Gods & Thieves ✔

50. Fire and Smoke

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My heart sinks as I run out of Loretto's apartment.

On the long loggia, flooded with serene sunlight, where the doors of all the living rooms on the floor open, there is a barely perceptible but distinct, acrid smell of burning interrupting the familiar aroma of the blooming garden below.

At first glance, there is silence around.

But this smell...

No, Cale couldn't ruin everything, I think, swallowing the bitterness coating my tongue. He couldn't attack. He has no weapons against shamans now, he will be killed, he knows. He's not such an idiot!

I am turning toward the stairs to leave the Great Temple and check, when Loretto walks out of faer apartment. Faer hair is tangled after my kisses, but faer robe that I pulled off is back on Lo--thrown on in a hurry, not fastened, leaving Loretto's chest naked and defenseless.

And also, while I was standing and thinking, Mentor managed to pull out faer silver-plated dagger from under faer mattress.

"Lo, I need...I need..." The phrase refuses to leave my throat.

"We need to leave," Lo says, shaking faer head. "Right now."

"We have to find out what happened!"

"No matter what happens, you are not the one who will solve everything!" Loretto's voice rises at the last word, hardening like a stone thrown at my back. Behind the anxiety, an angry gleam flashes in faer dark eyes. No, if Lo is afraid of something, if fae holds a dagger in faer hands, it's not for self-defense at all. It's because I'm a half-educated shaman, I'm either impulsive or determined, I get into trouble every time.

Loretto is afraid that something will happen to me. I'm a puppy who has to sit under the couch while the storm is raging.

"But..."

There are footsteps behind me.

Turning around, I find Faris, who rushes toward us at full speed, so fast that the echo of his footsteps hurt my ears. I've never seen him in such a hurry.

Running up to us, Faris opens his mouth to say something, but starts coughing. He folds in half, resting his hands on his knees, tries to catch his breath, mutters something hoarsely when his glasses fly off the bridge of his nose and drop to the floor. Bending down to pick them up, Faris almost falls on his shaky legs.

"Did aura in the laboratory explode?" I ask, my hope kindling.

Faris shakes his head. "Ariane sent a note," Faris gasps out between breaths. He looks at me, then at Lo with moist pleading in his eyes, suddenly forgetting all his former distrust of my handler. "The guards were poisoned. We were poisoned. The East Wing...Cale is here. I thought I'd make it!" Without adding anything else, turning even paler, and then turning green, Faris takes a step to the curb of the loggia and barely manages to lean over the edge, as he vomits. Not for the first time this morning, apparently, because nothing but bile, which pours down on the bushes, was left in his stomach.

I look away, I feel sick at the sight of it.

But new thoughts creep into my head. Ariane sent a note. The guards were poisoned...And Ariane knows that. The only reason she could find out everything was because she overheard our brothers talking at home.

...We were poisoned. Cale is here...

I glance at Lo. Mentor looks back at me without blinking, stands silent and tense, like my personal guardian. But something in my head doesn't add up yet. If shamans were poisoned, doesn't that include Lo? And me? If Cale sent someone after me and that someone dug up the silver that I hid and used it for its intended purpose, why don't I feel green and sick like Faris?