“Right, but. . .” He tapped the page once with his pen. “I don’t believe your blue light thing is actually meant to be used as a weapon.”
“What else would it be for?”
“Not sure.” He rubbed his brow. “I need to think.”
“Okay.” I took a step back. “Shall I come back later?”
“No. I’ll come see you at training. Tell Blade I’ll be there: he can get the others to back off.”
“Okay.” I looked at the door then back at Jase. “So this is what the crazy scientist part of you looks like?”
He stopped writing and slowly looked up, turning his gaze on me a second later. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I held both hands up. “Go ahead and theorise. If you can figure out how to make me melt stone again, that’d—”
“I’m more worried about your headaches, right now, sweet girl,” he said, and turned away to scribble things down. “If you wanna melt stone again, just go sit on the beach with one in your hand, Ara, and think back to how you felt the other day. Reliving the same emotions should give you the ability to recreate the scenario. Just—” He stopped and held up his arm, sporting a smart grin. “Do it alone.”
I laughed. “Okay. Maybe I’ll go out there after training today, if I have time.”
“Okay.” He went back to his pages. “And, Ara?”
“Mm?” I stopped by the open door.
“Don’t forget this.”
“Oh.” I skipped over and took the translated spell from him. “Thanks.”
“Any time,” he said, without even looking up.
The training hall was empty, except for the lone knight in the corner, taking out what looked like a year’s worth of fury on the punching bag. His arms were tight, the muscles lean and long, covered in a thin layer of perspiration, which I gathered wasn’t so much from the punching but from the restraint he was using not to break that bag.
“Mike?”
He looked up and wiped his wrist over his chin, then hit the bag again. “You’re early.”
“I know. I uh—” I looked out the windows to see if anyone else was coming. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“What about?”
I stopped with both hands on the weighted bag to steady it. “You okay, Mike?”
“Yeah.” He gave it another hit, the sheer force absorbed by my buckling knees. “Just girl troubles.”
“Girl troubles?”
There was something odd about the way he looked at me then, as if maybe he thought I already knew—or should know. “What’d you want, Ara?”
“Um.” I wiped my hands on my jeans. “Do you remember the night I fell off the lighthouse?”
He frowned at me, then turned to the bench behind him and grabbed a towel, disappearing under it for a second. “Why?”
“If I tell you something, will you promise not to investigate further until I say so?”
His scruffy hair stuck up from out of the towel first, followed by his wide caramel eyes. “I make no guarantees.”
“I thought you’d say that.” I spun on my heel and headed for the door.
“Wait,” he called, grabbing my arm. “Just . . . what do you know, Ara? If it’s something that puts you in danger, I can’t—”
“It doesn’t. But I’ve heard from two people so far that if I know the full story, it could lead to some problems between David and I.”
“See? Now, that’s concern enough right there.” He flopped the towel over his shoulder.
“I know. But you either agree to my terms, or I walk.”
He repositioned the towel. “What terms?”
“Promise me you won’t rough up my source.”
He rocked back on his heels, his lip curling in disgust. “Your source is Jason, isn’t it?”
I nodded. I could see Mike was in a tough spot here. He knew I wouldn’t come to him unless the information I had was good, but he also knew I wouldn’t share one shred of it if I thought Jason might get hurt.
“Fine,” he rescinded. “I won’t torture the little shit for information. Now, what d’you wanna tell me?”
“You hit me.”
His brow folded, but then he laughed.
“Seriously, Mike. You hit me because you thought I slept with Arthur.”
“What?” he coughed. “Ara, that’s . . . I’d remember thinking something like that.”
“Precisely.” I smirked.
His arms fell heavily to his sides. “Nob-head erased it.”
“Jason, yes.”
“And that’s why I don’t remember coming down here the night you fell.” He looked over to the weapons shelf where the cuffs sat—all lined up like shining reminders. “So, what, you were down here, and I. . .?”
“You could smell Arthur had been here, too.”
“What were you doing here with him?”
“Talking. Where no one could hear—”
“Why?” he cut in before I could finish.
“We were trying to find a way to save David.”
“From what?”
“Using the dagger to kill Drake—”
“You knew about it then?”
I nodded. “And I didn’t have sex with Arthur, Mike,” I promised. “Except. . .”
“I wouldn’t listen,” he said with a nod. “And I. . .”
“You slapped me.”
He looked at my face for a long moment, his eyes going smaller with thought. “I’d never do that, Ara.”
“I know. Jason said he found you the next day, packing to leave because of it. He knew I needed you here, so he erased it.”
“And you believe him?”
I nodded.
Mike’s hands went into his hair. He walked backward until he found the bench, then sat down. “Ara, I’m—”
“It’s okay, Mike.” I appeared beside him. “You were stressed and worried. I get that. But I know you. I mean, I don’t have any memory of you coming down here, only my talk with Arthur beforehand,” I said. “But I know you wouldn’t have hurt me. It was probably a pathetic little tap.”
“That doesn't make it okay, Ar.” He stood up again, slipping a shirt over his head and down his ribs. “I’m the chief of security—the one person in the world who is trusted to protect you, and I . . . I hit you?” His eyes narrowed as he muttered the last words in stunned disbelief.
“Aw, Mike?” I stood up. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No.” He opened himself up for a hug. “I’m glad you did, Ara. It’s . . . I should know.”
I fell into his sweaty embrace. “If it means anything, Mike, I forgive you.”
“Aw.” He kissed my head firmly. “You’re a good girl, Ara. But, I. . .”
“You?”
“You ended up falling off a lighthouse after that. Are you sure I didn’t—”
“You didn’t throw me off it, Mike. You went up to your room, and Jason took me back to bed.”
“Then . . . does he know how you ended up out there that night?”
I nodded. “I think Arthur knows something, too. But. . .”
“But?”
“Well, Falcon and I have been doing some research, and—”
“Falcon?”
I nodded. “He’s my go-to guy.”
Mike half frowned, half smiled. I could tell he was as pleased as he was shocked.
“Anyway,” I continued, “we think maybe I jum—”
“Ara?” Falcon swept into the room, flanked by Blade and Quaid, the three of them making an awful lot of racket—certainly enough to drown out anything I might have said.
“Whazzup, guys?” Mike flashed them a toothy grin, turning his head to whisper, “We’ll talk later,” under his breath.
I nodded, patting his arm, and Mike skipped off into the mix as if the guys hadn’t just tried to silence me. However, I was not so willing to play nice. Instead, I marched straight up to Falcon at full speed, grabbed his giant arm and hauled him outside. “What was that all about?”
He leaned down a little so the general distance from his mouth to my ear wouldn’t factor out discretion. “If you tell him you jumped, you can forget living, Ara. He’ll cover you with guards twenty-four-seven, and he’ll call David home.”
“He has a right to know, Falcon. How can he protect me if he doesn’t know what’s going on?”
“He’s not the one protecting you right now. I am.”
“He’s my friend.”
“I know. But when it comes to your safety, that is the very thing clouding his vision. I still don’t know why you jumped or if it might’ve had something to do with David, so I don’t want the king back here until we’ve had a chance to figure it out.”
We stepped apart as a group of knights walked between us and into the hall, both of us staying quiet until they were well and truly inside and the only noise out here was the gentle summer breeze and the chirping of birds in the trees.
“Mike knows you butted in deliberately then, Fal.”
He nodded. “And I’ll tell him it’s because you were about to say something I didn’t want Quaid and Blade to overhear.”
I looked at the three of them in the centre of the training hall, laughing loudly like they were trying to hear their own voices over a storm. “They know, don’t they—Blade and Quaid?”
Falcon nodded. “I briefed them.”
I folded my arms in, watching the man across the room that I was once so close to—the man I could trust with anything. “It’s so wrong that you’re leaving Mike out of the loop, Falcon.”
He looked at Mike, too. “I know. But he’s too close to you, Ara. I believe this is best—and I’ve got ten years of Special Forces training to back my claim.”
“Special Forces, huh?” I elbowed him softly.
“Come on.” He winked, leading me away with a gentle hand to my shoulder. “Let’s finish up with training for today, then we’ll go to the library and put in a few more hours’ research on the Mark.”
“M’kay,” I said glumly. “If I’m not crippled with a headache after.”
“Something tells me you’ll be fine.”
I frowned up at his grin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Ara?” Mike cut in, jogging over. “You’re up first today. We’re gonna do weapons training after dinner instead. I need to make a report on your blue light for David.”
“Why?”