“Very well.” Lake slid his arms under me and lifted me from the pallet. “After you.”
Rowan pulled his pants back on, leaving his shirt off, and gathered the pillows and blankets. Lake then followed him into the cave with me tucked against his chest. My earlier drowsiness returned full force, and by the time they made up the mat and placed me down, my lids were too heavy to keep open.
A fire burned beside us, the flames not too high but enough to keep us warm. The tiny pops and crackle along the logs soothed me, sending me even more into sleep’s clutches.
“Good night, my human,” Lake murmured into my hair. “May only sweet dreams find you.”
The scent of black cardamom strengthened as Rowan pressed closer. “Happy Solstice, little treasure.”
And then, I slept.
For a few hours anyway.
Sometime in the middle of the night, my bladder woke me with a vengeance. Probably all that damn wine. Carefully, I unwound from their arms and sat up, slipping on my boots. The ground was too cold to walk barefoot. I also dreaded stepping on a creepy bug or something equally as horrifying.
Like Herbert’s demented brethren, their nasty little bodies scuttling across the grass, just waiting to sink their pinchers into my toes.
“He’ll even eat flesh. If he’s hungry enough.”
No, thanks. That would be a hard pass.
Boots on and wearing Rowan’s cloak, I tiptoed from the cave as quietly as possible. Miracle of miracles, I didn’t trip. A small mercy because the force of a fall would’ve made me piss myself. Once outside, the moon was so bright it lit up the small valley and surrounding mountains, allowing me to find a path. The crisp air helped wake me up as I walked a good distance from the cave and did my business.
And it was then, as I was at the waterfall washing off my hands, that I saw a blue glow coming from within the woods. It pulsed bright, then faded. A second later, it appeared again.
Reason told me to ignore it. Whatever it was probably wanted to eat me. But my curiosity got the better of me, as it so often did, and I stepped toward the tree line. Toward the strange blue light.
It wasn’t until I was in the woods that I recalled folklore about flickering blue flames that appeared in the dead of night to lure travelers to their deaths. The flames were thought to be mischievous ghosts or even faeries.
“Please don’t be evil, little light,” I muttered, stepping over a fallen log and landing unsteadily on the other side of it.
The light appeared again, pulsing for a second or two, then fading. Closer I crept until reaching a break in the trees. A small clearing waited beyond it, and moonlight flooded the area, brighter than it’d been near the cave. The blue light appeared again. Luckily, the source wasn’t a ghost or faerie.
It was a man.
I stayed hidden in the tree line as I watched him.
Dressed in black, he stood beside a trickling stream and held a book. Something about him was familiar, but with his back to me, I couldn’t see his face. Glass vials had been placed on a log,and as he flicked his hand, blue light flowed from his fingertips and into one of them.
A mage?
As I inched closer to get a better look, a twig snapped beneath my boot. I froze. The man didn’t react to the sound. Maybe he was too focused and didn’t hear it. I released a shaky breath and kept watching him.
He stepped over to the log and checked the glass vials. “Spying is extremely rude, you know.”
My heart rate spiked.Shit.What if he was some dangerous wizard who’d suck out my soul with the creepy blue light, place it in one of those vials, and sell it to the highest bidder? Or sacrifice me? I sprinted back the way I’d come, deciding to make a run for it.
The man snapped his fingers. A gust of wind slammed into me from the direction I’d been heading, blocking my escape and sending me shuffling backward, out of the woods and into the clearing.
Cover blown and totally exposed out in the open, I racked my brain for a way out of this that didn’t result in me crammed into a little jar or vial, slapped with a label that read,Essence of Muffin.
“Evan?”
My soon-to-be-murderer knew my name? Steeling my nerves, I faced the man. Dark blond hair, average build, and pleasant features. “Xavier?”
He was the man I’d met in the guild hall shortly after arriving in Exalos. A professor from the nearby magical academy.
“What brings you to the mountains at this hour?” he asked, tone light and curious.
