Chapter 37 #3
“Of course I did. Looking for you—it’s all I’ve done for the last seven years. I was so afraid you were… that I would be too late. But here you are, and—”
“Enough,” the Shadow King’s high voice cuts us off. “You’ve seen him. You know he’s alive. Let’s get this deal over with.” He waves a hand. The guards clutching my arms yank them behind my body and start to push me out of the chamber.
“No!” Daerios says.
I want to turn aside. I want to look at Daerios, to remind him that everything will be okay—even if it won’t.
But I can’t take my eyes off Michael. He’s looking at me like I’m a ghost. Like he’s standing in a dream that has played over and over in his mind for the last seven years, waiting to wake up.
“No,” Daerios says, softer this time. “How are we to know that, once you take Quinn, you won’t simply keep her brother and the sword to yourself?”
Unwillingly, I tear my eyes from Michael turn around to watch the interaction between the prince and the Shadow King.
“Here is what’s going to happen.” Daerios straightens, folding his hands behind his back to match the king’s posture.
“You will give the order that no one is to harm us on our return journey up the mountain. As a show of good faith, your guards will lead us out of árrion, past the Trial Gates, past any other guards you might have hiding in the trees. Once we reach the river, you’ll hand the sword—and her brother—over to us.
Then, you can have you way with the girl. ”
You can have your way with the girl. His back tenses as he says those words. I can only imagine how painful they must be. How foul they taste coming from his lips. Don’t say anything foolish, I pray. Play along. Play along until the very last moment.
“Have their way with you?” Michael’s question rasps behind me. I twist my head back around to look at him. “What is he talking about, Quinn?”
His words nearly break me. They yank me seven years into the past. All at once, I’m no longer a spy who dedicated her entire life to infiltrating a race of mythical beings; I’m just an older sister.
An older sister whose little brother doesn’t understand something and needs her to explain.
I want to run to him. To pull him into my arms and tell him it will be okay.
Instead, I say, “Don’t worry, Michael. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“But you’re coming with us… right?” His eyes are so wide, so innocent, looking just the way he did at seven years old—if that seven-year-old were pale, malnourished, and six feet tall.
Tears well in my eyes. “Everything will be okay, Mikey.”
“Enough with the pleasantries,” the Shadow King snaps, causing Michael to flinch. Fury boils in my chest. What did the Shadow Elves do to my little brother that causes him to wince at the mere sound of their voices? “I need time to consider the prince’s stipulation.”
Naturally. It’s a suspicious request. To lead a group of your enemies through the woods, where anything could go wrong?
Where we could have laid a trap—or several?
We could escape, or turn on his guards, or enchant a pair of urrath into eating the Shadow Elves for supper.
I don’t even think that’s possible, but I certainly wouldn’t mind if it were.
“You have no other choice, Shadow King,” Daerios says.
“These are the ground rules laid out by my father. If you do not follow them to the letter, when his army arrives tomorrow morning”—Daerios glances out the window—“or whatever your version of morning is, and his directions have not been followed to the letter, he will fight. We will all fight. There will be outright war, and I know you think you can win, but consider this: he will have every single one of the elf tribes behind him. The Wood Elves. The Wind Elves. The Wild Elves. The Water Elves and the Fire Elves. Not to mention Berendir’s father. ”
The Shadow King’s eyes dart to Daerios’s best friend, and although he tries to mask it, I see the fear cloaked behind his irises.
“The General alone has probably killed more elves than your entire army combined.”
The Shadow King snorts, his mask of confidence sealing back into place. “I doubt that.”
Daerios shrugs. “You could take that gamble. Though I certainly don’t recommend it.”
For a painfully long moment, the Shadow King says nothing.
He surveys us, our dirty clothes and sun-drenched faces, so out of place in this land of permanent darkness.
I catch his gaze snagging on the spot where my fingers brushed against Daerios’s minutes before.
I can only pray that he writes it off as an accident.
At last, the Shadow King nods. “Very well.” He turns to the same guard who brought Michael and says, in Lukkarin, “Fetch the Shadow Sword. Let’s get this negotiation over with.”
The guards usher us through the double doors. We move quickly, but not so quickly that I cannot hear the king mutter to one of his guards in Lukkarin, “Keep your eye on the prince and the Lightbearer. I think there might be something between them.”