CHAPTER 8
Talon
I pushed open the door, and Onyx and I stepped into the sitting room. No one sat on the couches or chairs and the door to the bedroom stood half open. Nothing looked disturbed, which meant Rider and Quill had yet to return and Sage was still safe. If her remaining attackers had found her, there would have been signs of a struggle.
“She’s in the bedroom, resting,” I told Onyx. And it looked like Ash was still in there as well.
I wonder if he’s still hiding in the shadows, scaring her.
Onyx eased the door open and stood back, allowing me to enter first, but my gaze landed on Sage and Ash, and I froze.
Ash wasn’t hiding at all. He sat propped up by pillows against the headboard, holding Sage in a protective embrace. Her vibrant red hair spilled over both of them as her head jerked toward the door, her emerald eyes wide with fear.
“It’s just Talon,” Ash murmured, his grip around her tightening. “He’s a friend of mine. He helped rescue you. You can trust him.”
She rested her head back against his pec but kept a wary eye on me. I couldn’t blame her. I’d been rude to her, and she had no reason to trust me, but I was glad to see she had a spark and wasn’t cowering from me.
That spark had to have been what propelled her to stab Wells over and over again until the newly forming mating bond shattered.
My shadow curled tighter within me even as a sliver of pride unfurled in my chest. It didn’t want this woman to know it existed, and it certainly didn’t want its allure affecting her, but it was still proud of her… or was that my pride?
Unlike human women, fae women were strong and confident. But I wasn’t sure how many of them would have had the strength to handle being strung up, cut, and half drowned, and then attack a man easily twice her size.
“I brought my friend Onyx,” I told her, keeping my voice low and steady, trying not to let my anger at her attack bleed through. “He’s a Knight Captain in the Order, and he’d like to know what happened. Can he talk to you?”
Sage’s gaze darted to Onyx and her eyes narrowed.
“He’s safe as well,” Ash said. She turned her full attention to him with nothing in her expression indicating that she was afraid of the horrible scars on his face. “He’s mated to Rider’s sister and I trust him.”
She turned back to me and nodded, and I stepped to the side, keeping my distance from her and letting Onyx enter.
He took one step forward, his movement slow and deliberate, then stopped. “May I approach?”
A flicker of surprise flashed through her eyes as if she hadn’t expected him to ask for permission to get closer to her. “Yes.”
“Talon tells me you’ve been through something terrible,” he said, carefully drawing closer and crouching beside the bed. “I know this will be tough, but can you tell me what happened?”
“I woke up in the Garden again,” she said, her voice heartbreakingly soft and uncertain. “I keep waking up here and I don’t want to.”
Her eyes grew glassy, and my shadow’s rage spiked at her distress, releasing a burst of allure. She gasped and light flared from her already too-bright mating marks.
Shit. I couldn’t stay here.
My shadow’s regret at momentarily losing control swept through me, but I couldn’t afford for that to happen again. With her marks as bright as they were, she had to be desperate for a sexual release, and my allure would only make it worse.
“Excuse me,” I muttered.
I stepped back into the sitting room, partially shutting the door behind me.
Fucking hell. I needed to pull my shit together. If I couldn’t, Rider would force me to leave. But my shadow wouldn’t let me abandon her.
I sank onto the couch near the fire, planning to wait until Onyx was done, but couldn’t sit still and jerked back to my feet. Sucking in deep breaths in an attempt to steady the emotions whirling inside me, I paced to the outside door then to the partially open bedroom door and back again.
I was on my thirtieth circuit — the room wasn’t that big — when the door to the rest of the grove opened and Rider strode in, his expression grim.
His gaze darted around the room, landing on the partially open bedroom door.
“Did Lark ask questions?” he asked. He didn’t bother asking about Onyx, since with his enhanced smell and hearing he could scent the man and hear him talking with Sage.
“No. But you know she’s going to the moment she gets you cornered.”
He huffed a sigh. “Hopefully by then we’ll have this mess cleaned up. Although…”
That didn’t sound good.
“I found eight different scents in the sacred pool.” He glanced at the bedroom door again and sat in one of the over-stuffed chairs near the fire. “Two of them don’t match the bodies we found and I didn’t recognize them.”
Well, shit.
Rider’s wolf was strong. Not only could he smell scents in his spirit form, he could also smell spirit scents. But if the scents didn’t match the dead and Rider didn’t recognize them, we’d never be able to figure out who they were.
The odds that Rider would randomly catch a whiff of them were low, especially since his body was in the Black Tower and fae could only manifest in the Garden, nowhere else in the fae realm. And if I were one of the idiots that attacked Sage, I’d avoid the Garden for at least a decade.
To make matters worse, sometimes a person had a different scent in their spirit form than their physical form. Which meant he could be a member of the Black Guard, we could work with him every day, and not know he’d committed one of the worst crimes possible.
“I didn’t get a good look at all of the bodies. Were any of them knights?” Onyx could discreetly find out who was supposed to be guarding the pool, but I wanted answers now and learning there were two assailants we couldn’t identify only made that need stronger.
“I didn’t see anyone wearing a uniform during the fight,” Rider said. “And none of the bodies were in uniform, either. But we both know that doesn’t mean much.”
“Yeah.” I resumed my pacing, unable to stand still. “They could have ditched the uniforms before joining Wells. Or…”
“Or Wells took out whoever was supposed to be guarding the pool and hid the body,” Rider finished grimly.
And once again I was hit with the staggering implications. Wells could have murdered a knight, or one of the knights could have been involved. But it could also have been many knights or powerful magisters involved.
Rider got up and quietly strode to the bedroom doorway. I watched his face as he peered inside, trying to gauge the situation with how Sage was and how Rider felt about her.
“How is she?” I asked when his expression stayed typically stoic.
“Shaken,” he replied as he headed back to his chair. “But Ash is still with her. Did you know they’re cuddling?”
“Hard to believe, I know.” Which was an understatement. Ash had hidden from all women the minute his body had healed enough that his spirit could manifest in the Garden.
The muscles in Rider’s jaw flexed. “Do you think she’s his mate?” he growled… or quite possibly his wolf growled.
I didn’t know. But from his tone it sure sounded like she was Rider’s mate.
Which didn’t mean she also couldn’t be Ash’s.
Goddess, I hoped she was. Ash deserved happiness and that connection he craved to balance his soul.
I prayed he didn’t get in his own way. As soon as the rush from saving Sage and the need to protect and comfort her vanished, I had no doubt he’d retreat. I had to make sure he gave her a chance and not let him assume she’d be terrified and disgusted by him once she was past the shock of the attack.
Of course if she was disgusted and afraid— If they weren’t mates?—
She’d shatter him.