LITMIR.BIZ

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over and sat down next to him on the fallen log. They were almost close enough to touch, but the air between them might as well have been a granite wall. “Tamani?”

      He turned to face her, but said nothing.

      Not sure whether it was a mistake, Laurel smiled and leaned forward, circling her arms round his neck. “Hello,” she said, her lips near his ear.

      He wrapped his arms round her, returning her greeting. She started to pull back, but he held on tighter, his hands begging her to stay. She didn’t fight it – realised she didn’t want to. After a few more seconds, he released her, but it was with obvious reluctance. “Hi,” he said quietly.

      She looked up into his light green eyes and was disappointed to realise that the colour still bothered her. They weren’t different, really; they were still his eyes. But she found the new colour irrationally disturbing.

      “Listen,” Tamani said slowly. “I’m sorry this was all such a surprise for you.”

      “You could have told me.”

      “And what would you have said?” he asked.

      Laurel started to say something, then closed her mouth and instead smiled guiltily.

      “You’d have told me not to come, right?” Tamani pressed.

      Laurel just raised one eyebrow.

      “So I couldn’t tell you,” he said with a shrug.

      Laurel reached down, plucked a small fern, and began tearing it to pieces. “Where have you been?” she asked. “Shar wouldn’t say.”

      “Mostly in Scotland, like I said in class.”

      “Why?”

      It was his turn to look guilty. “Training.”

      “Training for what?”

      “To come here.”

      “The whole time?” Laurel said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

      Tamani nodded.

      Laurel tried to push away the hurt that instantly filled her chest. “You knew this whole time that you were coming back and you still left without saying goodbye?” She expected him to look ashamed, or at least apologetic, but he didn’t. He met her eyes without blinking.

      “As opposed to waiting for you to come and tell me in person that you were choosing David instead of me and wouldn’t be coming round any more?”

      She looked away, guilt crowding out her hurt feelings.

      “How would that have done me any good? You’d have felt better – heroic even – and I’d have looked like a fool going off to the other side of the world to play scorned lover.” He paused, taking a bite of the nectarine and chewing thoughtfully for a moment. “Instead, you had to feel the weight of your choices and I got to keep some of my pride. Just a touch,” he added, “since, regardless, I still had to go off to the other side of the world and play scorned lover. I think my mother would say, ‘Same fruit, different bough.’”

      Laurel wasn’t sure she grasped the idiom. Even after two summers in Avalon, faerie culture mostly eluded her. But she got the gist of it.

      “What’s done is done,” Tamani said, polishing off the nectarine, “and I suggest we don’t dwell on it.” He concentrated for a second before throwing the pit hard at the trees.

      A quiet grunt sounded. “Hecate’s eye, Tamani! Was that really necessary?”

      Tamani grinned as a tall sentry with closely cropped hair materialised from between the trees, rubbing his arm. “You were spying,” Tamani said, his tone light.

      “I tried to give you some space, but you did ask me to meet you here.”

      Tamani spread his hands wide in defeat. “Touché. Who else is coming?”

      “The others are watching the house; there’s no reason for them to join us.”

      “Great,” Tamani said, sitting up straighter. “Laurel, have you met Aaron?”

      “Several times,” Laurel said, smiling her greeting. “Several” was probably stretching it, but she was fairly certain they had met once or twice. Last winter she had tried to go out and talk with the sentries – make friends. But they always simply bowed at the waist, which she despised, and said nothing. Still, Aaron looked familiar.

      More importantly, he didn’t correct her. He just nodded – so deeply it was almost a bow – then turned back to Tamani.

      “I’m not here as a regular sentry,” Tamani began, looking at Laurel. “I’m here to be what I was always supposed to be: Fear-gleidhidh.”

      It took Laurel a moment to remember the word. Last fall, Tamani had told her it meant “escort”, and it resembled a word the Winter faeries used for their bodyguards. But it was somehow more. . . personal.

      “We had too many close calls last year,” Tamani continued. “It’s hard for us to watch you while you’re at school, or protect you well in crowded places. So I went to the Manor for some advanced training. I can’t blend in with humans as well as you do, but I can blend in well enough to stay close no matter what.”

      “Is that really necessary?” Laurel interjected.

      Both fae turned to look at her blankly.

      “There hasn’t been any sign of trolls – or anything else – for months.”

      A look passed between the two sentries and Laurel felt a stab of fear as she realised there was something they hadn’t told her. “That’s not. . . exactly true,” Aaron said.

      “They’ve seen signs of trolls,” Tamani said, sitting back down on the fallen log. “Just no actual trolls.”

      “Is that bad?” Laurel asked, still thinking that not seeing trolls – for any reason – was a good thing.

      “Very,” Tamani said. “We’ve seen footprints, bloody animal corpses, even an occasional fire pit. But the sentries here are using everything they use at the gates – tracking serums, presence traps – and none of them are registering a troll presence at all. Our tried-and-true methods simply aren’t finding the trolls we know are here somewhere.”

      “Couldn’t they be. . . old signs? Like, from last year?” Laurel asked.

      Aaron started to say something, but Tamani spoke over him. “Trust me, they’re new.”

      Laurel felt a little sick to her stomach. She probably didn’t want to know what Aaron had been about to say.

      “But I would have come regardless,” Tamani continued. “Even before you told Shar about the lighthouse, Jamison wanted to send me to find out more about Barnes’s horde,” Tamani said. “His death gave us some peace, but a troll like him would have lieutenants, or commanders. I think it’s safe to assume this is merely the calm before the storm.”

      Fear was gnawing at her insides now. It was a feeling Laurel had grown used to living without and she wasn’t happy with its sudden return.

      “You also gave Klea four sleeping trolls, and it’s probably too much to hope that they simply woke up, killed her, and got on with their lives. It’s possible she interrogated them and found out about you, maybe about the gate.”

      Laurel snapped to attention, feeling panicked. “Interrogated? The way she talked, I figured she would just. . . kill them. Dissect them. I didn’t even—”

      “It’s OK,” Tamani said. “You did the best you knew how, under the circumstances. You’re not a sentry. Maybe Klea did kill them outright; trying to interrogate them would be suicidal for most humans. And we don’t know how much Barnes told his lackeys, either. Still, we have to prepare for the worst. If these troll hunters decide to become faerie

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