The Witch With No Name. Ким Харрисон

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СКАЧАТЬ four of them on a good day, the girls playing happily and both Trent and Ellasbeth as loving, though not united, parents, a questioning guilt slid through me. Quen, too, seemed to regard Trent’s and my relationship as a phase tied to Trent’s newest preoccupation with furthering his magical studies. It was irksome, but every time Trent spoke of Ellasbeth and the girls, it left me wondering why I was delaying the inevitable.

      “Thank you, Jon,” Trent finally said, touching the tall, almost gaunt man on the shoulder as he gave him a grateful smile. “That makes my day a hundred times easier.”

      Contenting himself with a short nod and a dry look at me, Jonathan turned and went back the way they’d come. I knew the girls loved the man, but I liked him just as much as he liked me. Which was to say not at all.

      “Is Jonathan going gray?” I asked as Trent closed the few steps remaining between us.

      “I haven’t noticed. But that might be why he’s cutting it so short lately.” Trent stopped before me, worry creasing his features. “You could have slept upstairs. You did sleep, yes?”

      “A few hours.” I fell into step beside him when he gestured for us to continue down the hall past Ivy’s door. “I’m not a spare room kind of girl.”

      “It wouldn’t have been the spare room you would have been in,” he said, matching our steps and giving me a sideways hug. “Life is too short for bad coffee,” he said, taking my cup out of my hand and setting it on a table in the hall. “How’s Ivy?”

      “Okay, thanks to you,” I said, not wanting to talk about it. My arm went around him and my head fell onto his shoulder. Trent eased us to a halt and I pulled him to me, resting my head against his chest. The light scent of his aftershave was a bare hint, just enough, and my jaw finally began to relax. I could hear the sound of his waterfall downstairs, past the great room, and my eyes closed.

      The relief that he came to help me in the ever-after had almost hurt, even if he’d risked his life and an already failing reputation. There hadn’t been a wisp of regret in him, and I shoved the coming heartache down because even though he meshed with my life perfectly, I did not mesh with his.

      Trent had been moving toward bringing his people back from the brink of extinction his entire life. The path had been laid out. He’d willingly sacrificed for it—and he would again. The ugly truth was, I couldn’t help him accomplish what he needed to do, I could only hinder it. That was why Jonathan disliked me and Quen disapproved even as he agreed that this was the happiest Trent had ever been despite his dwindling fortune and the lawsuits piling up like cordwood. Trent was all about duty—and I was dragging him down.

      “You okay?” he asked, and I tilted my head and turned the hug into a brief kiss.

      “Yes.” I dropped my head again, needing to feel him next to me if only for this space of time. “I don’t like leaving her in that ugly white bed.”

      “It’s going to be okay.” His voice rumbled up through me.

      I didn’t want to move. Ever. “I don’t know what I would have done if she had—”

      I couldn’t even say it, and my eyes warmed as the tears spilled over.

      His grip strengthened, and I blinked up at him, feeling like a wimp. “But she didn’t,” he said firmly, understanding in his eyes. “You did good. You got her out of immediate danger, and more important, gave her a place to meet her future with dignity and peace. If she had died, she would’ve done so with the person she loved most in the world with her. No one can ask for more than that, even kings.”

      How could he understand so clearly? “When you put it like that …” I sniffed back the tears, letting go of him to wipe my eyes. “Sorry,” I said with a sad little laugh that really wasn’t one. “I haven’t gotten enough sleep. I don’t know how you do it, getting up at daybreak like this. This is crazy.”

      He eased me back into motion, heading down the hallway. “Coffee helps. Have you found the staff break room? There’s a mini kitchen. Frozen waffles …,” he coaxed.

      I remembered the homemade ones Maggie had made for us. It had been the first meal we’d ever shared. “Sure, thanks.” His hand lingered about my waist, and I dropped my head onto his shoulder again, breathing him in, gaining his strength. I wished things were different. Ivy was going to be okay, but that Trent had saved her life wasn’t going to help his political standing. Keeping her alive was going to be even harder. Cormel didn’t want money, he wanted his soul.

      The click of Ivy’s door brought me around, and we hesitated when Nina came out looking exhausted and rumpled—worse than the day after she and Ivy had come back from a five-day backpacking adventure in what was left of a Turn-ravaged Guam.

      “Coffee?” the bedraggled woman rasped, her hair still dull with dust and hanging in strands about her creased, worried face. The scratch the surface demon had given her was red rimmed and swollen, looking worse than it probably was.

      “And waffles.” Trent gestured for her to join us. “Right this way.”

      Relief flickered across her face. “Thank you,” she whispered, shuffling forward in her torn nylons. She hadn’t even taken the time for a shower, and was still in the same clothes she’d had on in the ever-after. The faint scent of burnt amber lingered even now. Her clothes were a monochromatic orange from the dust, and guilt kept her head down. That was fine with me.

      “We keep this stocked for the medical staff,” Trent was saying as we found the comfortable, if somewhat sterile, break room, open to the hallway. “I’m assuming that you’d rather eat here than upstairs?”

      I nodded as I took in the clean counters, homey tables, and fresh flowers in vases still beaded up with condensation. Four monitors hung from the ceiling, three dark and one lit with Ivy’s vitals. An entire wall was taken up with one of those floor-to-ceiling vid screens showing a deck and a garden, and I collapsed at a table, thankful for the small comfort.

      Nina took a chair across from me, easing down with a little more grace and a cautious glance. There were dirty dishes in the sink from the doctor and nurse on call. I’d put them in the dishwasher later.

      I loved watching a man cook, even if it was only toast, and I collapsed my head onto the cradle my arms made on the table, exhausted, as Trent took waffles out of the tiny freezer in the top of the fridge. “If you want to come upstairs, I can make them from scratch,” he said as the door sealed with a sucking sound. “The girls are at the stables with Quen. I thought it better to keep them occupied out of the, ah, house.”

      “Frozen is good.” I smiled as he ripped the box open, letting my head hit the table as the toaster went down. I liked the girls, but Lucy, especially, was inquisitive to the point of exhaustion.

      “I never thought I’d ever eat anything out of a box from the freezer,” Trent said, his voice distant in thought, “but the girls want everything now, and frankly, these aren’t half bad.”

      My breath was coming back stale from the table. It sounded as if he was in the fridge again, and curious, I pulled my head up as he set butter and cold maple syrup on the counter. Nina had fallen asleep in the chair, her head lolling back and her breath even.

      I had said I wasn’t going to tell Ivy, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that Felix had been dipping into her Nina as if she were his personal thirty-one-flavor shop. My anger was a slow, steady burn for the lie she was СКАЧАТЬ