?”

“It did the trick here,” Caleb agrees. “Unless Nazar has put something in his fireplace that he hasn’t told us.”

Nazar doesn’t answer, but Miriam shakes her head.

“No. Simple fire destroys them, and a poultice of sage and oleander draws out the poison from the skin, allowing it to heal.” She cocks an interested glance at Tennet.

“I’ll be curious to see when the pain returns to your back, or if you experience any other reactions given how long you carried the creature with you. ”

“I’ll be fine,” he says gruffly. “If the pain that comes is strictly that of healing skin, that won’t be anything new.”

“But which houses have these stones?” Caleb asks, though no one has an answer to that, of course.

“And was it only Lord Rihad who carried these things? He had bards in his employ, and no one would notice if one of them dropped a pretty rock out of his bag and snugged it up against a cornerstone. The bards all fled the First House after Rihad’s fall, supposedly to take the story far and wide.

We’ll never be able to warn them in time—and what are we supposed to warn them about?

A random curved rock that looks out of place? ”

My lips twist in dismay. “That’s only part of the problem. Something is sending these creatures out, something tied to the threat that lies beyond the western borders. These skrill, I assume, are part of that history?”