Page 26

Malik

M alik painted the symbols for about the tenth time. They were perfect. He knew they were. He checked the book again to be sure.

Seconds passed, and the blood still refused to fade and activate. A deep grumble left his lips, and he slammed a fist on the table, causing its contents to leap and rattle. “Damnable thing.”

He’d been trying to work out a containment spell, something to keep the papers for his detection spell safe before he met up with their targets. He needed to be absolutely certain of the papers’ accuracy, and he couldn’t be if the spell was triggered incidentally before his meeting. He wouldn’t harm innocents if it could be avoided. They still had time … through it grew shorter every day.

“No luck?” Drystan entered from the adjoining room where Ceridwen lay in her enchanted slumber. Dark circles lingered under his eyes. It must have been days since he’d shaved, for the beginnings of a beard clung to his strong jaw. Even his clothes seemed to hang more loosely on his frame.

Malik wiped the blood from his hands and tossed the stained cloth onto the table. “None.” He crossed his arms, leaning back in the ornate wooden chair. The swirls and designs on the back sat uncomfortably against his spine. Why his cousin had such uncomfortable furniture in his rooms was beyond him. Were he the king, Malik would have burned just about everything in the royal quarters and started anew.

Actually, now that he thought of it, Drystan pretty much had. Whoever had picked out the replacement furnishings hadn’t done their new monarch any favors.

The king wandered through the room like a ghost, there but not. “There was a rally in the city today, calling for me to step down. Did you know? They said a monster shouldn’t sit on the throne.”

Malik huffed. “My father was the real monster,” he mumbled. “Started by the dragons again, this rally?” It seemed since the accidents had failed to get their desired results from the nobility, someone had been stirring the commoners instead.

Drystan shrugged. “Who can say?” He stopped near the desk and stared at the shuttered window. Little light filtered in, but anyone who saw the king might assume he stared at some grand scene instead of plain, dark wood. “Perhaps I should give in to their demands. If it would save her…” He glanced back toward the other room.

“No,” Malik said decisively. “Not yet. We have no assurance that they’d keep to their word.”

“But if they did?” Drystan stared at his cousin with a haunted gaze.

“The risk is too great. If we can’t find them, stop them, it may come to that. But not yet.”

Drystan nodded slowly. “Not yet.”

Malik glanced back at the desk strewn with his failed attempts. He frowned as his mind worked. Suddenly, his attention snared on something, or the lack thereof, and his blood ran cold. “Drystan.”

“What?” The king seemed to come out of a trance.

“I enchanted that paper, the one on the edge of the desk there.” Malik pointed to it. “I accidentally got a few drops of blood on the lower edge, and they dried there…”

Drystan was no more than a foot or two away, certainly close enough to activate the detection spell, yet the color had not changed.

The king stiffened. “Fuck. Are you sure?”

“Positive.” Malik snatched up the paper and, with Drystan on his heels, hurried into the other room. He only slowed as he neared the queen. She looked exactly the same as the day she’d fallen into her cursed slumber. The sight never failed to unnerve him.

Once at her bedside, he lowered the paper and waited. The spot he’d bespelled turned black only a few heartbeats later.

“Fuck.” Malik crumpled the paper in frustration and hurled it at the wall.

Drystan’s answering bellow of rage was so loud that Malik swore again. Damn it all, if anyone heard that they would have to get even more creative with their lies.

“How?” the king fumed. “Try the spell again on me. There must be a mistake.”

But he already had. “That wasn’t the only page on the desk I spelled.” Malik gritted his teeth, gnawing on the implications. “When was the last time you used dark magic?”

A shadow passed over the king’s face, and he looked away. “Nearly two weeks ago. The spells did not work, and then that night…”

Malik nodded in understanding. He’d seen the result the next morning, the fresh grooves in the stone floor of the secret room. “There must be a time limit to it, then. Perhaps the spell can only detect active dark magic, or the recent presence of it.”

“Fuck,” Drystan said again, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “So all of Bronwyn’s paintings that we set up in the castle—”

“Should still work, but only if the person passing by them has an active spell or has recently used dark magic,” Malik confirmed. Not to mention they were a vast improvement over bare walls or hastily acquired paintings to replace Rhion’s. Bronwyn might consider them not up to her usual standard, what with how she’d rushed to complete so many so quickly, but all her creations were beautiful in his eyes.

“Yet the painting changed at the party last night?” Drystan asked.

Malik had filled him in on the that part of the evening, as well as Bronwyn’s suspicions of Miss Davies and his encounter with Lord Osric. As for what had happened in the study and the carriage ride… That, he’d thought about more than anything else, but he hadn’t spoken a word of it.

“It did. Which means we’re looking in the right place.” Hopefully. He had to believe that. If whoever cursed Ceridwen was long gone, hidden away in some hovel in the woods … well… He shut the grim thought down. “And we must be quick. Bronwyn already planned to write to Miss Davies this morning, and I can get in touch with Lord Osric as well, maybe ask him to join me for a drink at a club. We’ll confirm our suspicions before the time runs out or move on to the next in our list of possible suspects.”

“Don’t take too much time,” Drystan reminded him, his voice hard, his eyes cold.

The king would go to unsavory lengths to save his wife.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, but they only had two weeks left at best.