deserve to know what’s going on with me? Because if that’s the case…”
“No, you mistake me,” he interrupts. Although he’s quick to appease me, I can see the telltale tightening of his jaw and the tension in his muscles as he looks away and sighs again. “That is not what I mean at all. Rather, it would be a good idea to leave now, while this place is clean of our magic before it starts settling in again. You don’t want the faeries thinking you’re still lingering here. We should put distance between us and them.”
“Okay, well, let me at least write a note,” I reply.
When he nods, I push my chair back and get to my feet, allowing the blanket to drop into the chair behind me. I step away from it without a backward glance, heading straight for my desk. I rifle through the piles of documents I haven’t yet filed in search of an elusive pen.
There are always a dozen pens around here when I don’t need one, but the one time that I do, they say: “Find me.” I’m not even sure how it is that in all these stacks and sheets of paper I can’t manage to find one blank page to scrawl a note on.
Damn it!
“I know I have a scrap of paper and pen here somewhere,” I grumble as I lift a hand just in time to stop a mountain of receipts from crashing down over the space I just cleared.
When I get back, I really should look into hiring an assistant for the bookkeeping. Hunting for a pen shouldn’t be the equivalent of searching for Atlantis.
“Ahandral, we really must hurry…”
“I know, I know. Just one minute…”
My fingers close around a thin metal cylinder beneath the edge of my keyboard, and I lift up my prize with a victorious whoop.
“Okay now for the paper!”
Chapter 11
Steph
I feel guilty as hell just leaving a note and disappearing without saying goodbye, and I know I’ll hear plenty about it when I get back. But I can’t be too mad. Eliph has a sound reason for wanting to leave so soon, and, while I would never admit it, I’m a little relieved there isn’t going to be a long, drawn-out production with my family before our departure.
Instead, I’m perched awkward as hell on my mate’s back—since I never sat on a horse in my life, nor ever possessed the slightest desire to do so—and staring at the ivory horn that’s visible between his pricked ears.
His shoulders move, and his body shifts beneath my thighs as he adjusts his stance. It’s all I can do not to turn my hold on his mane into a painful death grip as anxiety suddenly knifes through me.
Definitely not the time to be learning the ropes of horseback riding.
“Are you okay up there?” Grimsal peers up at me from where he stands at Eliph’s flank, his eyes narrowed with concern.
Eliph stills at the question, and his neck curves as he cranes his head around to look back at me. His nostrils expand and blow out gently against my leg. The touch of his nose doesn’t startle me. No, it’s the warmth of his voice in my mind that makes me jerk with surprise.
Are you well?
It’s so strange hearing a voice in my head that’s not my own that I’m not sure how to respond. I almost forget the question as I debate answering him aloud or looking like a lunatic while carrying out the conversation in my head and feel even weirder.
As it happens, holding a conversation entirely in my head is just a little too much for me. Bad enough to look like I’m talking to myself, but I like the separation of hearing myself reply to his voice in my head. It gives me some measure of normalcy, even if it is small.
That still leaves me with one little problem. When he mentioned carrying me through the portal, I hadn’t imagined he meant like this. And then I figured, “How hard can it be?” when he transformed into his glorious quadruped form. Apparently, it was a lot harder than I had imagined. Not only that, but now that I’m up here, it’s a lot further from the ground than I had figured too.
Who knew that a unicorn would be so damn big?
I’ve always met every challenge without complaint or fear, though. It’s no wonder then that even now I hate to admit to him that sitting on his back, where