Page 208 of The Poison Daughter
“This isn’t the kind of gift I want people to know she has.” I take a step closer and lower my voice. “There are ceremonial things I will give her for everyone else. But these blades are for her to defend herself from people who might not be expecting her to be able to. I know you’ve taught her a lot. I want to be sure I’ve picked something she can work with.”
I don’t wait to see if that satisfies him. I just keep walking around the building until finally we reach the holding cells. He doesn’t say anything, but I can read his discomfort as we approach the building.
“No Drained in here this time. No one has been in here since that night, so I figure it was a good place to hide them for now and probably the one place in the whole fort where I’m certain she won’t go looking for something.”
Gaven huffs a laugh. “Pray to the Divine she’s learned her lesson about poking around this building.”
I unlock the heavy metal door, and it groans open. Bryce and Carter aren’t here yet, but they will be soon.
The air inside the building is stale and musty. Afternoon light pours in through the windows on the second floor, highlighting swirling dustmotes. He steps past me into the room, his focus entirely on the spot where he killed the Drained the other night.
I don’t know how he knows. Maybe it’s some old fighter’s instinct or just the finely tuned intuition of a man who has been vigilant for so long, but the second I close the door behind Gaven, he spins on me. He draws his dagger, and I feel the prickle of him summoning his magic.
His face morphs from confusion to frustration as he meets my eye.
“Your magic won’t work on me,” I say. “I’m not a danger to Harlow. I’m only a danger to you.”
This is not how I wanted to do this. I know better than to stand between a bodyguard and their charge. I wanted to incapacitate him with the poison blades I had made for Harlow, so we could question him, but that plan is out the window. Now he’s not just fighting for his life. He thinks he’s fighting for hers, too.
Gaven comes at me hard, and he’s better than I expected. I’ve never seen a man his age move with such lethal precision. A sharp sting in my bicep focuses my attention. I didn’t even realize he had two blades until he cut me with that one. Divine know what else he has on him.
If I were anyone else, even a Breeder, his skill and efficiency would be enough. But I have met death many times before and won’t meet it again, at least not from anything in this fight. Not when use of his holy fire requires a threat to Harlow.
I’m younger, faster, and my senses are more attuned than Gaven’s, but it’s the best fight I’ve had in a long time. It takes almost twenty minutes for me to catch him with a blade between his ribs. He stumbles back a step, blood pouring from the wound. He takes a step, but his leg buckles and he goes down on one knee.
I’m going to have to heal him enough to get information, but this will at least slow him down.
“Had enough for now?” I ask.
“That’s a death blow,” he says, panting.
There’s both shock and resignation in his eyes. His salt-and-pepper hair is plastered to his forehead and his usually perfectly pressed shirt, soaked with sweat and blood, sticks to his skin.
“Not for a healer.”
I step forward and rip the blades from his stunned hands, tossing them aside. Then I press my hand to his side and summon my healingmagic. It prickles at the edge of my blood-slicked palm, but when I try to weave it into the wound like I have for so many people before, nothing happens. It hovers just over his skin, never quite settling in.
“It won’t work,” he laughs, spitting blood onto the dirt.
“What won’t?”
“Your magic.”
Dread spreads through my blood. “Why?”
“It’s the reason I was hired,” Gaven says. “Surely you looked at me and wondered why Harrick would let me protect her when my only blessing is borrowed.”
My mouth goes dry, my stomach bottoming out at the realization of how badly I’ve miscalculated.
“If you were planning to torture me for information, boy, you’ll be disappointed,” Gaven says. “You won’t be able to magically patch me up and break me down again. I’m impervious to Divine blessings.”
This is why Gaven Pomeroy protects the youngest Carrenwell daughter. He has no Divine gifts, only the borrowed use of holy fire to protect his charge. What he does have is the extremely rare talent of being impervious to Divine magic. I didn’t even know it was possible until now. I want to deny it, but it makes so much sense.
I curse and run to the cabinets on the far side of the room in search of something to stop the bleeding. The last cabinet on the right has some old linen sheets, and I race back to Gaven with them. He’s already on the floor. One hand pressed to his side, his mouth moving in silent prayer.
Pressing the linen to his side, I meet his grave face.
“Why were you poking around the recovery room?” I ask.
