Dessert #3
“Me?” Mina giggled into the kiss before pulling away. She brought the cupcake up between them and flipped over the serving notes. “I saw that it was an address. That seemed more important than just a message.”
Esme checked the slip and indeed found an East Amaris address. Someone there knew something about Janos, something secret enough that it couldn’t even be hinted at.
“Why’d you keep it from Daphna?” she asked.
Mina shrugged, a bewitching glint in her eye. “Daph is a wonderful friend, and I love them very much,” she said, taking a dollop of icing and sucking it off her finger. “But you’re my wife. I must have some loyalties.”
Esme kissed Mina for the millionth time that night.
She had to hold herself back by the scruff of her own neck not to have her up against that century-old wall.
But what Esme intended to do to her wife needed a bed with strong legs, so instead she told Mina that she’d be home the day after next and to let Gia spend that night with a friend.
Then she escaped the coldrooms with the address in one hand and the cupcake in the other.
* * *
Esme galloped up the stairs back to the castle, following the spirals higher and higher until she turned into an achingly familiar hall.
The royal wing.
The second she entered the spire, nausea washed over her. This was no spell, nor the Bond’s reprimand. Sneaking through the night-drenched halls in pants filled her half with pride, half with fear. If Omniel ever saw her like this…
Plush carpet drowned the sound of her steps.
Decades ago, the royal wing had been a home, with fireplaces in every room and walls painted the warmest reds and yellows.
Open-air halls had allowed the sound of the Wyvern’s lapping waves to float through the air like a lullaby.
Now, it felt more like a chapter out of Omniel’s book of bullshit.
Armor sets were posed as valiant leaders, with plaques beside them spinning some lie of Omniel wearing them into a battle that had never happened.
The royal suite was at the very top of the spire, in the dazzling dollop of raven’s glass. Wraiths were barred from entering it these days, but thankfully Turiel found sleeping under a glass dome miserable, so he slept in another suite.
Esme snuck up on the suite, peering down the hallway at two guards struggling to remain awake outside the oak door. She balled up the shadow of an armor set’s cod piece and hurled it so hard she broke a vase down the hall. The guards startled awake, bolting in the direction of the noise.
Esme crept up to the door and fashioned a shadow key, only to find the door already broken.
The edge had been smelted shut against the jamb with the golden doorknob and then broken into afterward.
Who could melt a solid-gold doorknob? Esme didn’t have the time to investigate any further—the guards would be back soon—so she snuck in and slipped the door shut behind her.
The reek of spoiled meat and rotted blood curdled the air in the suite, but Esme found Turiel’s cluttered desk blessedly untouched.
She raided his drawers, stuffing every official-looking piece of paper under her arm.
With Turiel’s desk pillaged, she noticed the one thing that wasn’t cramping it: his signet ring.
Her shadows squirmed around the room, searching for it, but with no luck. Had someone already stolen it?
Armor clanking outside the door told Esme the guards had finally moseyed back to their posts. Shit. The only way out was the window. She took a step toward it—only to drop her weight on the loudest floorboard in all of Amaris.
The door rattled.
Without a second thought, Esme bolted for the window and flung herself out onto the sill.
Up this high, the wind ripped her moon-bright hair and she had to clutch the papers to her chest. She climbed atop the ledge over the window, a crumbling six-inch lip of rock.
She crouched like a panther as her shadows pulled the window closed.
Not ten seconds later, a guard slammed it open, head whipping around in the wind.
“Are you fuckin’ stupid?” a sleepy voice asked from inside the room. “If he jumped out the window, bastard’s dead.” He? As if only men could rob the dead. Esme took special offense.
The guard hanging out the window cast a look down at the darkness below. “Not if it was a Wraith,” he said as he moved back from the window.
The second guard scoffed. “Can’t be a Wraith. Everyone knows they’re allergic to crescent moons.”
What the fuck? Esme and the moon were great comrades.
The guards eventually left the room without noticing anything, and Esme peeked over the ledge.
She had no intention of being found splattered in the kennels.
Instead, she found the Wraith tower, standing beside the royal one.
The two were only about one hundred paces apart, and luckily the window to her rooms faced the royal tower.
Esme commanded the deep black shadows to harden into bricks. This required a tricky bit of control, and if the shadows hadn’t been so strong, this would have been impossible. As Esme stepped onto the first of her bricks, she realized it still might be.
She wobbled from brick to brick, each dissolving the second her foot left it for the next.
The wind battered her, and she sidestepped into open air, only for another brick to materialize beneath her left foot.
Unfortunately, that meant the brick under her right foot evaporated.
She stumbled through the air, just barely keeping her footing against the brutal wind howling between the towers.
Her heart pounded in her ears as she realized a fall right in this place would mean getting speared on the prongs jutting up from the castle below.
She blew out an anxious breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and muttered, “Ojalla, please.” It was silly. Her god couldn’t hear her.
Still, Esme found the moon. Ojalla’s Eye, it was called in Is-Khan. The goddess didn’t reside in this moon, but a pale smile in the sky would always give her comfort. She slowed her breathing and gathered her focus again.
Just before she made the next brick, the wind slowed its gallop to a trot and, finally, to a stroll.
Oh, blessed be.