She protected the Toral.
That was interesting.
With as powerful as he’d seen the Toral, this Eva still protected her?
Gavin moved past and pushed open the door. As soon as he did, Imogen brought her sword toward him. He reacted by sending a burst of his core reserves out and caught the blade with his bare hands, the power somehow pushed out from his hands and protecting him.
Imogen looked at him, and he looked at his hands. There was just a hair’s width between his hand and her blade. And that was with him pushing as much power out of him as he could.
He offered a hint of a smile at Imogen. “I brought some visitors.”
He stepped inside. Wrenlow hurried over to the table with Olivia and sat down next to her. He leaned forward and whispered to her, nodding to the Toral and Eva.
“What are you doing, boy?” Gaspar said, getting to his feet and flourishing his knives.
“They could have attacked at any point, but they didn’t,” Gavin said.
“You just led them here?”
“To talk. It sounds like she was hired by Cyran.”
The Toral stopped, frowning deeply at Gavin. “No. Not Cyran,” the Toral said. “Ceran.”
“Well, Cyran is a powerful sorcerer. Is that what your Ceran is?”
She frowned, wrinkling her brow. “I don’t know. Perhaps a sorcerer, but a Sul’toral regardless.”
Gavin’s eyes widened. Sul’toral. That was a word he’d only heard in passing from Zella. A powerful sorcerer.
“That’s who you serve,” Gavin said.
She nodded.
He looked over to Gaspar and shook his head. “That’s not Cyran.”
“No,” Gaspar agreed. “Regardless of what power your friend has, I don’t think he’s anything like that.”
Otherwise, Gavin wouldn’t have been able to stop him. Cyran had been challenging, but he had not been so challenging that Gavin hadn’t been able to defeat him. And if he was a Sul’toral, Gavin would’ve expected that he wouldn’t have been able to.
The Toral looked around the tavern, her gaze lingering on each person, and Gavin had the distinct sense that she was using some form of magic he couldn’t see. He couldn’t feel anything either, which comforted him, though only marginally so. He had no idea how much power she had and whether she could use it against them without him detecting anything. At this point, the only thing he knew was that he was no longer convinced she was the one responsible for everything that had happened to him.
“Take a seat,” Gavin said, motioning to the table.
She looked over to Eva before sitting.
Eva had scooped a mug of ale off one table and took a sip.
There was no smoke swirling around her, though he wondered when that would change. She drank the ale quickly, something in her seeming to relax.
It made Gavin relax with her.
That was one to watch.
She was powerful, though he didn’t know how.
“You obviously have the wrong impression of me, and I obviously have the wrong impression of you,” she said. “And I think we need to rectify that.”
Through the enchantment, he could hear Gaspar’s voice whispering, “What makes you think you have the wrong impression of her?”
Gavin twisted and made a point of putting part of his back up against the Toral, a marker of faith she wasn’t going to hurt him.
Despite that, he still held on to his core reserves, which were diminishing gradually after as much power as he had already summoned. “Because of Char, the sorcerer who helped you,” Gavin called over the distance.
She frowned as he turned back to her.
Gavin shrugged. “Your friend was reluctant to tell me anything about you.”
“Char would not share anything about me. Not with you.”
“Other than to say he didn’t think you would harm my friends.”
“I would not,” she said.
“He thought enough of you that it made me start questioning everything,” Gavin said.
And that was the part that he had to come to terms with. He had to figure out what was going on here and what his role was in all this.
“You said that you’re here for an item of dark power. Your Ceran must have told you about the dark egg, didn’t he?”
“Egg?” She frowned and shared a look with Eva. “You’ve said that before. That’s where I’m confused, and I’m rarely confused.” Eva snorted and the Toral looked over to her. “But I don’t know anything about an egg. What I’m after is something different—and dangerous for most who come upon them.”
“And that is?”
She shared a look with Eva, then turned her attention back to Gavin. She rested her hands on the table. Her fists were balled up, and she held his gaze with a dark intensity. “I thought you knew and were hiding it from me.”
“I’ve been trying to figure out what you’ve been after since I first met you. If it’s not the dark egg”—and Gavin suspected he’d have to explain what that was now that she knew about it—“what are you after?”
“The t’ranth. It’s the Toral ring you have.”
Chapter Twenty-One
It was all about a ring?
That was what she’d been after?
Not the dark egg as he’d feared.
At least it’s protected. The enchanters need it to keep the city safe from the Fates.
If something were to happen to him, he’d want them to have it, if only as a deterrent.
Gavin looked across the table at her, and he tried to figure out what he was going to say. He’d been hired to retrieve a Toral ring years ago and had failed, but he wasn’t sure she would even believe him. It would take far more explanation than what he thought he could share with her.
Gavin forced a calm smile, holding her gaze. “I don’t have a Toral ring. I have dealt with several different sorcerers around here, but none are Toral.”
“That is not what we understand,” she said. “And it’s not what I have detected.”
“I don’t care what you understand. I am telling you what is true.”
She cocked her head to the side, and Eva leaned close. A trail of smoke came from her mouth and drifted to the Toral
