Chapter 13
thirteen
There wasn’t much I hadn’t tried to do, sitting cross-legged on the floor, trying to understand what Helem had drawn with them, how he’d banished her, so that I could withdraw the banishment, at least. If I did, Nilah would come to me herself, I knew she would.
If I did, she would be here before this fucking palace let me out.
And I did have a good understanding of the ritual he’d used.
The problem remained finding her. Connecting with her.
She was too far, in another world, and I couldn’t even take anyone to her because there was nobody I trusted anymore, except Raja. Nobody in the entire realm. My hands were tied, and it was more difficult not to lose my mind than I would have imagined.
The Seer of Shadows came into the throne room and approached me slowly a few moments later, her bare feet barely making any sound. She came all the way to the circle of the ritual and looked down at me with her fingers intertwined in front of her. Curious. Calm.
Then she said, “I was told you wanted to see me, Your Highness.”
I would never get used to those two words if I lived a thousand years.
“How much longer?” I asked, which she probably already knew I would.
“As long as the palace needs,” she said without hesitation, and then she sat on the marble floor with me, on her legs, with her hands over her thighs neatly as she watched—me, then the ritual circle, then the lynx, who’d lain down on the dais’s first stair and looked at us through half closed eyes.
“And you’re certain we can’t do anything to persuade it to let me go now.” Again—these same words had been my question to her last morning, so I knew the answer wouldn’t change, but I still hoped. I still expected it to.
“No. This is the Midnight Palace. Until it has completed its connection with you, it will not allow you to leave. Otherwise, your claim might fade.”
I looked at the seer, her wide blue eyes, her small smile. “So, let it. Let my claim to this throne fade. I don’t want to be a king.”
The smile on her face turned sadder right before my eyes.
“You know very well why that is a bad idea,” she said.
“To give up on your throne means to give up on Verenthia, and where will you live with the one you love if you don’t have a place to call home?
You’re a smart man, Rune Kalygorn. You can make this conclusion yourself.
” A hand on my arm. “I do not understand why you continue to need me to put it into words for you.”
Because I continue to hope you’ll see something I don’t. Because I continue to hope that you won’t come to the same conclusion one of these days.
I didn’t answer.
“I can’t find her. She’s too far. I know how Helem banished her, and I know that she won’t be able to come back here on her own with that mark. Are you sure she’s in—”
“Nerith, yes,” she cut me off. “That is where this circle banished her to.” The seer leaned forward and pressed her hand on the marble, but her expression didn’t change.
“Can you connect to her?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Why can’t I?” I asked. “Helem banished her with these very shadows.” The same ones that layered the floors of this very throne room, ready to obey my every whim. “Why can’t I find them?”
“Because she’s in another realm, Your Highness. You would need something much closer to her to connect to her—like her blood.”
“I don’t have her blood.” Which she knew.
“I know,” the seer said. “And I would help you if I could, I really would. I’ve tried to test the palace myself—it will not budge.
Your father remained king for almost two centuries, and that was far too long.
The palace has become somewhat…paranoid, if you will.
” She looked up at the tall ceiling, and I did, too.
A paranoid palace was not in my best interest right now.
“You keep it on edge, too, with your refusal to cooperate. It cannot see into you yet, I think.”
Even though I understood her words, I still couldn’t picture it in my head. I thought this place would be like the Queen’s Palace in the Seelie Court—always so composed. Always perfectly responsive to the queen.
But this one continued to block paths and hallways, and leak shadows from the bedroom door whenever it felt someone coming, or shut down windows when it felt like it, too. Highly unstable.
“It will need its time. It will need to understand you as its new king. Then you will be free to go to Nerith—if you think that is the best course of action for Verenthia right now.”
I don’t care, I thought, but I bit my tongue before I said it. “There is nothing at all that you can do to help me find her,” I repeated, just to make sure it hadn’t changed.
“There is nothing I can do, Your Highness,” said the seer, and she stood up. “And I’ve had no sights and no visions to report.”
“Thank you,” I forced myself to say.
“You’re very welcome,” the seer said and slowly retreated toward the doors.
They opened without my needing to tell them to, and…
“Before I go, a word of advice. If I were you, my King, I’d accept his help and see what happens.”
I paused, turned to the seer. “What?”
“The pet,” she said, still smiling. “I would accept the pet’s help. After all, he’s got her eyes.” And she slipped out the door almost perfectly silently.
The door closed, and the silence returned in the throne room once more. I looked at the lynx, who was sitting now and looked wide awake, unblinking eyes on me.
“Are you here to help?”
No word. He gently walked off the dais and came toward me, thick tail raised and moving to the sides.
“Do you know how to find Nilah?”
A turn of his head to the side as if he were but a confused animal, nothing more. And I knew that wasn’t true. He was much more than that. Like the seer said, he had Nilah’s eyes.
Identical eyes in shape and color.
He used Nilah’s voice to speak, too.
“You can connect me to her, can’t you,” I said, but it wasn’t a question. I rose on my knees, shaking with a brand new wave of energy.
Shadows slipped from my fingers and rushed for the door—to close it, lock it, make it impossible to spy on me, something I did not need to do.
All I had to do was think it, and the throne room would make sure I wouldn’t be interrupted, but it was an old habit, and I was too excited already to think clearly.
“Sit over there, in the very middle,” I said, pointing at the middle of the remains of the banishment circle.
And the lynx didn’t hesitate.
He stood up, moved slowly like he had all the time in the world, and he sat in the very middle, never once looking away from me.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said. “But I will try to use you to find her. Help me in any way you can.”
A growl. Half a bark.
I took it as a yes.
With my eyes closed, I unleashed all the magic that came with being a king onto the circle, and onto the lynx. The shadows swallowed him whole within seconds, and he didn’t move a single inch even when they slipped under his skin.
Once I had a good grip on the magic burning deep inside the lynx, I searched for Nilah through it.
And I finally found her.
To me it felt like only a few minutes, but when I broke off the magic and it pushed me back, threw me against the marble floor, my entire body was numb like I’d been sitting in the same position for hours.
And the lynx was thrown to the other side, too, the tips of his silvery white fur dark, like he’d been burned.
It wasn’t fire or ashes, though. Only shadows—my shadows still sticking to him.
“It’s her,” I said because I’d felt it, even if only for a second.
However long I’d been searching, I felt Nilah’s energy through the lynx—and he felt like her, too.
The same energy, the same magic. His was faded, but it was the same kind.
I could have sworn I heard his voice, too—Nilah.
He called her name, and in her voice. It echoed in my head even now.
“You saw her, too. You saw her,” I said to the lynx as he slowly made his way toward me, toward the ritual circle, the tips of his fur no longer darkened by my shadows.
“She’s there. She’s marked. She’s…” A slice right through my mind like someone cut my brain in half, and I stopped speaking, gritted my teeth. The magic that was on her—all those shadows. The mark, the same one that I’d had on me when I was banished.
My eyes opened to find the lynx sitting in the middle of the circle again, watching me. Waiting.
To try again.
“I can break it,” I whispered, more to myself. “Raja broke mine with those dragon bones. I can break hers without—I’m a king.”
For once since I’d fallen into this trap, I was glad that I was king. Because being a fae royal meant having power—more power than anyone else. And more power was exactly what I needed to break that banishment, to reverse it.
Another growl. The lynx stood on all fours in the middle of the circle, those eyes on me like he wanted me to read his mind.
He was ready.
I stood up and stepped into the circle with him, kneeled in front of his paws, pressed both my hands against the marble on his sides. He didn’t move, didn’t complain, didn’t make a single sound.
“Brace yourself,” I whispered, a second before I released all the magic I had from my still shaking hands.
And I didn’t care how long it took or how much energy this required from me—I was going to break that mark Helem put on her or I was going to die trying, the Midnight Court be damned.