Page 59 of Great Falls Rogue
The wide, tapestry-lined corridor looming before me is intimidating for its openness. For having no alcove or deep shadow to hide in. Identical oak doors line both sides of the hall, intricately worked candleholders above each entrance casting overlapping shadows onto the elaborate red-and-gold carpet. At the very end of the corridor, the largest door belongs to River’s sleeping chambers, Headmaster Sage having apartments elsewhere in the keep. Despite River’s tendency to work late into the night, there is no light escaping from beneath the door. The male is either already asleep or in his study at the top of the tower.
I run my fingers along the engraved nameplates, making my way deeper into the forbidden den.Master Erik, history. Master Briar, mathematics.Coal is close. I can feel the male’s turmoil agitating my own.Master…My throat tightens.Master Han, Prowess Trials.I recoil from the sign, ending up on the other side of the hallway. Mercifully, Coal’s name catches my eye a heartbeat later.
Stopping before the door, I take a deep breath, trying to slow my racing heart enough to think. To give my sanity the benefit of one last chance before stepping forward. The scent of polished wood and melted candle wax fills my lungs, but brings no clarity with it.
Somewhere close, a cat trots along on soft feet—but otherwise, the hall is quiet as a crypt, the thick walls muffling the room’s sounds.
This is it. Now or never.
Turning the knob, I push on Coal’s door.
Nothing happens. Locked. Of course Coal would lock his door. Knocking it is—softly at first, then as loud as I dare in the hall. Although the surrounding stone entombs the rooms in silence, the sound still makes me jump.
Nothing.
A shiver runs through me, but I didn’t come here to turn away now. With a quick mental thank-you to Tye—who spent many evenings in Lunos trying to impart to me whatever skills River was least likely to approve of—I pull the pins out of my hair and get to work on the lock.
Iwillresolve something tonight, if it’s the last thing I do—and it very well may be.
Against the silence of my held breath, the soft click of the lock’s metal teeth is wonderfully crisp to my immortal hearing. Pin one of four gives obediently. Pin two. Pin—
The door swings open, Coal’s knife pressing into my throat before I even register his presence.
12
Lera
Idon’t dare move, not even to rise from the crouch I was in to work the lock.
Pulling the knife back, Coal jerks me into his room with a hot brush of metallic-scented air. His face is a storm as he closes the door behind me, and I stumble to reclaim my balance.
Beyond his half-dressed body, the room is an odd mix of heavy Academy splendor and the male’s personal attempt to turn every chamber he occupies into a makeshift armory. The carved mahogany four-poster bed has nothing but a rumpled blue sheet on it, the down cover and pillows having fallen—or been tossed—to the stone floor. A lit lantern in the corner wards off the worst of the dark, though Coal’s immortal eyes don’t require the extra light to see by. The top of the clothing chest is lined with sharpening stones and leather cleaner—and a bucket with hoof pick and curry comb, which still smell of the stable.
The strangest part—or perhaps not, given the room’s occupant—is the furniture arrangement. Everything, from the bed to the washstand, has been shifted over to create a patch of empty space. The rack of weaponry standing beside it offers all the explanation needed.
I rub my throat, my chest still too tight around my lungs. “You couldn’t hear me knocking, but you heard the lock being picked?”
“I heard you knocking,” says Coal. With his feet bare and a loose pair of cotton trousers hanging on his hips, the male looks deadly and beautiful enough to make any female damp—sling or no sling. His sculpted chest and torso gleam in the lantern light, his blond hair hanging loose around his shoulders. “I chose to ignore it.”
“Good to know you are a bastard at all hours of the day.”
Coal braces his good hand on the wall and looms over me, his chiseled face harshly beautiful. “If you are still upset because I opposed your suicide mission, whine to someone else. Shade is good for soothing whimpering. Tye may give you some sport for distraction as well.”
The last hits my chest and ripples outward. It takes me a few breaths to regain my equilibrium—to remember that I came here to call Coal out on his demons, not let him conjure up any of my own. “Your bloody nightmares are keeping me awake.”
Coal blinks.
Seizing the advantage of having the male off-balance, I step into his space, so close that the loose rabbit ears of his sling brush up against my tunic. “Chains, shackles, an evil being coming up behind you to do bad things.Thosenightmares. I’m tired of them keeping me awake half the night while you do nothing about them but brood in your room and get into fights.”
The flash of lightning in Coal’s blue eyes is at utter odds with the ice in his voice. “You want to talk about facing nightmares, Osprey? I’d be very careful what you wish for.”
The reasonable part of me hollers to heed Coal’s warning and get the hell away. Unfortunately, I’m too tired and upset and bloody overwhelmed to mind better reason. “Your threats and marching about like a feisty cock are getting old, Coal.” The truth, coiled and festering inside my chest, spills in an unfiltered torrent. Jabbing my finger into Coal’s injured arm, I snort when he gasps in pain. “If your head was where it belongs, Han would never have been able to break your arm. He’s good. But you are better. At least when your damn head is not so far up your ass that it would take three healers to extract it. And now, because of your stupidity, you can’t so much as have my back on patrols.”
I know I should stop, but I can’t. My breath quickens with every word, heat simmering in my blood. Even Coal’s metallic scent, tinged with a dangerous ire, isn’t enough to stop my words. “Everybody else might tiptoe around you, let you work through your past in your own damn time—but everybody else isn’t having to see the images of your torment night after night. I am. And I’m done with it. Done with the memories, done with the panic of knowing—knowing—you are ready to throw your life away. So you are going to talk, or meditate, or stare at a pair of shackles—I don’t care what you do, so long as you keep doing it until something works.”
I don’t see Coal move until his hand is already gripping the back of my neck, twisting me into the wall. I gasp, my cheek pressing against the hard plaster. Jabbing a knee into the back of my thighs, Coal efficiently pins me to the wall while he reaches for something on top of his clothing chest.
A moment later, the snap of a leather weapons belt in the air stops my heart.
