Abaddon's Gift

Chapter Thirty

Graydon walked into Naena's room without being greeted. He felt that annoying wall again, the frustrating agony of being caught in something.

This time he didn't push further, aware that it was some spell. Pushing past the spell would wipe it away as it attempted to stop him. While he was normally in the business of wiping away spells, this erasure would cause work and problems for a mage he wanted the help of.

Naena sat on the bed, her face angled away from him.

Every line of her screamed. The angle away, how her hands clenched in her lap, and her back too stiff. It was the look of someone who hoped the other person would follow social convention and pretend the pain wasn't seen.

Some days, Graydon followed that convention. Some, he didn't.

And some, he interfered, found the person who caused it, and strung them up in the darkest part of the night while everyone else slept. Leaving the body for the dogs to chew on.

"Invite me in," Graydon said.

That day, he wasn't certain what he felt like doing. What he did know was that he had to make it past that spell without dispersing it. He needed some amount of trust from her.

The murderous thoughts could come later.

"Come in," she said without looking at him.

Her voice spoke of tears. A thickened quality to it, as if bubbles threatened to break up her words. That nasally quality of a stuffed up nose that also threatened to run at any moment.

Oh, yes, Graydon was intimately familiar with that feeling.

He took another step in and closed the door, locking it behind him. Aware that he was trespassing on Naena's vulnerability, he slipped across the room and sat on Bo's bed.

Naena's head lowered. Her hair fell, covering her face as he studied her.

"What's going on?" he asked. "You weren't in either of my classes with you today, but you went to the other classes."

He pretended he didn't hear the sound of her voice, see the wet splotch on her skirt, the spots across her chest, and how she tensed as he watched her. He forced himself to relax, entertaining himself momentarily with visions of some unnamed student dying at his hands in slow agony.

He knew she would read any line of agitation in his body as anger with her. It was a flaw in her gender brought about by men who took advantage and abused the privileges granted them while within a woman's vulnerable time.

She said something to her lap, something Graydon didn't catch.

And he hated to ask because he knew not to ask a victim twice. But he honestly couldn't understand anything she said.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" he asked.

"I can read," she said, as her voice cracked and she appeared to begin crying into her lap.

Again.

Which told him that her tears were spent and the crying was simply a reaction. She was neither sorry nor afraid, simply overwhelmed and certain of the outcome.

"Look at me," he said, adding an edge to his voice when she didn't look up. "Now, Naena."

Her head raised, tears flowing down her cheeks as she looked somewhere over his shoulder.

An angry red welt stood on her right cheek. It hadn't bled any but came close enough that it might have if the strike had been a little harder. The welt would certainly create a bruise overnight.