Or anything else, as far as I could tell. Except hunt and laze about, polishing their weapons and waiting to accomplish deeds of derring-do. Of course, last night they’d pretty much managed that, so I guessed I should cut them some slack.
“They do when Caedmon tells them to!” Claire said, and got up, but not to leave. Just to pace around, because she looked like she was about to come out of her skin. And considering what that looked like, I was all for the pacing. “I had my hands full with our patients—and the boys, who were scared out of their minds!”
“They seemed okay earlier,” I said, “unless I was dreaming them being in here.”
“No.” She turned around, looking apologetic. “I hope they didn’t keep you up, but there was nowhere else. My room was taken up with injured fey, and Gessa and the little troll were in the boys’ beds, and I was constantly back and forth and would have woken them anyway—”
No wonder she looked tired, I thought.
And then what she’d said registered.
“The little troll? You mean he’s not dead?”
“Not yet,” Olga said darkly.
“I was up with him all night,” Claire told me. “And with Gessa, who had a slight concussion after Ymsi—”
She broke off, biting her lip.
“Wait.” I sat up and shoved another pillow behind me. My thoughts were still a jumble, but there was some stuff that I remembered clearly. Like a knife sticking out of a kid’s chest.
“Caedmon was with me,” I said. “And that knife was through the heart. So how is he alive again?”
“Troll heart on other side,” Olga told me simply.
I blinked, and filed it away for future reference. “I didn’t know that.”
“Someone else not know, either.”
“Or maybe they weren’t aiming for him!” Claire said heatedly.
“Aiden not stab,” Olga pointed out, with the tone of someone who had said it before.
“Aiden?” I looked at Claire. “You think this is about your son?”
“Who else?” She shoved extra-frizzy hair out of her face, because I guess she hadn’t had time to do anything with it today. “Gessa said those things went straight for the stairs, not once but numerous times. If you hadn’t been there—”
“They’d have met an angry mother dragon a floor up. They were better off with me.”
“Stone doesn’t burn, Dory,” Claire said, her arms tight around her, her face white. “It’s how the goddamned Svarestri win against the Dark Fey—how they’ve always won! Our element is fire; theirs is earth. And earth smothers fire. . . .”
Leaving you armed only with a maw of daggerlike teeth, ten-inch claws, and a tail that can crush a man in one sweep, I thought, but kept my mouth shut because this wasn’t the time.
“Aiden is probably the best-protected little boy on the planet,” I said instead. “Plus, he’s wearing that thing, isn’t he? That rune we spent so much time tracking down?”
It had been an ugly, discolored item, old and cracked and strangely heavy. Not something you’d expect the heir to one of the major thrones of Faerie to have in his possession. Or on his person, because it melted into the skin once on the body, becoming invisible—and making the wearer virtually invulnerable.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t be hurt; if Aiden had been stabbed, he’d have definitely felt the pain, and borne the wound until it healed. But it would have healed. Because wearing one of the last remaining Runes of Langgarn granted certain privileges.
So whatever had happened to the rest of us last night, Aiden had not been in danger.
Bu
t that raised the question: who had? Because they’d sure wanted somebody. Gessa had been right—they’d made a beeline for the stairs and never so much as looked at anything else.
“Why do the Svarestri want a troll kid dead?” I asked.
“They don’t!” Claire said, whirling around.