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“You will be going into the human territory,” Rhys warned. “I can’t spare a force to guard you—”
“I don’t need one. I travel faster on my own.” His chin lifted. “I will find her. And if there’s an army to bring back, or at least some way for her own story to sway the human forces … I’ll find a way to do that, too.”
My friends glanced to each other. Mor said, “It will be—very dangerous.”
A half smile curved Lucien’s mouth. “Good. It’d be boring otherwise.”
Only Cassian returned the grin. “I’ll load you up with some Illyrian steel.”
Elain now watched Lucien warily. Blinking every now and then. She revealed no hint of whatever she might be seeing—sensing. None.
Rhys pushed off the archway. “I’ll winnow you as close as we can get—to wherever you need to be to begin your hunt.” Lucien had indeed been studying all those maps lately. Perhaps at the quiet behest of whatever force had guided us all. My mate added, “Thank you.”
Lucien shrugged. And it was that gesture alone that made me say at last, “Are you sure?”
He only glanced at Elain, whose face was again a calm void while she traced a finger over the embroidery on the couch cushions. “Yes. Let me help in whatever way I can.”
Even Nesta seemed relatively concerned. Not for him, no doubt, but the fact that if he were hurt, or killed … What would it do to Elain? The severing of the mating bond … I shut out the thought of what it’d do to me.
I asked Lucien, “When do you want to leave?”
“Tomorrow.” I hadn’t heard him sound so assertive in … a long time. “I’ll prepare for the rest of today, and leave after breakfast tomorrow morning.” He added to Rhys, “If that works for you.”
My mate waved an idle hand. “For what you’re about to do, Lucien, we’ll make it work.”
Silence fell once more. If he could find that missing queen and perhaps bring back some sort of human army, or at least sway the mortal forces from Hybern’s thrall … If I could find a way to get the Carver to fight for us that did not involve using that terrible mirror … Would it be enough?
The meeting with the High Lords, it seemed, would decide that.
Rhys jerked his chin at Azriel, who took it as an order to vanish—to no doubt check in on Amren.
“Find out if Keir and his Darkbringers had any attacks,” my mate ordered Mor and Cassian, who nodded and left as well. Alone with my sisters and Lucien, Rhys and I caught Nesta’s eye.
And for once, my sister rose to her feet and came toward us, the three of us not so subtly heading upstairs. Leaving Lucien and Elain alone.
It was an effort not to linger atop the landing, to listen to what was said.
If anything was said at all.
But I made myself take Rhys’s hand, flinching at the blood still caked on his skin, and led him to our bathing room. Nesta’s bedroom door clicked shut down the hall.
Rhys wordlessly watched me as I turned on the bathtub faucet and grabbed a washcloth from the chest against the wall. I took up a seat at the edge of the tub, testing the water temperature against my wrist, and patted the porcelain rim beside me. “Sit.”
He obeyed, his head drooping as he sat.
I took one of his hands, guided it to the gurgling stream of water, and held it beneath.
Red flowed off his skin, eddying in the water beneath. I plucked up the cloth and scrubbed gently, more blood flaking off, water splashing onto the still-immaculate sleeves of his jacket. “Why not shield your hands?”
“I wanted to feel it—their lives ending beneath my fingers.”
Cold, flat words.
I scrubbed at his nails, the blood wedged into the cracks where it met his skin. The arcs beneath. “Why is it different this time?” Different from the Attor’s ambush, Hybern’s attack in the woods, the attack on Velaris … all of it. I’d seen him in a rage before, but never … never so detached. As if morality and kindness were things that lurked on a surface far, far above the frozen depths he’d plunged into.
I turned his palm into the spray, getting at the space between his fingers.
“What is the point of it,” he said, “of all this power … if I can’t protect those who are most vulnerable in my city? If it can’t detect an incoming attack?”
“Even Azriel didn’t learn of it—”
“The king used an archaic spell and walked in the front door. If I can’t …” Rhys shook his head, and I lowered his now-clean hand and reached for the other. More blood stained the water. “If I can’t protect them here … How can …” His throat bobbed. I lifted his chin with a hand. Icy rage had slipped into something a bit shattered and aching. “Those priestesses have endured enough. I failed them today. That library … it will no longer feel safe for them. The one place they’ve had to themselves, where they knew they were protected … Hybern took that away today.”
And from him. He had gone to that library for his own need for healing—for safety.
He said, “Perhaps it’s punishment for taking away Velaris from Mor—in granting Keir access here.”
“You can’t think like that—it won’t end well.” I finished washing his other hand, rinsed the cloth, then began swiping it along his neck, his temples … Soothing, warm presses, not to clean but to relax.
“I’m not angry about the bargain,” he said, closing his eyes as I swiped the cloth over his brow. “In case you were … worried.”
“I wasn’t.”
Rhys opened his eyes, as if he could hear the smile in my voice, and studied me while I chucked the cloth into the tub with a wet slap and turned off the faucet.
He was still studying me when I took his face in my damp hands. “What happened today was not your fault,” I said, the words filling the sun-drenched bathing room. “None of it. It all lies on Hybern—and when we face the king again, we will remember these attacks, these injuries to our people. We forgot Amarantha’s spell book—to our own loss. But we have a Book of our own—hopefully with the spell we need. And for now … for now, we will prepare, and we will face the consequences. For now, we move ahead.”
He turned his head to kiss my palm. “Remind me to give you a salary raise.”