Page 24

CHAPTER 24

C allum hadn’t been fooled by Hawk’s restraint in the courtyard. The king was nothing if not patient, and as Thaddeus showed them through the halls of the monastery, Callum could feel the anger in the snap of the king’s boots against the stone floor, see it in the way he balled his fists at his sides. As if he wanted nothing more than to wheel around and punch Callum in the jaw.

Hawk waited until Thaddeus had ushered them into the master’s own sitting room and his guards had searched the place and declared it safe. He waited until they had disappeared back into the hall, taking up their stations outside the door, until Thaddeus had seated himself on a trunk in the corner of the room—not too close, but not too far either, as though he expected this conversation to require intervention at some point.

And then, just for good measure, he waited more. He just stood there, arms folded across his chest, the point of his crown glinting among his light hair.

There was no point in saying anything. Hawk would speak when he was ready to speak .

In the meantime, Callum decided to pour himself a drink. Surely the master kept decent wine in here. He made it himself, didn’t he? Callum did his best to saunter, to take his time, pretending he couldn’t feel Hawk’s eyes boring into his back as he swirled the wine in its decanter, then splashed a good amount into a cup.

He supposed it was decent wine. A more discerning taste would take the time to pick apart the threads of cherry and oak, the sweetness, the tart aftertaste.

Callum swallowed it down too quickly for any of that. Then he poured a second cup, turning in time to catch Thaddeus rolling his eyes in exasperation.

“What the blazes were you thinking?”

Hawk had the quiet voice going, the one that could frighten his advisors into pretending they agreed with his worst ideas.

Callum held up a finger. “Hold on. If we’re talking now, I need to drink this.” He drained the second goblet, holding Hawk’s gaze as long as he could. He wasn’t sure exactly what he expected or wanted. In some distant part of his mind, he knew that drinking himself into a daze would not help him face this conversation.

Yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop, either.

When he was done, he set the goblet on the nearest bookshelf. “All right. I’m ready.”

The king was standing so still he might have been made of marble. Callum had seen it before. It was the calm before the storm. “You stole my soldiers.”

“Technically, they were my?—”

“No.” Hawk slammed a fist down on the desk, scattering a pile of papers to the floor. “ Technically , they are mine. I’m the king, so technically , everything is mine. The soldiers. The cities. Even your sorry ass, distasteful though that fact may be.”

Callum knew he should take this seriously, that Hawk could have him dragged away at any moment. But he couldn’t stop himself as he tilted his head, adopting his best bemused expression. It was a cover for the anger, like a lid set on a pot to keep the boiling water from spilling across the range. “Really?” he said, drawing the word into a long, mocking drawl. “ Everything? ”

“Callum,” Thaddeus said, a warning in his tone.

But Callum was done pretending the king was the reasonable person in this room, that his anger didn’t stem from his desire to punish him.

He’d spent his childhood chasing after Hawk, making sure the heir to the throne didn’t fall from a tree and break his royal head. It had been a job, yes, assigned to him by King Magnus. But it had also been a calling, one he’d taken very seriously.

And they’d been friends, damn it. No, they’d been brothers . The first time they lost their heads with drink, it had been together. The first time they’d ridden into a border skirmish, hands clenching their swords in fear, it had been together.

“Are the birds in the sky yours, then?” Callum felt his chest growing warm, the suppressed anger rising to the surface. “What about the Etrans? Do they belong to you?”

“You know very well what I meant.” Despite his desk-punching outburst, the king was disturbingly calm.

Callum poured another goblet of wine, hands shaking. “ Your General Moore called your emissary a whore. Is that truly the man you want as captain? As general ?”

Hawk’s lips thinned, his disapproval evident. He was a lot of things, but a judgmental snipe wasn’t one of them. He’d never liked the way Laena had been chased from her own capital, shunned for supposed love. “I will deal with Moore,” he said. “At the moment, I’m dealing with you.”

Callum set the goblet back on the shelf, untouched. Mages, but he wanted it. But he needed his wits about him for this conversation. “What of the attacks?” he asked. “The assassins? Silerith is stirring, and you’re wasting time lecturing me.”

Hawk glanced at Thaddeus, then back to Callum, as if he was not sure how much he wanted to reveal. He drew in a deep breath, as if to calm himself.

A pity. He was easier to deal with when he shouted.

After King Magnus’s death, Hawk had shut him out entirely. He might have blamed Thaddeus, too, for defying his orders and running off to join the poisonkeepers. Instead, he blamed Callum, who hadn’t wanted the younger prince to risk himself riding alone through bandit-infested woods. The King’s Guard had been so intent on stopping heart-tithers that they hadn’t been paying enough attention to the rest of their country.

None of that mattered. It only mattered that Callum had been absent from the capital. That King Magnus had died. And that Hawk would not forgive him.

He hadn’t shouted. He hadn’t lectured. But he’d made it abundantly clear, in every way possible, that the friendship they had cultivated since childhood had died along with his father.

Now, he was glaring at Callum like he thought anything he said here might be repeated. Like Callum’s disloyalty ran deeper than one mistake.

Perhaps he couldn’t be faulted for that. Callum had ignored Hawk’s wishes, had taken the delegation to Etra. And it had turned into enough of a disaster that Hawk had felt it necessary to leave the capital and come to Inasvale himself.

“I’m no traitor,” Callum said, and though he softened his tone as best he could, the words still came out as a growl.

Again, Hawk glanced at Thaddeus. Brothers in reality, even if Thaddeus’s status as a poisonkeeper should mean that he no longer considered himself part of the family. It was never that simple.

“My spies have reported no indication that Silerith is stirring,” Hawk finally said.

A retort sprang to the tip of Callum’s tongue, but for once he managed to suppress it. Hawk was opening a door, inviting Callum into a conversation that, if his silent exchange with Thaddeus was any indication, had been going on for some time.

He wondered what the king had seen in his brother’s face that convinced him it was safe to speak.

“The crystal—” Callum began, but Thaddeus shook his head.

“It isn’t a Sil crystal,” he said. His voice was soft, as though he were attempting to talk down a pair of unruly horses. Or hounds. “It’s from the Miragelands. We cannot know who planted it there.”

Without realizing what he was doing, Callum reached for the wine. More for something to hold onto than anything else, as if the goblet could tether him to this world. It was one thing to suspect the thing was evidence of the Miragelands. For Thaddeus to confirm it had come directly from that place? He shuddered, wishing he could banish the thought.

Demons, he wished Laena were here. Should they not be holding this conversation with her? She was the one who had discovered the crystal.

She was the one who’d discovered the crystal. And her country claimed increased activity out of Silerith was a threat. Callum’s head snapped up, suspicion sending renewed sparks of anger through his chest. “You cannot be implying that Princess Laena is in league with the mages.”

Thaddeus looked at his hands. “We don’t have enough information to determine who planted it,” he said carefully.

They didn’t know of Laena’s magic. They couldn’t know of it. Her magic was not a heart-tithe. It was born of the Vales, not mage-made poison. Even had he not trusted her to tell him the truth—and demons, he did —he knew what a heart-tithe felt like. And her magic wasn’t it.

Aside from the physical proof, the smell and the feeling of it, he had never seen a heart-tither rendered unconscious by their own magic .

His fingers tightened around the stem of the goblet. “But you cannot rule out her involvement, either?”

“That’s not how evidence works, brother.” Thaddeus’s eyes were sympathetic, as if he knew far more than he was saying, even more than Callum would admit to himself. As if it were no great task at all to reach into his very heart and examine his feelings.

The thought was disconcerting. Callum wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know what Thaddeus would see there.

Hawk only sighed. Clearly, they’d been in communication about all of this, while Callum had been left in the dark. “You’d best show me,” the king said.

They did not try to prevent Callum from accompanying them to the magepool. He’d never seen it; he didn’t want to see it, even now. It was a place for poisonkeepers and kings, not disgraced captains. Not commoners. The guards taking up the rear of the group kept casting anxious glances at one another, and Callum had to suppress the urge to give them a few words of encouragement.

They would not want to hear it from him.

Thaddeus led them deeper into the monastery, down narrow staircases where Callum’s shoulders brushed both walls and into the ancient part of the keep. It was damp here, musty, and Thaddeus sneezed several times before they’d reached the bottom.

At which point he unlocked a door that led to the longest passageway Callum had ever seen. The ceiling was low enough that he had to duck, the walls pressing in on either side. They walked for long enough that he thought they must have exited the outer walls of the city. The only sound was the shuffling of their footsteps, and the occasional drop of water splashing to the stone floor.

Not even the rats wanted to hang out here.

At length—great length, during which Callum remembered how late he had been up searching the bars for Laena, how late it had been when he’d finally laid his head down and how he’d stayed awake even longer, afraid to move lest he disturb her sleep—the passage finally opened onto a forest.

This was not like the forest where they’d met the bandits, with young trees and great amounts of underbrush. This forest was old, the trunks wide, with so many leafy vines snaking up them that it was difficult to tell one tree from another. The canopy was so thick, the clearing so dark, that for a moment he wondered whether they’d spent the day in the tunnel and emerged into evening. But the occasional pocket of blue sky told him the afternoon was still young.

This forest did not feel like it was in Aglye at all. A deep, frightened part of Callum’s mind wondered if it was in the Vales at all.

The forest floor here was paved in well-kept stone. No weeds poking up from between the cracks, no vines snaking along the ground.

And straight ahead, up a shallow set of steps, the pool.

It was the size of a small pond, the water too black, too still. It seemed impossible that no branches could have fallen to the surface, no seeds, not even a yellow streak of pollen. The surface didn’t even reflect the trees above; it was a block of uninterrupted obsidian, more like stone than water.

At the far end, a single torch burned, its flame an unnatural purple. It looked so much like Laena’s crystal that Callum could not help but shudder.

“The magepool,” Thaddeus said, his voice little more than a whisper. There was awe in his tone, but it was the kind of frightened awe that promised even the poisonkeeper—the supposed protector of this place, and of all the Vales—would rather have been somewhere else. Anywhere else.

This was the place where the mages had entered the Vales. Many centuries ago, they’d been driven back by a band of rebellious humans who’d found a way to break their enthrallment just long enough to drive the mages back into the Miragelands.

This was the place, both holy and corrupt, that the poisonkeepers guarded. To prevent the mages from rising again.

At least, if one believed the legends. And standing here, facing the stillness of the water, the ancient aura of the trees, Callum did believe them. It would be impossible not to.

He wondered whether the master knew they were here. Even he could not gainsay the king himself, surely. Hawk was not entirely wrong when he said that everything belonged to him—this place included—though he’d never been one to say it out loud before.

Hawk let out a breath, then made for the stairs.

“What are you doing?” Callum asked.

The king ignored the question as he knelt on the top step and reached for the pool. Callum started forward, ready to intervene in whatever this foolishness was, but Thaddeus moved first, skirting past Callum and hurrying up the stairs.

The poisonkeeper would prevent the king from touching the poisonous pool. He would talk sense into Hawk, whose eyes looked nearly as dark as the water itself.

But Thaddeus didn’t put a hand on Hawk. Instead, he withdrew a pouch from deep within his robes and held it out to his brother. Hawk nodded in thanks, plucking something out of it and pressing it into his mouth as Thaddeus retreated down the stairs, coming to stand beside Callum. He was all nervous energy; he kept fidgeting with his robes and adjusting his spectacles. His attention did not leave his brother.

Callum felt like he’d been dropped into a story he did not understand .

Closing his eyes, Hawk touched a fingertip to the surface of the pool. The water should have rippled, if only slightly. But the only indication that this was water, that the pool wasn’t made of pure stone, was the fact that Hawk’s fingernail disappeared into its depths.

Callum started forward, but Thaddeus laid a hand on his elbow. “Just watch.”

Callum watched. There was nothing else to do. The king crouched before the pool, half his hand now submerged in its depths. His eyes were still closed, lips pressed tight, and his skin had gone so pale it seemed impossible he could still be conscious. The shadows beneath his eyes seemed to darken.

Finally, the king lifted his hand from the pool, allowing a stream of water to drip from his fingertips. It fell too quickly, the drops landing heavily, leaving no ripples. As if they’d simply been called back home to rejoin the rest of the water.

At the side of the pool, the purple lantern flickered.

“Thad is right,” Hawk said, his voice raw. “The barrier is thinning.”

Thaddeus released Callum’s arm. He hurried to Hawk’s side and handed him the pouch once more. Hawk withdrew several leaves, shoving them into his mouth without examining them. A breath, then another, and he opened his eyes. The king rose, breathing hard, and turned to Callum. “Take the delegation to Vunmore. I’ll follow in a few days.”

Questions poured into Callum’s mind, insistent. “But?—”

Hawk stepped down from the pool. “Take the delegation to Vunmore, Farrow,” he said, his hands visibly shaking. “And if you disobey me again, I will banish you from Aglye for good.”