Chapter 30
SAPHIRA
Ihadn’t found the eyes yet, but I would. They were here somewhere in this castle and I would find them, and the dragon would tell me what she had seen.
Every inch of me ached as I rested in the bath, the steam rising from the surface perfumed with lavender and other herbs that relaxed me almost as much as the hot water.
It was time.
I had trained relentlessly with Meiryn over the last week, and then I had spent most evenings in my room with Danica, practicing how to hold my invisibility when I was extending it to another person, and drilling her on how to clear her mind when we entered the waygate.
Because I couldn’t risk landing somewhere between the Summer Court and Canada.
Last night, as I had lain in bed, staring at the teal and gold canopy and thinking of Kael, wondering what he was doing, a thought had popped into my head, somehow managing to get past what I now felt was some sort of barrier in my brain—a wall of Kaelerons that reasonable thought couldn’t get past, keeping my mind full of him.
That thought?
What if I used the waygate to go to the Shadow Court?
It had been followed soon after by another. If that was a possibility, Kaeleron would have told me to do it. I knew a barrier protected his court, and I wasn’t sure how it worked, or what it might do to someone who tried to use a waygate to travel from a seelie court into an unseelie one.
So I had thrown it out of my head and decided to stick with the plan.
Get Danica to Malachi.
Find the dragon’s eyes.
Discover the truth about Kaeleron’s brother.
The thought that my staying here in the Summer Court to do that might be the catalyst for Kaeleron coming here set me on edge, and had the weaker part of me wanting to go with Danica tonight, crossing that border back to the Shadow Court so my king wouldn’t be so reckless.
I couldn’t do it. The truth about his brother was here, and I would find it for him.
Hopefully before he decided to be a reckless idiot and come to me.
I sank deeper into the water, pushing the imaginary naked Kaelerons out of my mind as they all smirked and tempted me. Had I been alone, I might have indulged my imagination, but with Danica just feet away, leafing through the journals scattered across my bed, it wasn’t going to happen.
I was going to miss her when she was gone, but a tiny part of me was really looking forward to having some privacy again.
Seeing Kaeleron in the fae town, having his scent fill my lungs and his wicked words heat my blood, was wreaking havoc on me.
I banished him, filling my mind with everything I had read in the journals that Danica was muttering about in the other room, complaining that she should have been bespelled to read fae too.
Gods, I was tired. Thinking about anything was like wading through mud in my mind.
I closed my eyes, just for a little bit, letting the heat of the water ease my tired muscles and mind.
Between the training every morning, the library sessions in the afternoon, and the sumptuous dinners and court business most evenings, I had been up late almost every night this week to make sure I was getting enough practice extending my powers to Danica so she would remain hidden on our journey from here to the waygate.
A breeze danced in through the window, shifting the sheer curtains, making them flutter towards me as I opened my eyes.
Fear trickled through my veins.
The sky was almost as dark as it would get, which meant it was around halfway through the night.
Time to make our move.
I stepped from the bath, dried myself off, and dressed in the darkest clothing I had—my boots, teal trousers, and a jacket I had snatched when a guard hadn’t been paying attention.
I strode out into the bedroom and Danica looked up from the book she had open on the mattress, nerves flickering in her grey eyes.
Taking the heavy dark silver cloak from the end of the bed, I wrapped it around my shoulders, fastened it and pulled the hood up to hide my white-silver hair and face.
I went to Danica and pulled the hood of her matching cloak up over her chestnut hair, smiling at her and hoping it would calm her nerves.
“Just as we practiced,” I said.
“Just as we practiced.” She nodded and tried to smile, but it wobbled with her fear. “Morden will be so happy to see me.”
“He’ll be mad at first, of course.” I took her arm.
“Of course.” She linked her hand with mine and held it tightly.
I patted it, closing my other hand over it. “Don’t let go.”
She nodded and sucked down a sharp breath as light shimmered around us, turning the world ghostly.
Over the last few days, I had been testing the castle, trying to teleport to various places in it, and had discovered I couldn’t teleport into or out of my room, or inside the building at all.
The courtyard was the same. I suspected that there was some sort of protective ward on the main area of the castle that prevented it.
Which meant I had to get Danica past the guards using invisibility.
I led her to the door and paused there, stretching my senses outwards, into the corridor on the other side and then pushing them further still, right to their limit.
The floor was quiet, the only signatures I could detect unmoving in the rooms along the hallway.
Drawing down a deep breath, I squeezed Danica’s hand and quietly opened the door.
I didn’t breathe again until we were in the hallway and my eyes could see what my senses had told me.
We were alone.
Danica closed the door with a whisper of a snick and nodded.
I walked the way we had practiced in our room, placing my booted feet down in a manner that rendered them near silent on the floor, moving swiftly towards the staircase that formed the midway point on the three-sided wing of the castle.
My gaze darted between the hallway ahead of us and the bank of windows to my left, seeking any sign of movement on the side of the courtyard opposite us, and what I could see of the part that lay ahead of us, where the stairs were.
Nothing moved.
We reached the staircase without incident and carefully descended, each step I took cranking up the tension inside me until it felt as if I couldn’t breathe.
The shimmering world around me grew clearer and I halted on the landing of the first floor, giving myself a moment.
I signalled for Danica to remain silent and still, and closed my eyes, focusing on my magic, on that feeling of connection to this land, and that pulsing heat that chased over my skin, born of my solar power. My Summer Court blood.
When I opened my eyes again, the staircase shimmered as if in a heat haze, the invisibility that had been slipping through my grasp back to full power again.
I breathed a little easier as I split my focus between the bond with nature and scanning our surroundings.
Again, nothing bounced back at me on my senses.
We stepped out into the grand courtyard of the palace, and I couldn’t see a single soul.
The cautious part of me said this was too easy and to be on my guard, the rest of me said not to knock it and to roll with it.
In a matter of hurried strides, we were closing in on the main gate that led to the gardens and the highborn district, and our first real hurdle. There were always men on the battlements above the gate and in the small stone guardhouses on the other side of it.
We could do this. I renewed my invisibility, clinging to its power, willing it not to fail me now.
The arched gateway loomed.
A dozen guards marched through it, heading for us.
Panic was swift to claim me and I dragged Danica to my left, towards a columned covered walkway, and into the shadows there.
The world grew clear and sharp.
No.
I threw my cloak over Danica and bowed my head as I leaned back into the shadows, cursing myself for panicking and losing my hold over my invisibility, exposing us.
I covered Dani’s mouth with my hand and then did the same to my own mouth with my other one, trying to breathe softly and become invisible in another way as I fought to regain control over my power and restore it.
The guards marched towards us, clear as day on my senses, coming closer. My heart thundered, clamouring in my veins, and my hands shook. They were going to hear us. No, they were going to sense us.
Fae had sharp senses.
Hiding in the shadows wasn’t going to make us disappear.
They were going to find us.
Two males broke away from the others, heading right for us as they talked.
I squeezed my eyes shut and clung to Dani, mind racing to come up with a reasonable excuse for why we were out in the palace grounds and not tucked away in bed, and why we were dressed in clothing designed to make us blend into what little shadows existed in this court.
Only the guards didn’t sense us.
They didn’t stop.
They carried on right past us, only a few feet from us, and pushed the door near us open, heading up the stone steps towards the battlements.
I risked opening my eyes and lifting my head.
The courtyard shimmered.
I let out my breath.
We were invisible again.
I waited for the guards to spread out, and two of them to move towards the main gate, talking about relieving the men posted there and the evening they had just spent in the taverns in the lower city.
We hurried across the flagstones to catch up with them and fell into step a few feet behind them, just in case the fact the other males hadn’t sensed us had been a fluke.
Moving in time with them as they casually strolled towards the gatehouse wasn’t easy.
I wanted to race through that archway, wanted to get out of this place as quickly as possible.
I breathed slowly, controlling that urge, and my wolf instincts as they paced restlessly, urging me to escape this gilded cage in another way.
Shifting would make us faster, and would catch the males off guard and allow us to escape more quickly, but it would also expose us.
So as much as I wanted to run as a wolf, I wouldn’t.
I had to do this the fae way.