Page 41 of Lies Within the Darkest Tower

Guess he had been talking to me.

The guy in front of me turned, glanced down then looked at the men behind me. “The novices don’t have to arrive until noon. They’re probably waiting for everyone to assemble before bothering the quartermaster.”

“I’d still be surprised if he has anything in his size,” laughing guy said. “You sure you’re actually a man?”

My pulse froze. Had I been discovered already?

“He’s here so his name was drawn,” the man in front of me replied with a shrug and he step through the doorway into the kitchen. “Must mean he’s a man.”

He picked up a tray on a counter and set a bowl of porridge on it then took a few more steps along the counter giving me my first full view of the kitchen.

It was larger than the kitchen in Herstind, but then it had to feed more than quadruple the number of men. Two large cooking fires took up half of the back wall. One had a spit with a large chunk of meat on it being periodically turned by a man in black guard clothes and armor, and the other had half a dozen large pots hanging over it. More men dressed in guardsmen’s clothing — complete with armor and weapons — stood at counters preparing food or washing dishes, while the men in the line loaded their trays with porridge and bread and bacon and?—

Great Father! Was that fruit? Apples and grapes and even oranges from the Southern Isles.

Men seemed to take as much or as little as they wanted and no one stopped them. If a platter or bowl was empty, someone in the kitchen replaced it, and if someone didn’t notice and the man in line wanted it, he asked for it and was given it without argument or complaint.

I took a bowl of porridge, a small roll, and a precious orange, feeling a little like I was stealing, then found myself at the other door staring into the great hall at the sea of black-armored men devouring their morning meal.

The men closest to me gave me a terse glance. One of them huffed like the fae man in the towel and they returned to their conversation.

The man who’d been in line behind me, brushed past me and I drew closer to the wall to get out of the way while I figured out what to do. There weren’t any empty tables or even large spaces between obvious social groups, and I didn’t want to plopmyself down and join any of them since I had no idea what kind of reception I’d receive. Not to mention the whole point was to keep my head down and not draw unwanted attention.

“You’re never going to get that eaten before the second bell if you don’t sit down,” Talon’s sensual tenor said close to my ear, sending a shiver of desire rushing down my spine which quickly mixed with the fear of being discovered and being too close to him and?—

He pressed a hand between my shoulder blades, making the shiver melt into aching need, and nudged me between the closest row of tables before I could step away, leading me to a seat beside Grefin, who rolled his eyes at me.

“Speaking of the idiot,” he sighed, but he shifted to the side to give me more space on the bench.

CHAPTER 26

Sage

Talon took my tray,set it on the table before I could apologize and leave, nudged me down on the bench then sat on my other side, boxing me in between him and Grefin.

“You know what he did?” Grefin asked, looking past me at Talon.

“I can’t believe he killed a shadow hound,” the fae man sitting across from Grefin said.

He was handsome, like all the fae I’d seen, with short black hair and sapphire eyes, but thinner. I had no doubt he was strong and fast, but he was built for quick precision attacks, the kind of fighting I needed to strive for when in battle because neither of us would win a fight if it came down to wrestling… well, he’d win against me and maybe half of the humans here, but no one else.

“I don’t believe it,” another fae said as he approached, sweeping an appraising gaze over me that made me want to shrink in on myself. He was big, almost twice as broad as the thin fae, with heavy, bulky muscles that were obvious even fully clothed in his Black Guard gear. “He’s too small.”

He set his tray on the table beside the thin fae’s then sat on the bench and captured the thin fae’s lips in a powerful kiss thatno one else reacted to. I dropped my gaze to my porridge in an attempt to hide my shock. I’d only ever seen men kissing each other in my dream last night, and while Talon had said there were fae mates among the Guard, I didn’t think they’d be so open about it.

Unless, of course, that was the point: to see how the new sacrifice would react to them.

“And yet Rider says he did,” Talon said, making me hyperaware of him right beside me, his arm mere inches from mine.

My attention jumped to him of its own volition, drawn to him like it had been drawn to Quill yesterday when he’d delivered Sawyer’s summons.

Talon was just as stunning as he’d been last night, the Black Guardsmen uniform a stark contrast to his long white hair that shimmered as if some strands were real silver. Four braids at each temple still held his hair back from his face, and light flickered off the earring decorating one of his delicately pointed ears.

Then the memory of his naked body flooded me, reigniting the slick ache between my thighs. I yanked my gaze back to my porridge, my ears burning with embarrassment, praying he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he’d sat me here knowing the two across from me were in an intimate relationship. Was this his way of showing me my desires for men weren’t going to get me ridiculed or punished like it would in the human realm… if I’d actually been a man?

“You’re missing the point,” Grefin groaned. “He used the ring after dark which was how he ended up in that mess in the first place.”

Aaaaand… it looked like I was never going to live that down. Not with Grefin at least, and if the other guardsmen felt the way he did, not with the rest of the Guard, either.

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