Page 40 of Guardian of Exile

As she reached Valerie, she pasted on what she hoped looked like a nervous, apologetic smile. “Sorry about that. She’s…”

“Overprotective?” Valerie offered. “Big sisters usually are.”

“You have one?”

“I am one.” She held out a plain black ring that gave a faint buzz of magic. “Put this on and follow me.”

If Nyx and the others hadn’t already clocked the misdirection spell, she would have been hesitant about putting on a ring of unknown magical origin, but recognizing it for the tether it was, she put it on and walked with Valerie down the path. The ring, as much as Valerie grabbing her arm and dragging her, pulled her off the path into the woods.

The air shimmered a little as they stepped over the threshold of the misdirection spell. The space it contained was small, and she almost walked right into Tristen Veld in the crossing. She saw his face, and it was as if time reversed for a moment in the cruelest of ways. Black hair. Brown skin. Brown eyes. The same slightly crooked nose and full lips. The similarities were so stark that for a moment, she didn’t see a stranger. She saw Seth.

When she’d seen that boy’s photo in the newspaper, she hadn’t been imagining the resemblance to Seth as a child. She was absolutely certain now that Clay Gales was Tristen Veld.

Her eyes locked with his and the expression was so different from Seth’s—so wrong—that the illusion shattered. She didn’t know what her own expression was—horror? pain? loss?—but whatever it was made Tristen’s go cold.

“It’s rude to stare, and I don’t much care to help people who do.”

Her eyes finally left his face, and she understood where Tristen clearly thought her horror came from—his right hand was missing the ring and index fingers, and his left leg ended in a prosthetic.

“I wasn’t⁠—”

“Save it.” His eyes narrowed and he grabbed her wrist with his right hand, a punch of magic flaring through her. If she’d thought his gaze was hard before, it could have cut stone now. “You shouldn’t be here. There’s nothing wrong with you to fix.”

“What?” Valerie said sharply.

“I do need you to fix something,” Nyx said, ignoring Valerie and meeting his stare again. “I need Tristen Veld to fix something.”

His response was instantaneous. Power surged from him, and if she hadn’t already found A-Queltr, her heart wouldn’t still be beating. Instead of killing her, his magic hit a wall of death and sputtered out.

She had practiced what she was going to say if she got this response, which was the one she’d more or less expected. What she’d been going to say, was: I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk. But it turned out she really didn’t like having someone who looked like her dead lover decide to kill her on sight. So what she said was: “That was really fucking rude.”

Another pulse of magic crashed against the endless ocean of A-Queltr.

“Keep going,” she told him. “How many people have you healed tonight? I’m willing to bet you’re nearly tapped out, and I could do this all night.” She couldn’t hold A-Queltr and her physical body at the same time for that long, but he didn’t need to know that. But she was betting that she’d been the last person he’d intended to heal tonight, since neither of Valerie’s companions had returned after leading away the last two people Tristen had healed, which meant his magic reservoir should be low.

Before he could respond, Valerie did. “I trusted you.” Her hand lashed out—whether to strike Nyx, or only to haul her away from Tristen, Nyx didn’t know—but he grabbed the woman’s wrist before it could make contact.

“Don’t touch her,” he said tersely.

Shock lit Valerie’s face. “Why are you protecting her? She’s a liar. She’s⁠—”

“He isn’t protecting me,” Nyx cut in. “He’s protecting you.”

Valerie laughed. “You think you could take me?”

That right there told Nyx that Valerie wasn’t sensitive enough to feel either of their magic at work. It also told her Tristen had never killed anyone in front of her before. How best to make a statement to a Dead Earther? Nyx dropped the Hiding covering Alihana and Veritas.

“Valerie,” Tristen said calmly, “I don’t need anything else tonight.”

“I’m not leaving you here with⁠—”

His fingers, still holding Valerie’s wrist, slid down and tugged off the tethering ring she wore. Hurt slashed across her face as it came free, but she was clearly devoted to him, because she managed to say, “She has three people with her on the other side of the bridge,” before her eyes glazed over and she stumbled away, outside of the bounds of the misdirection spell.

Left alone, Nyx and Tristen studied each other in turn. He hadn’t let go of her wrist. His power still coiled within him with lethal intent, and she should be thinking about the fact that that meant he could try to kill her again at any moment. But she was too distracted by the abnormality of being touched at all to feel much in danger. Had, in fact, to fight the urge to relax, which set little alarm bells to ringing in the back of her mind, and brought her back to the reality of what her purpose here was.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” she told him. “Or kidnap you, or blackmail you into doing something, or any of the other things you’re probably thinking.”

“And the three others Valerie mentioned? What are they here for? Moral support?”