And, ever so slightly, frightened of it.
Or maybe frightening wasn’t the right word to describe the way the hairs stood upright at the back of my neck, the shiver that ran up my spine. It was more that something had changed in the way I saw him, a mismatch between what I had thought he was and what I was witnessing now.
Atrius’s eyes opened. Looked right at me. For a split second, we were both frozen there in our sudden awareness of each other. Then, in a movement so swift and oddly graceful it seemed instantaneous, he was standing, the stag twitching on the ground at his feet.
Blood ran down his chin and covered his bare chest, stark against the cold pale of his skin under the moonlight.
“What are you doing here?” He was, as always, soft-spoken, but his voice was a little hot with the anger that flickered at the center of his presence—quickly tamped down.
“Walking,” I said.
He wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, though the attempt mostly just smeared it across his face.
“Go back to your tent,” he said.
“Why? When everyone else seems to be celebrating?” I tilted my head, pointedly, at the stag. “Feasting?”
“Exactly why you should be away.” His eyes narrowed, as if in realization. “Erekkus left you alone?”
Oh, Erekkus was going to be in trouble.
I took a step closer, curious, and Atrius lurched backwards so abruptly that he nearly tripped over a cluster of rocks, as if frantic to get away from me.
That made me pause.
He collected himself fast, so fast that maybe someone else might have dismissed it, but I saw that… that fear. Not of me, exactly. Not quite.
I observed him closely, reaching for the presence he kept so carefully guarded. His chest rose and fell heavily. Nose twitched.
Hunger. He was hungry.
“Go back to your tent,” he said. “Stay there until morning.”
“What’s happening tonight? Is this a… festival? Ritual?”
He let out an almost-laugh. “Ritual. No, only your kind do rituals.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a festival in the House of Blood, to celebrate the birth of our kingdom. It takes place every five years, under the waxing moon closest to the spring equinox.”
“Every five years,” I remarked. “Must be special, then.” After a moment of thought, I added, “Maybe not, considering how many years your kind have in a lifetime.”
“It is special,” he snapped. “And they—”
He cast an unreadable glance back to the camp—the bonfire, and his warriors surrounding it. His throat bobbed, then he turned back to me. He wiped his mouth again, seeming to realize all at once how he looked—half naked, blood-covered.
“Go back to your tent,” he repeated. “That’s an order.”
An order? He said those words to me with such casual authority. I bristled at them without meaning to, being reminded far too clearly of the last time they were thrown at me—the night I came so close to killing the man who stood before me now.
I bowed my head, mostly hiding the sarcasm in the movement. “Very well, commander. I’ll leave you to your…” I tipped my chin, motioning to the stag corpse on the ground, my eyebrow twitching. “…meal.”
I turned away. He watched me go, unmoving. Weaver, he was capable of being so very… still. Not just his body, but his presence, too. His inner self. I sensed that something thrashed beneath the surface of that calm, like a beast that did not so much as ripple the glass surface of the water, but I couldn’t even begin to reach into those shadows.
“Beware that curiosity, seer,” he called after me. “It’s a dangerous thing.”
I paused, turned back. Smiled at him.
And there it was—just a hint. A single wisp of smoke against the impenetrable velvet-black of his presence:
A glint of interest.
Careful, commander.
I smiled at him. “So it is,” I said, and continued on my way.
I had every intention of obeying Atrius’s command—though I admit I chafed at it a bit, on principle. But I also liked staying alive, and his advice to stay away from his horde of vampire warriors on a night dedicated to drunken, delirious feasting seemed objectively wise.
I was, however, going to take a quick detour.
I wouldn’t have much time now that Atrius had caught me, and I was convinced that he would certainly have Erekkus guarding me during the daytime, so I had to be fast. I had spotted a pond not far from here when we arrived in this area—actually, it seemed more like a collection of murky standing water collected from a rainstorm, but I’d take what I could get. I could reach the Arachessen through stone if I had to, but that was a much more stubborn, unworkable element, and I’d never quite mastered it the way many of my Sisters had. The Keep was designed to sit at an apex of several powerful collections of threads throughout Glaea, stringing across key elements throughout the country. This way, a Sister could communicate with the Keep from virtually anywhere, so long as those veins of energy ran there.