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Entitled and arrogant bastard was right.

He’d never found the lost city, of course, and thus dismissed the rumors. “You found it?” Alder asked.

“They foundus,” Evora said quietly, swaying with her horse. “And then they led us to Velentis.”

Byus, she meant those of Asra Domm who’d not sworn fealty to Massie and declared themselves an enemy.

“Tell me you do not believe what Massie is saying,” Alder said through his teeth.

“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” she snapped. “But I do know Massie has grown so powerful that it’s hard to stand against him, and with so many of us at the Rift, fighting the war…Asra Domm couldn’t put up much of a fight.”

But that was what bothered Alder the most: the idea that his mother’s closest advisor could have led so many against her. That the queen—the figurehead of Weald, who’d held the curse away from Weald’s borders for over a century with her power—could have succumbed to that groveling, deluded narcissist.

Alder remembered the veiled woman traveling with Massie. “Have you heard anything about a witch?”

Josephine flinched in his arms.

Interesting.

Evora’s gaze flickered to Josephine. Not because she’d noticed Josephine’s reaction, but because she was silently asking whether or not the mortal could be trusted.

Alder nodded. It pricked him to do so, because her trustworthiness highlighted his own deceitfulness.

Evora leaned nearer. “I have. None of us have seen her, so if Massie’s really working with one, he’s kept her well hidden.” A pause. “What have you heard?”

Alder nearly confessed his suspicions to his cousin, but held off. It would incite far more conversation than he wanted to have right now, especially with Serinbor present, so he decided to wait until he had a better idea of what he was walking into. “Nothing more than you.”

Which was true. What he’dseen, however, left him greatly disturbed.

Massie had always had a following—a damned nuisance for his mother, especially after she dismissed him from her private council all those years ago. And if that witch had accompanied him here…well, it explained why his mother hadn’t been able to defeat him, and why the rest of Asra Domm would have sworn allegiance to Massie: they were afraid. And fear was a very powerful motivator. The most powerful of all, in Alder’s opinion.

Men would do anything to save their own skin. Even betray those closest to them.

“She never stopped searching for you, Alder,” Evora said after a moment.

Her words were a knife to Alder’s blackened heart and he looked sharply away.

“Actually, we were on a mission for her to find you when Massie attacked. When we returned, it was too late, and Massie had appointed himself over Weald, which forced those still loyal to your family into exile.” And more quietly, she added, “It was Abecka who took us in.”

Alder went rigid. He knew that name; everyone did.

It was underherlegacy that the Court of Light had fallen. She’d been the wife to King Issachar, and she had mothered his two sons, Edom and Jakobián—the two princes responsible for incurring Speech’s wrath and cursing them all. Issachar and Edom had perished long ago, but Jakobián and Abecka had vanished from sight and story, and most assumed them dead.

“The queen of Light yet lives?” Alder said.

Evora gave him a long glance and opened her mouth to say more but was promptly cut off by Serinbor’s grating voice.

“Evora. A word, if you please.”

Evora shot Alder a commiserative glance, then turned her face forward and urged her horse to the front, where Serinbor waited, glaring at Alder. Alder was glad to see that Serinbor’s bottom lip was still bleeding. He whispered something to Evora, who nudged her horse into a gallop, riding on ahead with her long auburn hair streaming behind her.

Alder had not ventured this far into the ancient woods, not in averylong time. Dangerous spirits of old dwelled here—at least, that’s what everyone claimed, and Alder had no reason to disbelieve it. This wood had existed since the dawn of time, preserving the unwieldy power of the ancients, and that power had spooked him on more than one occasion. Many kith had wandered into this wood never to return, or if they did, they’d gone mad.

Oddly, no one in their group seemed distressed.

They rounded a dense copse of trees when Alder first spotted the crater. It was a natural bowl in the earth, rimmed by trees whose boughs arched over it, shielding it from the sky. Alder felt a prickling ofeloitover his skin, and Josephine tensed in his arms.

She feels it too,he thought with some alarm.