Chapter 40
forty
I bathed alone, scrubbed my skin raw, then sat in the water that refused to get cold so long as I was in it. I stayed there for possibly an hour, crying. Letting it all out. Coming back to myself.
That’s exactly what it felt like— coming back to myself, like I hadn’t been me in that jail cell since I saw my bird.
Like something had shifted, both inside me and in the world, but now I was okay.
I could think clearly. I was no longer in that slightly numbed state. I was just me, and I remembered.
I didn’t cry just for what Rune had to go through and for thinking he was dead.
I also cried about being dragged to that jail cell unconscious, for the pain I felt when I thought Rune was dead, even if I never actually admitted it to myself, for the hopelessness I felt, for Lyall, who was not at all the man I thought he’d grown up to be.
For the life of that man with the mask in his pocket—who’d come to save me.
My God, he hadn’t come to kill me at all, he’d come to save me, and the fact that he made it all the way to my cell, and Lyall so conveniently found him and killed him just before he spoke to me…
I cried for the other jail cells outside of the one I had been in, that I’d completely ignored while walking back here with Lyall.
I cried for the three people I’d seen in them, lying on the floor, in the corners, in the dark, watching us as we passed, unable to even move properly.
I’d ignored them then because I hadn’t been strong enough to acknowledge them yet, but in that tub, I did.
In that tub, I came to terms with a lot of things I’d been running from since they brought me back here to the Seelie Court.
The room hadn’t changed a bit, not a thing out of place, and even though I knew that someone had actually been to this very bed and had pulled the pillows up and had searched the sheets, I had no choice but to lie down and sleep because I needed to clear my head.
I did sleep a little, but the moment the sun fell on my face through the windows, I was wide awake.
And God help me, I knew exactly what I was going to do.
When I told the guards to take me to see the prince, they didn’t hesitate. I thought he might be asleep considering the sun had come up not an hour ago, but the soldiers nodded and moved ahead, and now we were walking up the stairs to the eighth floor.
I was fully dressed in pants and a shirt, my hair still a bit wet from the bath because the chambermaids hadn’t been there to dry it with their hands like usual. I didn’t mind. Couldn’t if I tried because there were too many things going through my mind right now .
I expected the guards to take me back to Lyall’s bedroom, the same room where I saw him for the first time when I healed him and he woke up. The same place where he faked his death.
They didn’t, though. Instead, we walked down hallways and through a narrow corridor with no windows and no paintings on its walls, which was strange for the palace.
I’d gotten so used to seeing the windows and flowers and vivid paintings everywhere I went, and I never realized it until I walked down that corridor, toward the single door at the end, so polished it reflected our silhouette as we approached.
The lanterns on the walls at its side burned with golden fae magic.
The guard didn’t knock, didn’t wait for an invitation, simply pulled the door open and stepped aside to let me through.
No words, no instruction, which was the usual, but when I went through and they closed the door behind me without following, that certainly was a bit strange.
Those soldiers had loved to play my shadow for days now, but they weren’t going to follow me in here?
Then I looked around me and I saw where in here was.
A wide space that could have been a lot of things but was most likely an office.
It had a large desk made out of rich brown wood, decorated with golden vines around the legs and the corners.
On the shiny tabletop, a golden crown seemed to have been carved out of the wood underneath, and it looked real enough to touch if I focused hard enough.
Bookshelves lined most of the walls, full of books and scrolls and these small figurines that glowed golden.
On the rest were paintings of landscapes, a beautiful fireplace shaped like the head of a feline animal with large fangs coming out of its upper jaw.
Maybe a sabertooth tiger? It was my best guess, and the artwork was incredible.
Fire burned atop the tiger’s tongue and at the back of its throat, and every line carved on the pale stone was done exactly right.
Come to think of it, every detail in this place was precise and perfectly arranged, and it screamed Lyall’s name.
On the left, high arching windows let in slants of golden light across dark polished floors. The fire seemed to give off no warmth, just a flickering light against the silver and gold ornaments. Above it, a rack of ceremonial blades was displayed on the wall like art.
The air smelled faintly of ink and leather, and there was no sound in the air at all—the room was empty. Lyall was not here.
As I waited for him to show up, I went deeper into the room, curious to look around. He’d be here any minute, and I could take this time to calm down, arrange my thoughts, think through what I was going to say to him one more time.
It wasn’t until I stopped in front of the massive desk to inspect those golden corners that I began to hear the whisper.
It was faint, and I thought I was imagining it at first, but the closer I went, the better I heard the voice.
I stopped moving, looked down at the crown in the middle of the tabletop, my ears sharp as I tried to pick up that whisper better.
Thinking maybe it was Lyall and he was talking to someone, and I could spy on him shamelessly and finally be able to make up my mind about who he was.
But it wasn’t Lyall who was whispering. It was a woman, and her words were foreign, slurred together, like she was drunk, or high—or both.
And the sound was coming from the empty wall right behind the golden chair of the desk .
Fae and their hidden doors. I was starting to think they had them in every single empty wall I came across in this palace.
Without hesitation, I went behind the desk and I got as close to it as I could without touching it. It was painted a milky white and it looked nothing out of the ordinary, yet behind it the sound of that whisper continued.
Definitely a woman. I closed my eyes and held my breath, tried to hear better, to understand what she was saying, if she was speaking in English or Veren, but it was impossible.
A look at the entrance door—still closed.
No footsteps outside it, and Lyall hadn’t come yet.
The thought of him and Rune and what I had come here to say to him escaped me now—my focus still on that whisper, and I couldn’t even begin to understand why it seemed so important to me that I heard what she was saying. It was an urge—almost a compulsion.
When I put my hands against the wall to keep my balance, I found out exactly why.
The wall moved just like the one in my bedroom behind which was the closet. It moved slowly to the side, and I jumped back, the scream stuck in my throat until I saw into the room beyond.
A fire burned in there somewhere, much bigger and much louder than the one in the tiger fireplace.
It cast a bright orange hue on everything—the shelves on the walls, the white flowers, the round mirror covered in a black cloth that looked more like a shadow, the twenty-inch hourglass that was dripping golden sand upside down—and on the woman sitting cross-legged on the carpet-covered floor with a golden bowl in front of her.
The seer.
Every muscle in my body locked tightly. I’d seen this woman before—petite, short, skin full of wrinkles.
She looked like a hundred-year-old human being.
Her hair, what was left of it, was a silver so light it could be considered white, and it was cut close to her head.
The white dress she wore hung over her bony shoulders, so big it covered her like a blanket while her wrinkled hands moved just slightly over that bowl full of white liquid that could have been milk.
Her eyes were half closed, too, and she was looking ahead to where I couldn’t see, behind the door, where the light of the fire was coming from.
I didn’t realize I’d decided to enter the room at all until I did.
Until I stepped onto the colorful carpet that covered most of the hardwood floor and saw the large fireplace on the far-right wall of the rectangular room, opposite to where the seer was sitting.
Until I realized that she was indeed whispering in Veren, not English, and if she’d noticed me entering, she didn’t react at all.
The office behind me was still empty, still silent, the door closed. No Lyall. And this room was warmer, more comfortable, and it smelled of flowers here. Flowers and book pages, and the sound of the crackling fire was familiar enough that it made me feel more at ease, too.
Which was…strange, to say the least. Because no place in this palace—hell, this entire realm—ever felt inviting and comfortable (except Rune’s arms).
And that’s why, a minute in, I was almost a hundred percent certain that this wasn’t accidental at all.
That I was meant to be alone in that office, to hear the whispers, to open the door in the wall.
And I was almost certain that Lyall had planned the whole thing, too, considering he’d asked me to talk to the seer before.
I’d refused, of course, because there were a lot of unknowns going on around me—and inside me—and I was frankly terrified to even imagine what she could say. But now that I was here and she was sitting there and we were all alone… fuck me, how am I supposed to walk out of here without knowing?
“Hello.”
My voice was small, weak, but the seer heard.