Chapter 34
SAPHIRA
The number of tents in the encampment had doubled overnight.
I sat on the table on the terrace of my bedroom, sipping tea and eating toasted bread as I squinted at the far edge of the lower city, trying to make out more details than was possible at this distance.
How many soldiers did Evergreen Castle need to protect it?
There had to be several thousand warriors housed on the edge of it now.
Too many.
Something about it didn’t feel right.
I shifted on my perch to set my empty cup down and grimaced as the long scabs down my back pulled and stung.
Three days had passed, but they still hurt and were far from healed.
Getting into my dresses each morning was absolute murder.
I had given up this morning. Unable to bear the thought of being squeezed into a corset that would only irritate them and leave me in pain all day, I had thrown on my cream blouse and teal trousers, and donned my dagger belt.
My handmaidens had noticed my attire with surprised eyes and exchanged an almost scandalised look, but they hadn’t dared to say anything. They had deposited my breakfast, told me that Sylvan would be busy with the new arrivals at the garrison, and had left me alone.
I glanced at the moon ring on my left hand as my thoughts slipped to Kaeleron.
The opalescent white circular stone clutched lovingly between the silver twin crescent moons shifted as my heart filled with him, changing to tell me his location.
Only it wasn’t amethyst for Lucia shadows.
Or emerald for the mortal realm.
It was sapphire.
The ring could tell me four locations. The only two whose colour I didn’t know was Hell, or what Kaeleron had called the Dark Realm, and Lucia light—the seelie side.
I doubted blue was the colour for Hell.
I looked at the infinite vault of too-blue sky above me.
No.
I hopped from the table, and in my haste sent my teacup spinning.
It rolled across the table and smashed on the flagstones of the terrace, making me jump.
Cold electricity sizzled along my nerve endings as I raced into my room and tugged on my boots, my heart drumming a war march as my thoughts whirled and collided and then broke apart again, sending me spinning like the teacup had been.
I only hoped I didn’t break as it had.
He couldn’t be here.
Not yet.
I had told Malachi to delay him by a week, to give me time to find the eyes and speak with the dragon in the woods, and find out what she knew together with hunting for information on his brother.
“Damnit,” I muttered and hopped on one foot towards the door as I fought to fasten my second boot.
I had to move fast.
Faster than I was capable of right now.
My back screamed at me as I raced from my room, heading for the library.
I wasn’t sure how long it would take him to traverse the seelie side of Lucia to reach me.
He couldn’t teleport into this land, so he would have to go north.
That was the fastest way here. Or through the tunnels beneath the mountains of the Black Pass.
I had read about those in the books in his library. Could he teleport from there?
Gods, I didn’t know.
I really should know.
I hit the staircase at a dead run, flying down the steps despite my protesting back, sure I would reopen the scabs and find blood on the back of my blouse later.
I wasn’t sure what would happen when Kaeleron reached the castle, but I had to be ready to get the hell out of this place with him, unseen by anyone.
I needed answers, and every instinct I possessed said the dragon would be able to give me them, but she wouldn’t speak without her payment. The eyes had to be here somewhere. There were only a handful of places I hadn’t checked yet, and one of them was in the library.
Sylas’s private library had various boxes and trinkets on display in it, and the cupboards around the desk in the centre of it might have more of them.
They had to be there somewhere.
If they even existed anymore.
Arianell had seemed as crazed as Neve could be at times, and over the last few days of searching I had begun to worry that her actual eyes were long gone now.
Body parts tended to have a built-in expiry date once they were removed, and I hadn’t seen any jars of formaldehyde containing pieces of people anywhere in the castle.
I scanned the route ahead of me on the third floor, moving at pace still, scouring the rooms along the corridor for any sign of someone.
Nothing moved. No heartbeats. I was alone.
I pushed the door to the library open and closed it behind me, and crossed the beautiful and airy cream room to the arch that led into the rest of it, and then shoved the door to Sylas’s personal library open.
I made fast work of checking every box I could see on the shelves.
Golden rings that matched the ones on the scrolls on the shelf next to it filled the first one, and the second contained a collection of metal rings with a piece of glass in the centre.
Magnifiers. I kept checking. More rings.
Some strips of leather with buckles. A collection of various dried flowers.
They had to be here somewhere.
I began pulling cupboard doors open, tearing everything from them and hurriedly opening every container.
Nothing.
“Godsdammit!” I slammed the lid on one box and hurled it away from me as I loosed a growl.
I shoved everything back in the cupboards and began going through the journals, back and back through the years, panic mounting as I searched for a clue. Something. Anything.
When I found it, I almost sagged onto the floor.
As it was, I sank onto the chair behind the desk, loosing a breath before I read the entry I had found in a record of court proceedings.
It talked about Arianell being brought before the court in the great hall and that she had shared a vision that had greatly displeased Sylas.
So he had cut out her eyes and exiled her. He had refused to let anyone help her. Had watched as she had stumbled blindly from the room with blood pouring down her face from where her eyes had been.
I went to his private journals and found the corresponding date, and skimmed from there, until I found what I was looking for.
A clue.
Confirmation that Sylas had kept the eyes.
Gods, he sounded mad.
Not angry, but crazed.
I swallowed as I read his scribblings about how Arianell haunted him with her words, that he knew she was a liar and a fraud, but he couldn’t shake the vision she had shared with him.
He didn’t mention what it had been. He just kept writing about her being a liar.
Every page. I flipped through close to twenty.
Every page he said the same thing. Liar. Fraud.
That he stared at her eyes each night, unable to sleep.
They mocked him from the mantel.
His room.
I raced from the room, taking the journal with me, folding it and shoving it in my pocket in case it held any more clues.
I sprinted back up the stairs to the fourth floor and to my right this time, towards the opposite side of the horseshoe-shaped building from my own room.
Meiryn had told me they had kept the king’s quarters intact after his death, ready for the next king or queen, and that they were at the end of the corridor, and were a mirror of mine only larger.
The second I reached the last door, a beautifully ornate gold one, I had it opened and was stepping into the room. My gaze skipped around the enormous room, over the golden cloths that had been draped over every piece of furniture.
The room was a mirror of mine.
I looked at the huge bed opposite me, flanked by windows that revealed a terrace just as mine had, and then to my left, past a seating area, to the fireplace.
And the white marble mantelpiece.
A black box sat on it, thick with dust.
My hands shook as I hurried around the furniture to it, partly because I was afraid it would be a dead end and that I wouldn’t be able to get the knowledge from the dragon that I needed to protect Kaeleron, and partly because I feared someone would see me here, in this room that was a mausoleum of a long-dead king.
Sylvan would no doubt be furious if he saw me here.
If Lorien caught me, he would have the perfect reason to convince Sylvan to let him come at me with the whip again.
I firmly gripped the box, bringing it down so I could see it as I opened it, heart running wild.
Twin crystals stared up at me, so pale blue they were almost white.
Like winter’s first frost.
I tucked them in my other pocket and left the room as quickly as possible and was on the ground floor and crossing the courtyard just minutes later.
My wolf side snarled.
Hackles rising.
Putting me on high alert.
My gaze darted everywhere, seeking the reason my wolf instincts had me jumpy, warning me that someone was near, someone who was a threat to me, but I saw no one.
My hand went to my dagger anyway—a dagger I refused to be without anymore.
It was probably just the fact I was crossing the courtyard where I had been beaten and humiliated by Lorien. A courtyard that my blood still stained near the rock.
But that sensation of being watched didn’t go away.
When I scanned the courtyard again, I found the source of my rattled instincts. Sylvan stood on the covered raised walkway, speaking to two males dressed in fine armour. It had probably been him watching me that had set me on edge.
But I had learned to be cautious since Lorien had seen me leaving with Danica.
I hurried through the main gate and then the garden, smiling politely whenever one of the highborn stopped to greet me, leashing the urge to snap my fangs at them all. Every one of them had been there, watching Lorien beat me, refusing to believe their future queen over a usurped heir.
When I reached the lower city, I slowed down, pretending to peruse the stores in the Artisan District, admiring the pottery ware and fine dresses, and the beautiful paintings. I went into several stores, biding my time until my instincts had settled and that sensation of being watched faded.