Chapter 7 #2
His jaw clenched, and his hand dropped. “Why did Oriana spare you?”
He always answered questions with other questions: an annoying habit. I could guess why he wanted to kill my attacker, anyway. A dead Blood princess was no use when it came to his agenda.
Bitterness slipped into my voice. “She thought it would be violating her precious neutrality to oversee my death.”
“Perhaps.” He stepped back, putting space between us. “Perhaps not.”
Relief softened the tension of my muscles. It was hard to think when he was that close. “What do you mean?”
“She could have argued that interfering in any way would be breaking neutrality. The conflict was between Blood and Illusion; her house was merely the method of execution.”
I shook my head. “That’s the part she objected to. I’m sure she would have been delighted to see me dead otherwise.”
He hummed. “Oriana can justify anything she wants to do. She would have found a compelling reason to watch you drown if that had been her aim.”
I was quiet, considering it. Oriana clearly despised me, but she had rescued me. She’d engaged in the argument rather than immediately sending me away. She hadn’t changed her political position, but she’d interpreted it in a way that let me live.
Why?
Maybe the key would have been hard to recover from a corpse.
I didn’t know how that magic worked or what it would take to call it out from beneath my skin without my permission.
But maybe there had been another reason, one expressed in that whisper I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly. Take care of her.
Kallen was now watching Maude and Triana. “You’ve been busy since the council meeting. What are you doing with them?”
If he didn’t have to answer questions directly, I didn’t either. “Don’t you already know?”
The torch guttered again, and light danced across his face. The shadows under his eyes deepened for a moment, giving him a ghostly aspect. Then the golden glow steadied, catching on the sharp line of his jaw and the blade of his nose. “I don’t know everything, Kenna.”
“You knew I was here.”
“You were stalking through the halls, dripping wet. It drew notice.”
All right, so this hadn’t been a particularly stealthy mission.
Once that whisper had reached Kallen’s ears, it wouldn’t have been hard to follow the rumors.
I was used to going wherever I wanted, but a princess drew far more interest from observers than a human servant did—especially a princess who was soaked, scowling, and had been shouting in public.
“Why did you come here?” I asked, fighting another burst of embarrassment.
“You heard I survived. You didn’t need to confirm it with your own eyes. ”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. We stared at each other for a long moment while I waited to see if Kallen would answer a question for once.
The seconds ticked past. Apparently he would not.
I sighed, giving up. “Is there a purpose to this meeting besides your curiosity? I need to get them out of here.”
“Are you rescuing them, like you did the woman in the throne room last night?”
So he also knew I’d brought Anya to Blood House. An awful thought struck me. “Did you recognize her?” I demanded. Osric had cast an illusion to allow his court to watch the solstice hunt. Had Kallen known all along that Anya was in the brothel being tortured? Had everyone known?
He cocked his head. “Should I have?”
“From the solstice.”
A furrow etched between his brows. “I’m not following.”
“She was taken,” I said, voice sharp. “You must have seen it.”
“She was one of the sacrifices?” Surprise shifted across his features. “Osric’s illusion showed all of them dying. All but you.”
So Osric had wanted to abduct Anya, but he hadn’t wanted the other faeries to know. “Why would he do that? Why lie?”
“Her scars are…distinctive,” he said after a pause. “Osric was covetous of what he saw as his. There were atrocities I only found out about decades later, and more I’m sure I’ll never learn. He found pleasure in the secret as much as anything.”
“She wasn’t his ,” I snapped.
He was watching me closely. “A friend, I take it?”
It was none of his business who she was. “I need to return to Blood House,” I said shortly. “Are we done?”
“Is that where the secret passageway goes? I’ll walk with you.”
“No, you will not.” I glanced at Maude and Triana and saw them having a heated discussion. Triana made the sign for Void, and Maude made a sign I hadn’t been taught but could intuit the general meaning of, considering the inclusion of the middle finger.
“Perhaps it’s for the best,” Kallen said dryly.
My head snapped to him. “Do you know sign language?”
“Some things don’t require translation.”
I eyed him suspiciously. If any faerie in Mistei knew how to speak the humans’ secret language other than the servants, it would be Kallen.
He sighed, relenting. “I know the basics. It was difficult to convince anyone to teach me, but over the years I found a few humans who could be persuaded for the right incentives.”
Persuaded. Did he mean blackmailed? Threatened? Maybe he’d offered rewards, though, because what could he do to these people that hadn’t already been done?
“Why did you want to learn?” I asked.
“Why else? Information.” He leaned in, lowering his voice even more. “And because most of the Fae don’t realize how dangerous it is to trap a creature they don’t understand.”
“You call them creatures?” I asked, outraged. He was talking quietly enough that Triana and Maude wouldn’t have heard, but I wasn’t going to tolerate that sort of language.
“Only in the metaphorical sense. We’re all beasts, Kenna. Good or bad, kind or vicious, whatever level of power we hold. When broken down to our basics, we become capable of anything.”
“Then you must consider yourself a beast, too,” I said, not really believing it. The Noble Fae thought themselves superior to everyone and everything.
“Yes,” he said, surprising me. “A terrible one. And Osric never learned the lesson that a good hunter should know exactly what they’ve caught.
” He gestured at my friends. “The Fae chose to imprison and abuse a species they don’t understand on a fundamental level.
They decided to break them because they could, and then they decided there was no reason to pay attention to what the prisoners were saying to each other in their cages.
” He shook his head. “Cruelty aside, it’s dangerously shortsighted. ”
He spoke like the humans might rise up and destroy the Noble Fae. And one had. I’d been able to do it because of Caedo and my new magic, but I’d wanted to do it long before that, and that had been entirely the fault of the Noble Fae.
What would Maude do with a weapon? What would Triana? Once the humans had freedom or power—once they knew how to believe in that freedom or power—what ruin might they be capable of visiting on their captors?
“What do you mean, the Fae don’t understand humans?” I asked.
“Everything is condensed in a human lifetime. Hopes, hates, passions…” There was a pause after the word, and I wondered uncomfortably what Kallen imagined he knew about passion. “Humans have an intensity of purpose.”
“The Fae have purpose. You’ve been plotting against Osric for, what, centuries?”
He inclined his head. “Perhaps purpose is not the right word. The point is that humans are capable of a great deal more than the Fae have ever acknowledged, and they are often unpredictable.” His gaze was steady on mine.
“Sometimes they will even sacrifice their own self-interest to help others—something many of the Fae will never understand.”
“You clearly understand it, though.”
He paused. “Perhaps because I know what the world looks like from a cage.”
Because Osric had chained him in the role of the King’s Vengeance in exchange for Void House’s survival. “How old were you when Osric forced you to serve him?”
His expression grew grim. “Just old enough to be able to speak the vows.”
My breath left me. “A child.”
“I’m not sure I was ever that.” Then he cleared his throat. “Does Drustan know Earth’s secret passageways extend this far?”
The abrupt change of topic put me off-balance. “I don’t know.” Then I scowled, realizing that had been the point of asking so suddenly. “I mean, this isn’t one of Earth’s tunnels, it’s one of the, ah…”
“You’re a good liar, but not that good.” He eyed the door contemplatively. “This is how you cheated in the trials, isn’t it? How you got into the labyrinth, how you learned so many things you shouldn’t have known. These tunnels must go everywhere.”
I rubbed my temple, feeling headachy and overwhelmed. Kallen was far too clever, and I was far too tired to keep up with his games. “Yes.”
He hummed. “Oriana’s been keeping a dangerous secret. She can’t be pleased you still have that key.”
“She isn’t.” And she would be even less pleased to find out another faerie—much less Kallen—knew about it. I grimaced. “Can you please not tell anyone else about this?”
“Why not?” His head was slightly cocked, as it often was when he’d spotted a vulnerability that might be ripe for exploitation.
I sighed, giving up all hope of holding my own in this conversation.
“Because it’s the one advantage I have in Mistei.
Everyone else has soldiers, resources, alliances, thousands of faeries to support them.
I have two house members—four now—and this key, and that’s it.
” I shook my head. “What do you think Drustan will do when he realizes how far the tunnels go? What will Hector do?”
“They’ll want the key.” He looked at where it hung between my breasts. “I want it, too,” he said, voice reverent. “The things you must have overheard…”
“Well, you can’t have it,” I snapped.
He met my eyes again. “I won’t tell anyone. Not even Hector.”
Dizzying relief swept over me. “You won’t?” Then I remembered who I was talking to, and my relief shifted to suspicion. “There’s a price, isn’t there?”
“Consider it more of a request.” His dark eyes gleamed. “I don’t trust this Accord. Imogen, Torin, and Rowena will play politics in public, but they know what’s coming as well as we do. They’re going to be preparing for war. I want to know how.”
“You want me to spy for you again.” Frustration built in my chest. Would I never be free of his blackmail? My position in Mistei was too vulnerable to refuse, though.
He shook his head. “I want you to take me with you.”
That made me pause, once again set off-balance.
That was what Kallen did, though. He moved through conversations like they were sword fights—advance and retreat, feint and parry.
He lured me in by sharing glimpses of the person hidden beneath that forbidding exterior, then struck to send the conversation spinning in the direction of his true objectives.
He was looking at me with such intense interest, though. Alive, maybe even excited, as if he couldn’t wait for the two of us to go spying together. Kallen was rarely this animated, and a part of me I wasn’t well acquainted with wanted to agree just to keep that look on his face.
Did he have any friends? Did anyone besides me let him share his philosophies about hunters and beasts? He’d come here because he’d heard I’d been hurt, not because he’d known I was going to use the key. Did anyone else care about his concern—or even believe him capable of it?
Maybe he hadn’t been luring me in with conversation merely to manipulate me.
Maybe I had gotten too close to the real person—the one who knew the view of the world from a cage and had sworn a vow to a tyrant as soon as he was old enough to speak—and he’d changed the topic in an attempt to regain the upper hand.
Kallen didn’t know how to be vulnerable, but he did know how to negotiate for information.
So here we were. Me in possession of a secret, Kallen manipulating the circumstances to gain access to that secret, too. An old pattern, yet the way he was looking at me, the way he’d said, Take me with you , with that pleading edge to his voice…that was new.
I cleared my throat. “Fine. But you can only enter the catacombs with me, and no one can ever know about it.”
And then something truly shocking happened.
Kallen grinned.