Gods & Thieves ✔

13. Faithful and Fearless

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The next couple of days is a blur.

I sleep, or stare at the ceiling, or pretend to sleep. I don't want to go anywhere, I don't want to think of anything, I'm not sure I want to fight for anything anymore. Because...what am I even fighting for here?

As though sensing my misery, Loretto comes and goes without saying a word, spending most of the daytime outside faer apartments, and quietly browsing books at the desk in the evenings. Or maybe fae just pretends that I don't exist. You can ignore a problem for a quite while, right? And I bring Loretto nothing but problems.

But, as weird as it might be, having a mentor doesn't seem like a problem to me now. Now, on the contrary, I feel strange serenity in Loretto's presence. In Loretto's even steps and undemanding glances. As though I've been shoved in a hurricane for a long time, and now I've finally got a chance to breathe, and Loretto is here to faithfully guard the peace and make sure the hurricane ain't coming back--after any of us.

On the third day, though, I ruin the peace. When I wake up to the sound of Loretto's footsteps crossing the living room behind my back as the shy sunlight begins to seep through the window, I make a mistake, saying, "Morning."

The footsteps stop. "It speaks? Aren't we waiting for when you turn into a pillow?"

Without opening my eyes, I throw my arm over my face. "We are."

"I don't want a talking pillow."

"Too bad you're stuck with one."

"Well, you'll get me unstuck, then." I hear as Loretto takes a deliberately nosy sip of faer coffee. "Once you get hungry."

"Hungry? But a waiter brought me food from the cafeteria yesterday and--" Turning my head to look at Loretto, I cut myself off as faer bare torso sharpens my sleepy mind in a blink. And not just the torso. My eyes drop to-- "You're naked!" Rather out of shock than courtesy, I squeeze my eyes shut. "Oh gods...Why are you naked?" Completely.

Loretto's voice sounds in no way abashed. "I like sleeping naked, and I drink my coffee naked every morning. Am I supposed to change my habits for you?"

Every morning? So I've been snoring beside this uncovered ass for two days by now, without noticing? This is a new sort of hurricane. I swallow my sudden impulse to look again. Just to make sure I haven't hallucinated it all. Nothing else, no. "A waiter brought me food yesterday and a day before that. I thought you ordered for me."

"I did. And I gave you space, leaving you to vegetate on my couch for two days. But don't you think that's enough for mourning the person you never even knew for real? Your own life hasn't ended, so get your lazy bones up, and do something to make the air spent for your breathing count." I can't take a hint of irritation in Loretto's tone seriously now. All I can do is keep suppressing that impulse to look, though Loretto doesn't seem to appreciate my modesty. "You still need to learn to control aura, Eli. The council won't leave me alone and let you go home until then or--until we're both dead. So. What do we do?"

You're going to get dressed, you whimsical, shameless shaman. But if I'm being honest, I don't know what to say. What do you do when you learn someone tried to kill you? What do you do when you learn they still want you dead? Or make me one of them. An aurablood. But that's impossible, I've no inborn talent, and even if I had, if I somehow found a spell or a potion, which I once heard rumors of, to temporarily turn the blood in my veins into aura and grant me powers, to trick Loretto and the empress...Plainblood who play with magic go mad. Besides, I'll betray my family by giving the empress what she wants and standing with the shamans--that's even worse.