Page 85

I’m glad he doesn’t sugarcoat it for me. And yet it stabs me in the chest like a rusted nail. I think of Perg’s mother, casting herself into the canyon ...

Unach would never support us. Even Perg would never support us. And if they won’t, no one will.

We’re doomed before we begin.

“Which is why I’ve requested my own quarters,” he continues. “They would be much smaller, but more ... private.”

My face warms. “Oh,” I say stupidly. “But this ... The law ...”

“There is no law against it ... officially.” He leans his elbows on his knees.

I study him, the concern knotted at the corners of his eyes. “Because it should be obvious without the council declaring it.”

He nods. “Because aside from Perg, it’s unheard of.”

That wilted hope from last night grows new roots.

A moment passes in silence before I ask, “Why did you change your mind, Azmar? Last night ...” I can’t find a way to finish the sentence without feeling foolish. I can still taste him on my lips. My pulse is erratic in the aura of his calmness.

“I did not change it,” he said, allowing an iota of panic to surge into me. “I merely accepted it.”

I study his profile, and then his eyes when he turns toward me, so resolute. I reach forward and splay my hand on his chest, over his shirt, where his heart is. Despite the firmness of his voice and the stoniness of his features, his heart beats swiftly, one hard pulse for every two of mine.

A strange jubilation burns in my core, and despite everything—Cagmar, Unach, the council, the laws—I find myself smiling.

His lip quirks at my countenance. “Did you think me heartless, Lark?”

I don’t pull away. “Only worried.”

His hand touches my thigh, and he leans in, but before I can kiss him again, loud footsteps sound outside the door.

I’m up so fast—smoothing my skirt, skittering away from the fire—that the room spins.

Unach barges in with such intensity that the door crashes against the wall behind it. Azmar stands, his expression utterly stoic, his body poised as though ready to fight.

My gut hits the floor. There is no way Unach could already know—

“Seven trollis,” she says, and confusion replaces my trepidation. “Seventrollis adolescents murdered, their heads left on pikes for us to find!”

My jaw drops in shock. And given the scathing look Unach throws my way, I know exactly who the perpetrators are.

Humans.

Chapter 19

Ufreya the queen and Sankan the oak tree.

Did the stars predict this?

Azmar answers Unach first. “Where? When?”

Unach whirls around and kicks the door shut. It seems all of Cagmar shakes with the frame. She stares it down, as though it might attempt to war with her, before turning to face us. Her green skin is especially bright, her glare hotter than the fire behind me.

“East fan,” she says. It’s a trollis district, not anything labeled on human-made maps. “Right on the border of the East Arrow.”

From what I can remember of trollis geography, she means somewhere south of Dorys, the township I’d run from after my father’s men attacked me in the stable I was sleeping in, in the earliest hours of the morning.

I shudder and hug myself. “Were they scouts, or—”