Page 32

Chapter

Thirty-One

ANYA

I jump, awakening on the common room floor at the sound of banging on the door. I blink blearily, my heart stutters a little with hope that it might be Daghel but I am more worried that it might not be. I push to my feet and head cautiously for the door. What if it is someone Vorn sent to kill me? That is a strong possibility as well.

“Anya, let me in,” Linahna calls through the door and she bangs on it again.

Relief swamps me and I run to the door as I try not to worry about the fact that it is not Daghel coming for me. Throwing open the locks, I pull open the door just as she shoves against it, making us both stumble back into the rookery. She barely seems to notice that she momentarily is off balance because she grabs for me, urgency bright in her eyes.

“Anya, Daghel is okay. He’s alive!”

My knees grow weak, and I nearly crumble to the ground, but she catches me and forces me upright. “No time for that now. Listen—I was right! After I left you, I went to Vorn’s room while he was busy feasting, and you have no idea. He is in thick with some of the outlier clans, all of them ruled by males who have overthrown their queens. They call themselves something absurd like ‘the Council. Apparently, when Daghel brought you here, it gave him exactly the opening that he was looking for to bring a gathol under his control and execute an experiment that the Council has been talking about for some time.” She shakes her head in frustration. “I do not know the details but all I know is that all of this has been orchestrated in a way I never could have imagined.”

“And what about Daghel?” I whisper. “You said that he’s okay?—”

“He is, he is. For now,” she amends with a grimace. “He is imprisoned. Drisk, too I imagine. I do not know what is going about but everyone seems afraid of them. And Anya—he avenged my people. He slaughtered nearly every warrior who participated in that attack before a pair of mages restrained him. Mages! Can you believe that my brother has had a mage here the entire time, and another had newly arrived?”

My breath shudders in and out of me as I grip her arms. I am unspeakably proud of Daghel but I am also confused. Why wouldn’t Vorn just kill him?

“There is something else, Daghel is not quite Daghel,” she says in a low voice and my gaze snaps to her in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he is a Daghel, but he is also not. There is something strange about him that I cannot quite put my finger on.”

“Did he say anything?”

She nods. “He asked me to bring you to him.”