Starling (25 page)

“What changed things?”

“Not what, Rothgar. Who.”

Gunnar absently smoothed a finger over his left eyebrow, his gaze distant. He was silent for a long moment, and Roth and Rory exchanged a glance. Rory recalled the last entry in the diary, suddenly, and wondered if Gunnar had told Roth about his vision loss—the price he’d paid for the knowledge he shared with them now.

“
Who
, father?” Roth prompted finally.

Gunnar roused himself from his reverie and tossed back the dregs of his drink.

“He calls himself the Fennrys Wolf,” Gunnar said. “And he is a gift to us from the very gods themselves.”

T
his time, there was a pebble actually sitting on her windowsill when Mason got back from class that afternoon. It was smooth and sparkly and had a silver string tied around it attached to a note. Mason smiled to herself as she plucked up the pebble and folded open the piece of paper.

She had to admit, Fenn’s way of communicating did have a certain charm. It beat the heck out of texting. Mason turned the pebble over in her hand, thinking. She shouldn’t go. She had a mountain of homework, a group tutorial she really couldn’t afford to miss, and later that night an optional fencing practice that she knew perfectly well Toby would not consider optional. Not for her, not this close to the NACs. Also? The last time she’d found herself in proximity to TFW, she’d been attacked and almost killed by monsters. Again.

Really, she should just be a good girl and do what she was supposed to.

But she was feeling uncharacteristically rebellious. And she deserved a night off. Didn’t she?

Regardless of whether she did or didn’t, Mason knew perfectly well, just from the way her heart was beating rapidly in her chest, from the way she was arguing with herself, and from the way her eyes kept straying back to the pebble in her hand and the note, that she was not going to be a good girl.

Not this time.

“I have something for you,” Fennrys said as she stepped out of the freight elevator and into his apartment. When she’d arrived at the warehouse, the front door had been left ajar and the elevator had been waiting with the gate open, ready to take her up to the second floor. Mason was still a little surprised at herself. No one knew where she was, no one knew who she was with or how to find her. She’d known Fenn for a grand total of a couple of days and had almost gotten killed on more than one occasion in his presence. And yet she’d never felt so safe in all her life.

Safe—but a bit on the breathless side, nonetheless. She tried not to fidget with her hair or outfit, half wishing she’d decided against dressing up and just gone with jeans and sneakers, like usual.

As she stepped into his apartment, she noticed that every one of the windows all down the long brick wall were open a few inches, framed by panel drapes that billowed gently, like a chorus line of ghosts.

Mason felt herself smiling. He’d opened the windows for
her
.

Neither of them had spoken as Fennrys walked her over to the part of the wide-open loft that was furnished as a dining room. There was a long wooden table, and on the table rested a dark leather case, long and narrow, tapering at one end. It was adorned with a wide silver ribbon, tied in a bow. Mason glanced back and forth from the case to Fennrys.

“Go ahead,” he said quietly. “Open it.”

Mason reached out a hesitant hand and tugged on one end of the ribbon. It fell away, and she undid the silver clasps on the long side of the case and flipped open the lid. Inside, resting on a bed of midnight blue velvet, was the breathtakingly elegant, swept-hilt rapier with the silvery blade that Mason had so admired on the day she and Fennrys first discovered the loft apartment. And the hidden weapons cache. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the tag attached to it. It said:

She took a deep, shuddering breath and kept her face turned away from Fennrys, and she blinked at the sudden wetness on her lashes that turned the reflected light from the blade into starry spangles. “You want me to have this?” she asked softly.

She heard him chuckle behind her. “I figured as long as you keep getting yourself into situations you need to fight your way out of, you might as well look good doing it.”

The gleam of light on the wire-wrapped hilt compelled her to reach out and grasp it. The sweeping lines of the guard wrapped around her hand like silver flourishes from a calligrapher’s pen. She lifted the sword from its velvet bed and saw that there was a soft, midnight-black leather fencing glove underneath, alongside a cross-body, baldric-style scabbard—also black, with silver finishings and a blue jewel set in the buckle fastening. It was obviously not something that had been made for Fennrys—it was feminine and sleek and so,
so
her. She picked it up and slung the belt over her shoulder, so that the scabbard hung at her left hip, and picked up the gauntlet. She sheathed the sword just long enough to slide her right hand into the soft leather that fit her, well, like a glove.

“It’s perfect,” she said, drawing the blade as she walked into the center of the room, where the rug had been rolled away, and swept the blade from side to side in a circling, figure-eight motion, suddenly, utterly, unself-conscious. Mason was at her best, at her most peaceful, when she had a sword in her hand. All of her shyness and her reticence evaporated, and she was able to feel confident and powerful.

Fennrys was watching her as she moved through a series of fencing exercises. Of course she was used to a much lighter, whip-slender blade, but the principles weren’t too dissimilar. After a few moments of Fenn standing there watching her with his arms crossed over his chest and a smile ticking at one corner of his mouth, he turned and slid the wall aside to reveal the weapons cupboard. He plucked a second rapier—one with a plainer, more masculine hilt—from its hanger on the wall and stalked in a half circle around Mason to stand in front of her in a loose-limbed, careless en garde.

His grin was an invitation, and Mason felt herself smiling in return. She gave him a small salute with her blade. Her breath slowed in her chest even as she felt the rush of blood to her head and the surge of adrenaline as Fennrys made a feinting dart with his blade that she parried easily and swept to the side. Her own exploratory attack, a diagonal cut aimed at his left shoulder, met with an equal lack of success. The two of them circled each other for a moment, and then Mason went in for a low, running sideswipe that got under Fennrys’s guard and very nearly tagged his thigh right above the knee. She thought for an instant that she would have to pull the blow to avoid actually hitting him, but then his blade came down in a lightning-fast, liquid-silver circle and crashed onto hers, with enough force to make her fingers go instantly numb.

The blade flew from her hand and skittered the length of the room.

And she suddenly found herself standing with the point of Fennrys’s rapier kissing the hollow at the base of her throat.

The Wolf’s pale blue eyes were glittering and cold, his pupils dilated. His nostrils flared as he shifted the point of his sword slightly to one side, so that it rested on her right shoulder, almost as if he was about to knight her, and he closed the distance between them. The cool steel of the flat of the blade slid over Mason’s bare skin in a chill caress, and she shivered and looked up into Fenn’s face.

“I might not remember much, but I remember this. I definitely think I’ve done this a lot,” he murmured.

“Disarm young women in your apartment?” she asked, her breath coming in shallow gasps—and not entirely because of the exertion. “Is this your idea of a date?”

Fennrys grinned down at her. “I meant fight,” he said. “I think I’ve fought … a lot.”

“I could have told you that when we first met. And then again at the boat basin.” She smiled at him and nodded toward where her sword lay on the floor. “Now can I have my present back, please?”

He laughed in that low, dangerous-sounding way that was almost a growl and made her heart skip a beat. Then he turned and scooped up her blade from the floor and tossed it lightly through the air toward her. She caught it just under the hilt with her gloved hand.

“So.” Fennrys swept his own blade through the air in front of him. “You want to have another go?”

Mason looked at him, raising an eyebrow. She thought she might have figured out what he was up to, but she asked him all the same. “Why are you doing this?”

“What?”

“All of this.” She circled the tip of her sword in the air. “The fencing thing.”

“It’s important to you.”

“And?”

“And I want to help you win at the competition next week.” He took a step toward her. “I saw how upset you were after you lost that last bout. You’re an amazing fighter, Mason, but I think I can help you be even better, if you’ll let me. Like I said … I think I’ve done this a lot.”

“I do have a coach....”

“I know.”

“And Calum is supposed to be mentoring me....”

“But he isn’t, is he?”

She shook her head silently.

“Take off your shoes,” he said.

She looked down. He had a point—heels, even relatively low ones, weren’t really conducive to fighting (of course, neither was the flirty little skirt she’d worn). She kicked off her shoes and stood very still as Fennrys walked around behind her and gently lifted her arms into en garde. She settled into the pose, readying herself.

“No,” he said.

His voice was right in her ear. She could feel his breath lifting the stray hairs that had escaped her ponytail.

“Your fingers are too tight. Brittle. That’s why I was able to disarm you so easily just now. You have to stay relaxed.” He worked the edges of his fingers under hers and loosened them so that the blade rocked slightly in her grip. “Like this.”

“I know how to hold a sword.”

“I know you know how to
hold
one. This isn’t about holding a sword. And it’s not about
using
one, either. A sword isn’t a tool. Not if you’re doing it right,” he continued in a quiet, murmuring tone. “It’s an extension of your will. There is continuity and flow. This isn’t about
using
a weapon. It’s about
becoming
one. About making the sword a part of your hand. Your arm. Your entire body …”

As he spoke, Fennrys ran his own hands over the back of hers. Along the length of her arm. Across her shoulders. Down the muscles on either side of her spine. Over her backside and the lengths of her thighs and calf muscles, all the way to the heels of her bare feet. Mason felt as though his hands had left trails of fire and ice crystals all along her skin. She struggled to keep from gasping as he knelt beside her and grasped her bare ankles in his long fingers.

“You’re tense.”

“I’m standing en garde. Shouldn’t I be ready to fight?”

“You can’t fight if you’re not loose. You have no give. No room to change your mind. Relax your feet.”

“How am I supposed to change my mind from my feet?”

“Your feet will know what they’re supposed to do before your brain tells them. Let them. C’mon, Mase. Wiggle your toes.”

He put the flats of his palms lightly on the tops of her feet, and his thumbs lightly stroked her arches. It tickled, and she had no choice but to wiggle her toes.

“Let go of your conscious control of your body,” he murmured.

Mason didn’t feel like she
had
any control of her body—conscious or otherwise—at the moment. She was standing there stiff as a board, wiggling her toes and breathing shallowly and rapidly. Her heart was pounding, and it felt like it had shifted from her chest into her head. She had no idea where her brain had gone to make room for it. But, yeah, her brain was definitely gone.

“Mason?” Fenn looked up at her.

“Yeah?”

“Duck.”

With speed that made him almost a blur, Fennrys launched out of his crouch and whipped his own blade up in a diagonal arc toward her head. She saw it as a flash of lightning, and the air in the room went from heavy and electrically charged to vacuum light. Her own sword flashed up and across her body and parried Fenn’s strike with a screech, sliding off his blade as he sprang back and swept his rapier from side to side. He backed off a step, feinted, and then ran at her, striking with blinding speed—left shoulder, right shoulder, head cut, thrust for the heart—and Mason retreated, parrying for all she was worth, not even chancing a riposte when she could have, because she knew he was expecting that.