I sink deeper into the chair and pull my arms in with me. “No, I can deal with it.”
He smirks with a naughty boy flare, but it’s a grateful expression. “Nonetheless, I can see what this ordeal has cost you.”
See or feel? I can’t help but wonder. “But you had a reason.” There go my dryad sensibilities. We’re always the ones to pay a price for helping, but it never stops us.
“You know how shadow demons work?”
I know the agony part well. “I was told they collect pain, then release it when they have to.”
“Do you know why there are shadow demons?”
I go off the book I read last night. “According to history, shadow demons started off kinda like dryads did.”
“How so?”
I shrug. “We both collect the pain of the world, keep negotiations from becoming hostile, keep the peace and don’t let deep hurts fester.”
“Yes.” Riven stares at the fire, and I wonder if he’s saying yes to me or Cackus.
“But,” I go on, supplying my own theory. “We have to disburse that pain in the hopes that the goddess will absorb it instead of releasing it back into the world.”
Riven straightens, eyes piercing. “Who told you that part about the goddess?”
My smile stretches. “That’s my deduction, owing to my experience and what I’ve read.” I’m not a top student for nothing.
Riven nods. “There’s more hate in the world. More than ever.” His intense gaze twists my stomach. A man on a mission. While it’s inappropriate to think my headmaster sexy as all get out, the thought flitters through my mind anyway. Can sex negate his pain? It must, if holding Harlow’s hand is a relief for him. And it looked like it was…
“Believe me, Everly, more pain means more hate. I should know.” He says, as if he’s trying to convince me.
Right. Hate. Not love or sex. But I know what Riven is going through, goes through every day, every moment. It’s within my soul to try and keep him from suffering.
“Okay.” I lean forward, urging him to continue. “Why am I here?”
He nods and studies me with narrowed but inquisitive eyes. “You’re the top of your class. True Seeing, Augury, Clairvoyance, Guidance, Identify, Foresight, Scrying, Find Traps…” He says the talents as if reading off my dossier. “You’re well versed in all of them… and probably many others.”
He’s not wrong.
“You forgot Beast Sense, both Commune branches and all the Detect talents.”
Riven bobs his head. “Yes…”
“So?”
“So, I need all of your abilities. You, Everly, I need you. Here.”
His words make my heart flip in several ways. He appeals to me as a dryad and as a woman. “And hopefully you’ll tell me why anytime now.”
“You have the impatience of a gifted student, too,” Riven chortles. “But that serves me as well.” He sobers, leans forward, and sets his elbows on his knees. “Something is coming, I can feel it. And it’s something big, something ugly. I believe it’s going to separate us.”
“Us?”
“Yes, I believe it will start in Dread but then it will spread. I believe whatever this thing is, it’s leading to war.”
He watches me, letting his words sink in.
I shrug. “I believe you.”
When his slow, relieved sigh comes, I realize he realizes I trust him.
“Those I tell either wave me off or maybe they have a vested interest in that war.”
“Why won’t they listen to you?”
“Because a shadow demon is a cycle of agony. Giving it, receiving it. Most would say the added pain is just a side effect from my release, the guilt I feel unleashing the miasma.” His brows are pinched.
I can’t help it but there’s something about him that… turns me on. Something about his heroic stance in all of this that makes me admire him, yes, but it’s more than that. I feel… drawn to him, but sexually.
A single eyebrow lifts into his sexy forehead and I’m suddenly afraid he’s able to read my reaction to him. His eyelids close at half-mast and he finally smiles with teeth.
“Sexual frustration is its own torture. Pain, you could say.”
Oh goddess. I’m mortified. He’s totally picking up on the vibes I’m obviously releasing. “I’m sorry.” I pull into the chair, hiding my face behind my hands. “How can you even feel that with everything else going in?” Oh, goddess, please stop me.
“Compartmentalization.”
I face the embarrassment head-on and drop my hands. “You can separate the types of pain?”
He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “I’m sure you were able to deduce that sex is one of the things that can relieve me. It’s only natural a dryad would want to… help.”
Riven is giving me an “out,” explaining away the reason for my mind swimming in the gutter. But that isn’t fair to him. “Well, let’s be honest here…”
“Yes, let’s….”
I clear my throat and then swallow hard. “You’re extremely attractive,” I say. “You and the count and Harlow…” I laugh as my voice fades.
His eyes grow the size of dish plates. “You can see his face? Jean-Claude’s?”
“Yep.” I grin.
“How does he look?”
I hesitate. There’s a reason the count has a veil, and I feel uncomfortable exposing him. Even saying I see through his magic is borderline invasion of privacy.
“I mean…” Riven amends. “Is there anything out of the ordinary about him? Nothing like a disfigurement, but a… a wrongness, or…ahh… ahhh…” Riven rubs his forehead.
I gasp.
Yes. The second face. When Jean-Claude showed me the garden, it was like a different person revealing himself to me. I’d
