Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
Izabel turned back to the body, focusing on lowering the sheet so that no one could see the burn of tears in her eyes. How did Luka still manage to make her feel so bruised? So vulnerable? She should have moved on. She should have forgotten him long ago. She should have—
“You should poison him and be done with it. I’ll help you bury him,” Cori whispered quietly in her ear.
Izabel snorted sadly and turned to hug her friend. “I missed you so much. When did you get back?”
“Yesterday. Our regiment withdrew from the border in advance of the treaty. A gesture of goodwill or some such idiocy,” Cori said, hugging her back just as tightly.
“I know we haven’t been in active war for a few years now, but the animosity is still there.
How do we know whether the peace we’ve had was because we had soldiers watching the wall?
If it was up to me….” She scrubbed her hand through her short chestnut hair. “It’s not though, is it?”
Izzy squeezed Cori’s arm. She understood her friend’s frustration all too well. “It should be up to you, Cori. You’d do a better job than any of the rest of them!”
Cori gave her a sad smile. “I hoped you’d be at the feast tonight, but since you weren’t, I planned to come to see you tomorrow and drag you away from your patients for some downtime.
” Something even wearier flashed across her expression, quickly hidden.
“It would have been nice to get out of here for a bit.”
Izzy forced herself not to look back at Shane.
Cori had never said anything, never even hinted, but she was clearly in love with Shane.
Something had happened between them. Something that sent Cori over a thousand miles away to the northern border.
Izzy had asked if she wanted to talk about it, but Cori wiped away her tears and promised that one day she would be free to tell her everything, but not then.
All Izzy could do was support her friend as best she could. And she understood the need to get away. She knew what it felt like to want someone who didn’t want you back. Thank the Mother, she didn’t have to work with Luka.
Or watch him seduce half the court, her beast added flicking her tail.
That was true. Luka had almost certainly seduced half the court—he’d been entirely clear that he planned to—but at least she hadn’t had to watch.
He’ll figure it out, her beast added. Someday.
Her beast hadn’t quite given up hope. Not yet. Perhaps this would do it. Then she could finally let go and move on.
“How did you get out of coming tonight?” Cori asked softly.
Izzy shrugged. “I’m just a humble healer now. No one needed me there.”
Cori lifted one dark eyebrow. “Oh please. Your mother is one of the queen’s best friends.”
“My mother is happy in her little cottage. She doesn’t expect me to go to these things anymore.” Izzy gave her friend a small smile. “Which was good, because my invitation was strangely lost.”
They both chuckled. “I wish my invitation was lost,” Cori admitted. “Unfortunately, my mother loves these things.” She sobered. “I guess she thought things would be different.”
Cori’s mother was a duchess, and she’d made no attempt to hide her horror at her daughter’s choices—first joining the guards and then the crown legions—no matter that Cori was an excellent soldier and a fantastic leader. Izzy squeezed her arm, and Cori shrugged sadly.
How did everything become so complicated?
Izzy sighed as she tugged the sheet off the body and started her examination.
She rolled back the young woman’s sleeves and examined her arms. There was nothing to see.
Not even a bruise. No discoloration on her nails.
She pulled back the young woman’s eyelids but couldn’t see any change to the eye color.
No strange smells. “I don’t think she could have been poisoned,” she muttered, half to herself.
She looked back up. “Did she attend the feast?”
Shane cleared his throat. “Yes, she sat at the top table. She ate what we all ate.”
Izzy nodded. “How was she behaving earlier? Did she seem unwell?”
A flicker of ruby scales slid over Shane’s forearms. “She… uh… she seemed fine.”
Kai—dressed like Aiden and Luka in a richly embossed silver tunic, but with dark swirls of ink creeping over the skin visible above the collar—narrowed his eyes. “Well, you were closest,” he said scathingly. “So you would know.”
Luka grunted, and Cori looked away. God of Chaos, Izzy didn’t want to ask, but she had to know. “How close, exactly, were you?”
Shane’s eyes flicked toward Cori, but she’d turned to look at the maps on the wall, putting her back to the conversation. He answered slowly, clearly picking his words. “She seemed like herself. Witty. Charming. She loved the dancers and the music. I didn’t notice anything unusual.”
“Did she seem drunk? Did you smell anything? Taste anything?” Kai asked, the edge in his voice sharpening.
“Well….” Shane scratched the back of his neck.
Luka crossed his arms over his chest, scales flickering. “Just tell them all of it,” he growled. “If we’re going to drag Izzy out of her bed and put her in danger, against my firm recommendation to leave her safe at home, at least be fucking honest.”
What? Was that why he didn’t want her there? Izzy blinked at him.
Shane ignored Luka’s barbed comment. His gaze had gone to the same map Cori was looking at, as if it was suddenly immensely fascinating.
“Narya kissed me. She tasted of plums in spiced syrup, which is what we’d all been eating.
And—” He broke off as Cori abandoned her maps, turned, and walked to Aiden and Kai, nudging them to let her stand between them and focused her attention on the floor. They immediately closed in beside her.
Shane bristled, his words apparently forgotten.
“And what?” Izzy prompted.
Shane’s gaze returned to hers, his expression blank. “I was probably one of the last people to see her alive.”
There was a moment of heavy silence as they all considered his words. “What do you mean?” Izzy asked eventually.
“I took her for a walk. We went to see the fountains in the conservatory.”
Hard to see fountains when you’re bent over the back of one of the couches, her beast muttered, distressed for Cori and unsettled by the swirling tension in the room.
Cori lifted her head, eyes flashing. “How did your fiancée feel about you showing Narya the fountains?”
“Kaliska and I are friends,” Shane muttered. “Narya suggested it in front of Kaliska. I thought I was helping build relations. I had no idea she was going to kiss me.”
Cori snorted bitterly. “Of course. Building relations is your special skill.”
“I’m trying to save this treaty!” Shane roared at her, scales flashing. “And anyway, I really did show Narya the fountains. We had guards with us. I wouldn’t disrespect Kaliska like that.”
Cori flinched and dropped her gaze back to the carpet as if it was endlessly fascinating, the fight seeming to have drained out of her.
Izzy rubbed her aching forehead and tried to think over her beast’s angry mutters. “Is that where you left her? In the conservatory?”
“Yes,” Shane insisted. “She was fine when I left. She wanted to sit in the warmth of the conservatory for a while.”
Izzy pinched the bridge of her nose. Getting the details out of Shane—and Luka—was like sharpening a blade on water.
“Okay, so after Narya’s… ah… time with Shane, she was somehow moved from the castle to the Nabaspath.
At some point in that journey, she died or was murdered, and then her kidnapper, or accomplice, or killer—whoever was with her—left her body abandoned on the path,” she summarized.
“We don’t know anything for sure, except that the person closest to her before she died was our Crown Prince.
I assume that half the court saw him leave the banquet with her? ”
“Yes,” Luka agreed. “More than half.”
“Did anyone see her after that?” Izzy asked.
“We haven’t had a chance to ask any other guards,” Luka admitted, “but none of us saw her again.”
“We were in the hall the whole time,” Aiden added. “She never came back to the banquet.”
Kai grunted. His smoke-colored scales formed a ridged armor over his collarbones. “We assumed she was with Shane. We didn’t see him again either.”
Shane’s scales flooded across his face in a wave of ruby. “You don’t genuinely think I did it, do you? That I killed her and then got someone to dump her far away?”
“Of course not,” Izzy stated firmly. Shane was many things, but he wasn’t a murderer. Or stupid. “But it looks terrible.”
“Batlok won’t accuse Shane,” Aiden argued. “He wants Kaliska safely on our throne, and he needs Shane to do that.”
“Maybe,” Luka said, sounding unconvinced. “Or he will accuse Shane and then offer leniency in exchange for unimaginable concessions.” He leaned back on the wall behind him, his usually perfect posture slumping ever so slightly. “Either way, the location is concerning.”
The location was a problem. Even if they could argue that the prince had nothing to do with her death, Narya was left on the path of their holy mountain.
Right where we looked for Rayan, her beast observed sadly.
When Rayan’s body washed up on the shore, his clothes were tattered, as if he’d tried to shift.
Izzy suspected that he might have been thrown from the rocky headland and had attempted to fly, but failed.
Had that been the plan with Narya’s body?
Would that have been her fate if Dashiell hadn’t disturbed whoever carried her there?
But why would anyone murder someone in that way? It didn’t make sense.
“I’m sorry, Izzy,” Shane said softly. “I know this is hard.”
She blinked, taking in the scales flickering at his collar. Guilt and remorse were written over his face. Mother of the Weave. How many times were they going to go over this? “My brother’s death was not your fault.” She twisted to shoot a glare at Luka. “Or yours.”
Or yours, her beast muttered, but Izzy ignored her.
Rayan had told her that he was investigating something that he couldn’t discuss. And maybe she should’ve pressed harder, but she hadn’t imagined anything would really hurt him. He was her older brother. He was strong, kind, and funny. Invincible. She’d expected him to live forever.
In fairness, he also didn’t give us any details, or we might have helped. He wanted you to stay out of it.
Izzy sighed. That was also true. But in the end, it didn’t change anything. Rayan was gone. And his death had changed everything.
Luka grunted—whether it meant agreement, disagreement, or “please stop speaking,” she had no idea. Probably the latter.
“The truth is,” Luka said, “any one of us could be accused of this. Shane was close to Narya. Dashiell found her, but I was nearby. Cori, Aiden, and Kai are among the elite warriors we’ve pulled back from the north—despite their repeated warnings that it would be a mistake to leave the border—and Cori, well…
.” He swallowed whatever he was going to add.
“The point is, we could all be blamed.” Luka’s voice lowered to a dark rumble. “And now, so could you.”
Well, at least that’s clearer.
What was? None of it seemed clearer to her.
And they needed to figure it out right now.
“Okay. So we don’t know anything helpful.
” Izabel turned back to the body. Any clues to what had really happened were not on the surface.
She needed to examine Narya properly and, hopefully, find something to point them in the right direction.
But the young woman’s dignity was important, too.
“I need to take a proper look at her. Cori, please can you stay and help? The rest of you, go wait somewhere else.”
Izzy said a quiet prayer to the Mother while the men filed out into an adjoining study and Cori took off her formal outer tunic. She’d seen her share of death, but it always hurt. In a strange way, she hoped it always did. Her patients deserved that she cared.
Then she rolled up her sleeves, washed her hands, and started to strip off Narya’s silk robes.