My quick-churning mind strikes upon a thought that makes my throat clog with panic.
“What?” Penn asks, taking a sudden step toward me. Reading the terror plainly on my face. “What is it?”
“If he hunts halflings for mere traces of power…what would happen if he got his hands on a Remnant?”
Penn’s eyes are hard, as is his voice. “We are never going to find out.”
“But he—his men, they saw me on the bridge.” I shake my head, thoughts spiraling faster than I can sort them out. “They know what I can do and you said—oh,gods, you said it yourself, you said it to Soren! They’ll come for me. He’ll come for me—”
“Rhya.”
My eyes snap to his face. It is the first time he’s ever said my name, and hearing him say it makes my heart, which is already pounding, stumble inside my chest.
“You are safe here,” he says with uncharacteristic gentleness. “You are safe with me.”
“But…”
“Even if they made it through the Avian Strait—which they will not, not while Soren of Llyr still breathes—they will never make it here. The whole city is warded. No one will breach Caeldera. Not even Efnysien’s red army.”
My brows rise. “Warded?”
“Wards. Protective shields that rebuff unwelcome guests, like an invisible net of deterrence. They surround the entire city. Those with ill intent are kept at bay.”
“How? Is it a maegic spell of some kind? An enchantment?”
“No. I’m no sorcerer, I assure you.”
He walks to me and lays a hand on the wall beside mine. The veins in the black ash begin to glow bloodred, responding to his touch. I snatch back my palm when the heat grows too intense. He drops his as well, and the flare instantly fades from the dark stone.
“The petrified lava that flows throughout the city walls is imbued with natural energy. That energy can be tapped. Infused, rather. Like a conduit or a crystal, absorbing a charge.”
“You provide the charge?”
“Yes. A pulse of my power once or twice a year is enough to reinforce the natural defenses that shield Caeldera. Like a magnetic force field, it attracts positive energy and repels anything that poses a threat.” He shrugs lightly. “It also heats the whole crater during the cold months. That’s why everything here is so lush and green, even in the heart of winter. And why the castle is so warm, even up here in the tower.”
I think of my paltry air shield, offering a friable bubble of protection, and almost laugh aloud. I’d been proud I could defend a handful of paces of earth. How absurd it feels now, hearingPenn so casually describe the net of safety he casts over an entire city. The scale of his power is so immense in comparison, I find myself looking at him with fresh eyes.
Who is this man, standing before me?
This stranger who was once my enemy, this enemy who became a protector. A man with a scarred past and an inferno in his bones. For all our time together, I still do not know him. I have scarcely scratched the surface of all he’s endured in his extended lifetime. But…a part of me wants to. Wants to with a desperation that will not relent.
That wanting shakes me to the core. My newfound curiosity is at war with every instinct of self-preservation, which screams at me to run from his blazing complexities as quickly as I fled the fires of Seahaven.
“Come,” Penn says, calling me back to the present. “I’ll show you to your sleeping quarters.”
“Am I not…” I glance around, fighting a blush as my eyes skate past the bed. “I thought I was staying here.”
With you.
By your side.
Where it’s safe.
“In a way, you are.” He leads me across the round chamber. Near the wardrobe, there is a ladder bolted to the wall, leading up into the lofted ceiling rafters that divide Penn’s room from the pointed spire that sits at the very top of the tower.
“Go on, then.” He jerks his chin at the ladder. “Up you go.”
“You jest.”