21. Sage

CHAPTER 21

Sage

I woke in the Garden again with the aching, twisting need from Talon’s magic only partially diminished despite touching myself and making myself come multiple times back in my bedroom in the Black Tower.

Great Father! I wanted to scream in frustration. Even with my body weak and trembling and filled with ice from his shadow, I still craved another release.

I’d barely managed to get myself under control when Lord Quill had returned to my room with a tray overflowing with food. And in the short time he’d been with me, my desire had been almost back to where I’d started when Lord Rider had pushed me into Lord Quill’s arms and he’d carried me from the practice yard to my room.

It had taken everything I’d had to not stare at him and not to react to the sensation zinging through me when he touched me. Even the panic induced by his interest about me — or rather Sawyer’s sister — hadn’t done much to ease my yearning for him.

Thankfully, no one sat on the bench on the other side of the pool where I’d woken in the Garden, and I didn’t have to fend off Wells’s and Crane’s unwanted advances, or fight my attraction to Lord Rider or anyone else.

And as much as my body yearned to find Fantasy Man and have him satisfy me again, I couldn’t forget what I’d decided last night, which was to stay focused on keeping Sawyer safe.

Giving in to my desire would only jeopardize my plans. The men here were looking for their mate and while I looked like I was fae in my spirit form, I wasn’t fae and that could only spell trouble for me in my real body back in the Black Tower.

I couldn’t risk them thinking I was their chance to be mated, and I certainly couldn’t risk triggering whatever magic bound fae’s souls together to create these bonded mate groupings.

And since I hadn’t had a chance to figure out how to send my spirit back to my body, let alone not manifest my spirit into the Garden in the first place, I was going to have to avoid everyone until I returned to the Black Tower.

And that included Fantasy Man .

The evening breeze warmed my still ever-so-slightly too-cool skin and ruffled through my long hair. It carried the sound of men’s voices and the sweet scent of flowers, drawing my attention to the gauzy green curtains separating the garden part of the Garden from the courtyard.

An unsettling mix of desire and fear twisted in my gut. I should leave, go deeper into the garden, and get as far away from the men gathered in the courtyard as possible, and yet that wouldn’t help me if I ran into anyone.

I still knew nothing about fae and fae culture. I had no idea how long it was going to take me to figure out what was going on with me that made me wake every night in the Garden or how long it was going to take me to stop it from happening. I could try to hide every time I came here, but I always woke in the same spot close to the courtyard, and I was bound to be greeted again by Wells and Crane or other men like I had last night.

Lord Rider had mentioned something about putting the men in their place, but I didn’t know what that meant and I couldn’t just ask someone. I mean, I supposed I could, I just didn’t know how strange the question would be.

Here in the Garden where I was a woman, I was sure it would be extremely strange. I was supposed to be familiar with fae culture.

And if I asked Kit or Payne back in the Black Tower where I was a man… probably strange as well.

Why would a man want to know how a woman was supposed to behave in someone else’s culture?

Which meant I was going to have to figure it out by myself, and since I was here, the best way to do that was to observe how men and women interacted with each other.

There was a chance there wouldn’t be any women in the courtyard since I couldn’t remember seeing any of them last time, but then I’d been instantly swarmed by a group of men all bigger than me. Even if there weren’t any women around, just watching the men was the best use of these unwanted visits. At the very least, maybe I’d get a better idea of who was safe to run into and who wasn’t.

The catch would be to find a place where I could watch without drawing attention to myself. As soon as I stepped past those gauzy curtains, I’d be swarmed again.

I scanned the rolling lawn, the flowerbeds, and the stone path between me and the courtyard. The curtains undulated with the breeze, tangling around the statues of the fae women standing at the edge of the courtyard and revealing glimpses of the men inside.

There wasn’t a good place to observe those inside while being unnoticed. At least not any place that didn’t make it look like I was spying on them if I got caught.

And while yes, I was spying on them, I didn’t want to look like I was sneaking around.

A stronger breeze rippled through the curtains, making the fabric canopy above the courtyard flutter, drawing my attention to the strange building beyond it.

It was hard to tell in the moonlight, but it looked like a castle and a tree had been mashed together in an impossible melding of stone and foliage like the stone-vine archway at the entrance of the grove.

I strolled across the lawn attempting to look casual while not following the path leading to the courtyard to try to get a better look at the building.

There were lights flickering among the leaves as well as against the fae’s magical, almost perfectly clear glass windows at least five stories up, and I got a sense of wood and rope bridges hanging between the enormous branches.

Three men strode out of the courtyard and I shrunk back into the shadow of a tall shrub.

Unlike the previous night where every man had snapped his gaze to me the moment he’d left the courtyard, these three didn’t even glance my way, and I could only hope that was because I wasn’t out in the open and not because they were already mated and no longer had a strange attunement to know exactly where an unmated woman was.

If all unmated men did know exactly where I was, that would ruin my plan of trying to secretly observe them.

I hurried farther away from the entrance, circling the courtyard in the shadows until I reached where its canopy and curtains connected with the building, which was indeed half stone and half tree.

Here there was another path that led out of the courtyard and into the garden as well as a stone staircase with a hip-high railing that curled up around a wide tree trunk.

This close, I could now see that there were balconies one and two floors above the courtyard and above that, windows overlooking the courtyard as well.

The first level of balconies sat beneath the gauzy canopy, promising a perfect view of those inside, and while there was light and a handful of people in a couple of the balconies, the three smaller ones closest to the edge where I stood were dark and hopefully empty.

I hurried up the stairs into a strange half-tree half-stone hallway. More of the vines with the softly glowing white and pink flowers illuminated the space making it difficult to tell where tree ended and stone began. Beside me stood the dark, open archway to the first balcony while up ahead, two more archways down, light and laughter from the occupied balconies spilled into the passage .

I peeked into the first balcony just to make sure it really was empty then hurried inside. The space was deeper than I’d first thought with room for a delicately carved table and four chairs on one side near the back and a seating area with two couches on the other side near the railing at the front.

The dim light of two barely lit fae lanterns glimmered, one above the table and the other over the seating area, but I ignored them, leaving them at their lowest setting, and stepped up to the silver railing wrapped with vines and branches.

Just below the level of my balcony hung the lanterns for the courtyard with large metal shades reflecting the light down, keeping the balcony wrapped in shadows while offering me a perfect view of those below.

As expected, the courtyard was filled with fae men, all of them tall and beautiful and bigger than most humans. They were also stronger than human men, but now I knew the truth that only half of them had magic and, unlike the minstrels’ tales, most of that magic wasn’t overly powerful. That said, there was no way of telling just by looking at them who had powerful magic and who didn’t.

The men sat in conversation areas or at tables or stood near the food and drink tables, all of them talking and laughing with each other. A couple in a darker corner away from the other conversation area were quietly making out, and no one seemed to notice or care.

With the exception that there was only one woman who was surrounded by three men and being ignored by everyone else — and the couple making out — the gathering below looked like the one social event I’d attended as a child when my mother had taken me and Sawyer to the royal court in Erellod to finalize her marriage to Edred.

A flicker of impossible golden sunshine caught my attention, and my gaze jumped across the room to Lord Quill and Talon sitting at a table in another out-of-the-way corner.

Seeing them made my pulse skip and the remaining desire from Talon’s magic — that I’d so far managed to ignore — flared back to life.

They were eating and drinking and sharing a quiet conversation, their voices too soft for me to hear over the din of conversation from the other men, and I yearned for the feel of Talon’s mouth on mine even if that meant his shadow’s ferocious frozen power would steal all strength and heat from my body again.

Lord Quill nodded at something Talon said, sending a lock of golden hair spilling across his forehead.

Unlike Talon, his hair was short like Sawyer’s — like mine now was. I’d thought that was unusual for a fae, but only about half of the fae in the Black Guard had long hair. And while those in the Garden were more likely to have the waist-length long hair that the minstrels’ tales sung about, Lord Quill wasn’t the only one in the courtyard with shorter hair.

I leaned against the railing, my body trying to draw closer whether I wanted to or not, and while I could chalk up my desire for Talon as a result of his shadow’s magical allure, I couldn’t explain my attraction to Lord Quill.

And I certainly couldn’t explain the shock of something that always zinged through me whenever we touched.

There was something about him… about both of them that called to me, and the longer I sat there, the harder it was to remember that I needed to keep my distance from them.

I heaved my attention to the other side of the courtyard, determined to stop staring. I needed to practice not looking at them now or I was going to be a disaster tomorrow during training.

Great Father, how was I going to get through anything when even just thinking about Talon made the memory of his shadow’s magic swell inside me?

I groaned with desire, but the heated need froze suddenly as a hint of unease flickered through me.

Someone was watching me.