Affinity

Chapter 8 - Nathan

He could hear Aaralyn taking her time to pick her way down the path to the clearing where he was waiting. From the sound of her soft, careful footsteps, he could tell she was trying to sneak up on him again.

Two nights ago, he had bet her that, even if she completely masked her presence, he would still be able to hear her coming. She was highly competitive, and he had only needed to tease her about her lack of stealth in order to make her take the bait. It had really been too easy. And now, for the second night in a row, she came to meet him by playing this new, invented game of hers.

The previous night, he had been able to pinpoint her precise location as soon as he heard her. Tonight, she was doing better. He couldn't quite tell just where she was walking, so he stayed quiet and waited.

She had confessed her vision five nights ago. The night immediately following, he hadn't seen her. But the night after that, she had found him, and she had been coming every night since. It was now the fourth night in a row that he had waited in the clearing for her to venture out into the woods. In light of her circumstances, she was either very brave or very naive. He hadn't quite decided which. In any case, he couldn't deny his pleasure over her willingness to spend her nights with him, despite the risk it posed.

With each night they spent together, he learned more and more about her and the daily pressures she faced, and his respect grew with his admiration. She woke up each morning and willed herself to take on a life she deeply resented, the kind of life he pointedly avoided. If he credited her for nothing else, he had to admit that, contrary to his initial assumption, she was capable of tremendous strength under pressure.

She hadn't yet gone into any great detail about herself or the specific problems she faced, but Nathan had continued to investigate what he could of her coven against her wishes. That, too, was a risky venture, but if they were to take the chance of meeting, he insisted on finding out everything he could about the Celendine's vendetta against her, or rather Lexander Karalis's vendetta against her. 

As he had rationalized to her, he had a better chance as someone that none of her fellow coven members would recognize. She hadn't exactly relented, but her resolve against it had weakened enough that Nathan hadn't felt too guilty about venturing into the city and tracking Lexander.

Two days ago, his efforts had paid off. He had found Lexander in the corner of a dark alley speaking with another coven member. With his keen hearing, Nathan had been able to stay out of sight on the main street as he eavesdropped on the conversation. It had only taken a few minutes of listening for him to realize that Lexander was furious that he hadn't succeeded in exposing Aaralyn to the coven leader. Frustrated by his failure and unwilling to suffer it again, Lexander had evidently decided to renew his efforts to ruin Aaralyn's image by spreading rumors to other coven members. He had even made two attempts to tail her since the night of Aaralyn's dinner with Nicholas.

Nathan had gathered that Nicholas was growing weary of Lexander's obsessive need to paint Aaralyn as a traitor just as Lexander was growing weary of having his efforts dismissed. It seemed that the Celandine leader held Aaralyn upon some kind of pedestal because of her spirit magic, though Nathan suspected it had more to do with the attention Aaralyn's powers gained the coven from the authorities at the fortress. But to his credit, Nicholas had grown displeased by Lexander contributing to the disquiet within the coven and had ordered him to stand down from his errant mission. So, for the time being, it seemed Aaralyn could afford a modicum of relief that Nicholas was either blind to the truth of Lexander's accusations or refused to give them any credit.

Of course, Nathan had shared all of this information with Aaralyn, along with some of his own speculations. Right away he could tell the news had troubled her, though she had made a valiant effort to cover it up. At first she had tried to hide her true feelings by venting her frustrations at Nathan for spying on Lexander after she had warned him not to. Then, once she had calmed down, she had just gone quiet for a while and withdrawn into herself while she considered all he had told her. Nevertheless, before the night's end, he had managed to convince her to increase security at her home, and he had taken it upon himself to keep a closer watch on things.