Reflection Pond (14 page)

Jack clapped and whooped, “Private party!”

“I’m in,” Rowan said, downing the rest of his drink and handing it to a passing waiter. “This party is dull anyway.”

Callie would’ve argued with him just for the sake of arguing and defending Sapphire, but the drink made her thoughts and voice disconnect. So when Ash pulled her to her feet and the group left the room, she followed.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Bright afternoon light streamed through the window. Callie’s body ached as she forced her eyelids open. Cracking her neck, she sat up and gasped, trying to make sense of the scene before her. She was sprawled on the floor, legs underneath the spindles of a wooden coffee table, and looking around, she wasn’t sure whose house it was.

The space was in shambles.

Decorative plants lay torn from their stone pots, roots exposed like veins ripped from skin, dripping dirt crumbles. Champagne glasses littered the floor, some shattered, others half-full of multicolored liquid. The couch behind her was turned on its side, pillows spilled across the floor. She sat up further, groaning. A few feet away, Willow and Sai were entangled on the couch, his dark skin stark against the paleness of hers. If not for their different skin tones, Callie wouldn’t have been able to determine where one ended and the other began. Willow’s hair was a riot of red, exploding across Sai’s chest.

She swallowed the dry foulness in her mouth. At the kitchen counter, Ash slept, head pillowed in his hands. Underneath the table, Jack laid prostrate, arms and legs akimbo, snoring softly. Callie stood, bare feet crunching the remains of something. She braced herself against the table, dizzy.

Callie took stock. She was still fully dressed, but couldn’t remember a thing from the night before, just a giddy blur of colors and flashes. One side of the dress she’d borrowed from Willow was covered in blue goo. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and picked her way to the door, careful not to disturb the others.

She trudged toward Sapphire’s, every moment in the sun a reminder of the wine’s harsh side effects. The light slid into her eyes like knives.

Fae hurried through the city, in pairs or groups. Callie left the shelter of the tall buildings and emerged into the afternoon sun. In the distance, a structure was beginning to take shape. Several men, chests bare and imprinted, were working together, hauling branch-stripped logs as thick as legs. The steady thunk of wood against wood reached her ears.

Callie wasn’t sure what they were building. The base was bigger than the top, which was flat as a table. As she reached the height of the path, she saw rows and rows of green covered chairs. Curiosity warred with her desire to shower as she turned away from the men, toward the cottages.

Rowan stood in the emerald grass, barefoot, the sun glinting off sweat on his chest. Callie’s steps faltered as he lifted a staff, the wood smooth and wrapped with thick leather on each end. He swung, the staff arcing in a great circle over his head that ended with a sharp jab.

She watched, transfixed, as he retrieved the weapon and stretched his neck. Callie’s gaze followed the gentle curve where it met his shoulder, and lower, where muscles rippled beneath his skin. Rowan had the body of a dancer, long, lean.
And flexible,
she thought as his feet flew over his head and he landed in a defensive pose. He pushed his staff in front of him on a horizontal, sliding one foot behind the other for balance. His body was fluid, mercury allowed to slide across a tabletop as he repeated the motion. Rowan was breathing hard when he settled the length of the weapon on his shoulder and flicked hair out of his eyes.

Here is beauty and grace,
she thought. There was passion behind the movement, restrained desire. Where he’d learned to fight like that, and worse, had he ever needed to use that knowledge?

Rowan cleared his throat.

Heat filled Callie’s face. “What are you doing?” she asked, gathering the length of her hair over one shoulder, realizing how terrible she must look, dirty and hung over. Whereas Rowan, dripping sweat, looked beautiful and all sorts of indecent.

He scratched an exposed hipbone, drawing Callie’s eye to the flat expanse of his stomach, the ridges of muscle there. As she watched, dry-mouthed, a bead of sweat dripped from his chest to the waistband of his loose pants and disappeared. Callie couldn’t drag her eyes away; they kept going to the little V created by bone and muscle. She wanted to touch him there, see if his skin was as smooth and perfect as it looked. She dug her nails into her palms.

“Callie?”

She startled
, blush burning hotter. “What are you doing?” she repeated, finally forcing her gaze to his face.

The skin around his eyes crinkled and he lifted one eyebrow.
“I said,
I’m training.”

“With that stick,” Callie said, knowing the moment the words left her mouth that they were horribly inaccurate. It wasn’t a
stick,
it was a flowing extension of Rowan’s body that he handled with intimate knowledge, as one might know a lover. She waited for the acid of his tongue, and it came, right on cue.

“That
stick
is a quarterstaff,” he muttered, gaze sweeping over her like a touch.

Callie pressed her arms over her stomach, recoiling as the blue goo smeared, cold and sticky, across her skin.

“You look awful,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said. She suddenly felt okay and was certain it had something to do with the adrenaline rush of watching Rowan train. She imagined learning to move like that, with lightness and confidence. She pointed to the men in the distance, desperate to change the subject. “What’s that?”

“Funeral pyre for the prophetess.” He came closer, so that Callie could smell the sunshine and sweat on his tan skin, sense the shiver of energy. “After they burn, we scatter the ashes in the river.”

Horror clogged Callie’s throat as visions of burning bodies filled her mind. It seemed inhumane, barbaric, even. She ripped her eyes from the pyre, turning so it was behind her. “That’s kind of awful.”

“It’s the way of our people.” He tapped the end of his staff against the ground, distractedly.

“So
this stick…”

“Quarterstaff.”

“Quarterstaff,” she corrected. “You fight with it?” Callie poked at the stretched leather, intrigued. “Why a staff?”

“For shits and giggles, mostly.
Occasionally, I use it to intimidate Ash and unsuspecting humans.” His expression sobered. “If you haven’t noticed, someone breached our wards and killed the prophetess. We could all use a little more training around here.
Eirensae
is complacent, has been for a while. The people are weak, but don’t listen to me. I’m just the illegitimate, unimprinted idiot. I wouldn’t know anything about fighting or strategy. It’s not like I’ve read all the history books in the library.” His lips twisted.

Callie digested that. Rowan had read
all
the history books. She hadn’t counted, but there had to be thousands of thick bound volumes in
Eirensae’s
library.

“Will you teach me?” Callie asked, looking up at him. Rowan stood half a foot taller than
her, making Callie feel tiny.

“Will
I what?” he snapped.

“I want to learn how to fight.” Her thoughts went to Elm, to the energy pulsing beneath her skin. Maybe it would help her learn to control it. “If the people that killed the prophetess are after me, at least teach me to protect myself.”

Rowan’s glare turned wary, and then interested. He sucked his lips inward, deciding, and then blew out a breath. “Fine.”

Callie hadn’t expected him to agree.
“Fine?”

“Fine.”
He held up a finger. “One condition.” She waited, expectant. “Go shower. No way am I touching Willow’s puke.”

***

Rowan followed Callie’s approach with a mixture of dread and anticipation roiling in his gut. Freshly showered and changed, she’d plaited her hair into a heavy, dripping braid. He’d used her absence to practice more, going over the familiar routine time and again until his muscles shook.

It hadn’t been enough.

She wore a green tank top that exposed the gentle curve of her throat and collarbone. Rowan swallowed. He should’ve pushed himself harder—he should’ve been too tired to think. He reminded himself that Callie was nothing more than a student, the same as the young people he’d taught before he’d come to
Eirensae,
but his gaze found her calves, summer bronzed under matching green leggings. Her feet were bare, her toes unpolished. Was it weird to find toes erotic?

Callie stopped, squinting against the sunlight. She had to feel awful. A headache throbbed behind Rowan’s eyes, but that was no reason not to train. Whoever had killed the prophetess wouldn’t make exceptions for hangovers. He hefted the extra quarterstaff he’d gone to get for Callie. “Ready?”

She nodded, staring at the staff, uncertainty clouding her expression. Suddenly, Callie’s situation became real. There wasn’t much time left for Rowan, eventually they’d cast him out. She had to learn to protect herself, because he couldn’t trust the city to do it when he was gone, not with Hazel lurking over Callie’s shoulder.

“The first thing you have to learn is how to fall.” He tossed the staff. It landed in the grass with a muted thunk. He used Callie’s distraction to attack. She fell easily beneath him, the air that rushed from her lungs smelled like flowers with a light tang of fermentation underneath. Her eyes
widened. She was soft and solid at the same time and he didn’t let himself linger, though he did imagine a hundred different variations of the same scene.

Rowan fought a smile as he stood and offered a hand. “That was the wrong way to fall.”

Callie ignored his hand and dragged herself to her feet, elbows already stained green and brown. A little furrow appeared between her eyebrows.

Rowan planted his feet for stability. “Push me.”

She frowned and shoved his shoulder. There was no weight behind it and Rowan hardly moved. He sighed. “Like you mean it.”

This time she used both hands, holding her palms together as if she intended to give him CPR. Aside from the thrill of her hands on his bare skin, there wasn’t enough force to throw him off balance.

“This may be more difficult than I imagined. Even though I’m toned to perfection and that makes you believe I’m thin—I’m actually quite substantial.” He leaned in closer, enjoying the wariness that crossed her face. “Push
harder.”

Callie’s shoulder rammed into his chest and he got a face full of her sunshine and lilac scented hair.

“Are you hugging me? We could skip the training if you just want to mess around.” He was smiling, the expression hidden where she couldn’t see.

“I thought I was supposed to be falling,” she grunted against Rowan, struggling to knock him down.

He bit back a laugh. “As you wish.” Rowan countered Callie’s weight and she collapsed. He heard the snap of teeth as her head connected with the ground.

To Rowan’s delight, she climbed to feet seconds later, livid, the muscles in her jaw tense.

“The first rule of falling is to let your body go slack,” he said, reverting to teacher mode, deciding it wasn’t fair if he enjoyed
every
second of training Callie. “Why do you think drunks always survive car accidents that would kill a sober person? They’re ragdolls, they just…” He mimicked flopping with his hand. “You can’t tense up. Try to relax.” Rowan didn’t give her time to prepare, just went in low, tossing her to the ground.

She glared up at him. Rowan offered a hand, and this time Callie allowed him to pull her upright.

“Am I going to do a lot of falling?” she asked, brushing the dirt from her arms and backside.

“Oh yes,” he said, lips stretching into a smile, “a
lot
of falling.”

***

Callie hurt everywhere. Her elbows were dark with grass and the dirt. She knew her backside was bruised, and she could hardly turn her head to the right—but she’d survived. Rowan came toward her again and Callie tensed, anticipating another fall. She’d lost count of how many times she’d met the ground, at least fifty, maybe more. Instead of knocking her down, Rowan pressed his palm to her belly. “You’ve got to relax from here. Contrary to popular belief, your core controls everything.”

Though the touch was light, Callie felt Rowan’s hand like a punch to the stomach. She flinched and stepped away.

Confusion flitted over Rowan’s expression and then he smiled. “I think you’ve had enough for today.”

She went weak. She wasn’t sure she could handle even one more fall. Rowan, as if sensing this, made one last attempt to knock her off balance. Callie let her body go fluid. She hit the grass and rolled away from him in the same motion, the collision less jarring than the
others.

Rowan sprawled next to her, sweating. “That was good,” he said.

Callie rolled over onto her stomach, feeling all the tendons in her back pop. She couldn’t remember the last time she was so tired.