Damion Bane
Late that night, after spending about two hours peeling potatoes and a few more toiling in the apothecary lab, I start back to the North Tower. Halfway across the cold, windy field, I realize I’ve left Professor Kristian’s books in the kitchen.
It’s well past midnight when I return to the kitchen to fetch the books. I’ve never been out so late, and it’s strange to find the University so quiet and deserted, only a few stray scholars walking here and there, some scattered lamplight visible through windows.
I push open the door that leads to the kitchen’s storage room, hearing some muffled voices in the otherwise quiet kitchen up ahead. I hesitate near the second door, curious as to who could be here at such a late hour.
“Please...please let me go,” a young woman pleads, crying softly.
“Now, why would I do that?” a velvety voice answers.
I creep up to the door in front of me and peer through its window. My gut clenches when I see who it is.
Fallon’s older brother, Lieutenant Damion Bane, decked out in his black military garb, silver-striped cloak and white armband. He’s grabbing at Olilly, the shy, violet-skinned Urisk girl who cleans the floors at night. The girl Fallon chased away.
“I have to go. Please let me go,” Olilly begs, trying to pull away from the hand firmly clenched around her thin arm.
Anger courses through me, making my heart race. Trystan. I should get Trystan. He’s a Level Five like Damion. He doesn’t have as much training, but still...
“You have something that belongs to my sister,” Damion says with a smile. “So you’re going to do exactly what I want, or I’m going to report you for theft and get you sent back to the Islands.”
“I didn’t take anything. I swear it.” Her words are muffled by crying.
“There, there,” he purrs, reaching up to finger the buttons of her tunic. “What Fallon doesn’t know won’t hurt her. You’re going to come with me, and we’ll have a little talk. We’re going to take a walk in the woods.”
Anger boils over inside me. Level Five be damned.
I grab up the biggest iron skillet I can find, swinging it by its wooden handle, and make for the kitchen door.
I burst into the kitchen wielding my makeshift weapon. As Damion turns to look at me in surprise, there’s a crash, and a blur streaks through the kitchen, colliding with Damion.
He falls backward away from the girl and onto a table with a groan.
Yvan Guriel is now standing over him, Damion’s wand in his hand. Yvan deftly casts it into the bread stove’s fire. Cold air rushes in from the still-open back door, the logs Yvan had been carrying lying all over the floor near the door in disarray.
I blink, momentarily thrown off balance. How did Yvan move so fast? Impossibly so.
Yvan’s fists are clenched, his body tightly coiled as if he’s ready to spring at Damion at any moment, green eyes blazing.
Damion looks at him, then me, ignoring Olilly as she cries and huddles against the spice shelf. He smiles and pushes himself off the table, then pauses to brush off his fine clothes.
“Doing some late-night cooking?” he asks me, amused.
My arm hurts from holding the heavy skillet, but I don’t care. I want to throw it straight at his head.
“Stay away from the kitchen girls,” I tell him, my voice steely.
I’ve heard all about him, and some of the other soldiers. Preying on any Urisk girl unlucky enough to find herself alone with them. The kitchen workers don’t talk to me directly, but they talk around me, and I’ve ears to hear.
“She’s a thief,” Damion tells me conversationally, flicking his fingers in the direction of the girl without looking at her. “She’s coming with me. She stole something from my sister. A picture.”
Oh, Ancient One. Guilt lashes through me. Lukas’s cracked portrait at the bottom of my cloak pocket. Olilly’s predicament is all my fault.
I hoist the skillet a little higher on the handle, fearing I may drop it. “She didn’t take Fallon’s picture,” I tell him, heart pounding. “I did.”
His eyebrows fly up, then his gaze turns malevolent and he lets out a short laugh. “So you have my sister’s picture of Lukas Grey?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Interesting rivalry you two have going,” he says, shooting me a dark look.
I fish the broken portrait pieces from my cloak pocket, walk over to him, the skillet hanging heavily from my other hand, and drop the pieces into his outstretched palm.
He smiles chillingly. “I don’t suppose she’ll laugh this off.”
“No, I’d imagine not,” I reply flatly.
I let out a long breath as he takes his leave, then turn to find Olilly and Yvan staring at me, Olilly terrified and frozen in place, Yvan’s eyes a storm of emotion.
“I left my books here,” I explain weakly, mind spinning with the many ways Fallon will soon be devising to kill me. And still reeling over Yvan’s otherworldly speed.
I awkwardly set the skillet down on a table. The kitchen is now quiet as a tomb, and my gaze is drawn to Olilly’s bloodshot eyes, the telltale spots around the corners of her lips.
The Red Grippe.
I’ve noticed that a few of the kitchen workers have been ill with this for some time. It’s easy, but expensive, to cure. I’ve tried to sneak medicine to them, but none of them have been able to get past their fear of me.
But maybe she’ll take it with Yvan here.
I pause, pull a medicinal vial out of my tunic pocket and hold it out to her. “Olilly, I made this for you.”
Olilly recoils and shakes her head stiffly from side to side. She looks to Yvan, terror stark in her eyes.
Yvan turns his back to me, puts his hand on Olilly’s arm and murmurs something, his words too low to decipher. He’s so gentle with her, his long fingers brushing her hair back so kindly, his voice so deep and resonant as he reassures her. It sets off the usual unsettling, warm thrum deep inside me.
Olilly starts to sob, lifting a slender, shaking hand to wipe at her eyes. She looks up at Yvan imploringly. “He could follow me. What if he follows me?”
“I’ll walk you back,” Yvan assures her, his voice low and soothing. “All right?”
Olilly sniffs back her tears and nods.
“Go on,” he tells her, his voice barely audible. “Gather your things.”
Olilly nods again, some of the tension loosening from her stance. She shoots me another fearful look, then disappears into the back storeroom.
I sigh and glance worriedly toward where Olilly exited. “Maybe you can give this to her,” I say, holding the medicine out to Yvan, my emotions pulsing through me in a tangled mess. “She’s much too afraid to take it from me.”
His severe expression doesn’t budge.
“It’s Norfure tincture,” I press. “I’ve seen what she’s taking. You know as well as I do that it won’t cure her. This will.” It’s medicine that works. Expensive Gardnerian medicine. Medicine she’ll never be able to afford.
Yvan stands, blinking at me. But then he walks over and takes it, his warm fingers brushing against my own, sparks lighting on my skin as my pulse quickens. His green eyes lock onto mine as he slides the vial into his pants pocket.
Feeling wildly self-conscious, I go and fish my books out from under a nearby table and straighten to find Yvan still watching me, his brow tensed as if he’s trying to figure something out.
“That was...brave, what you just did,” I tell him awkwardly, clutching at Professor Kristian’s books, hesitant to compliment him.
“You were going to attack a Level Five Gardnerian Mage,” he says, more a statement than a question. “With a skillet.”
I lift my chin defensively. “Why, yes. I was.” Heart thudding, I fight the urge to break eye contact with his intense, unwavering stare.
For a moment it looks as if he wants to say something. Instead he turns and picks up his own books, laid on a shelf with the spice jars.
Olilly emerges from the storeroom, cloaked and with a bag slung over her shoulder. Averting her eyes from me, she hurries out the back door and holds it open for Yvan to follow.
Yvan glances over at her, pausing. He looks back to me, his hard expression now conflicted. “Good night, Elloren,” he says stiffly, but not unpleasantly, before following Olilly out into the night.
His use of my name stuns me into openmouthed silence.
I watch him leave, his back broad and straight, deeply warmed by his thawing demeanor.
And still wondering how he could possibly be so fast.
* * *
I know I should put in an hour or so memorizing cough remedies. Especially after spending so much time with Professor Kristian—time that should have been spent studying.
I sit in my dim North Tower room, my Apothecarium text open on the desk before me, dawn soon approaching. I need to get at least a few hours of sleep, and I’m running out of time for study. But I can’t seem to focus. Professor Kristian’s tower of history books seems to be quietly waiting for me, and I find it hard to resist their forbidden pull.
Simply possessing these books feels like a traitorous thing. Especially the Keltic history. The Kelts oppressed my people for generations. How can I read a history book written by one of them?
But then I look to Ariel, passed out with one of her chickens. And to Wynter, asleep with threadbare wings wrapped tight around her thin frame. I think of Olilly—how poor she is, and how afraid of me. And of Yvan’s use of my first name, for the first time.
I decide to do the dangerous thing, not the smart thing.
I push my Apothecarium text to the side, pick up Professor Kristian’s history text and begin to read.