Chapter 15
Fifteen
Hanna
We hadn’t planned to race back to Kaelan and Dare. Our haste made me nervous in case we were followed as the two of us strode hand-in-hand through side alleys and streets, taking a winding way back.
“I’d notice. With the part of my vision I can use while you’re licking that one’s mouth.”
Oh, wonderful. The goddess is back.
She’d been quiet once Thorne and I entered the ball and began our subterfuge. If only I could always be licking one of them, as she put it.
Despite her bent toward violence, she seemed to be a strangely innocent deity.
“I never wanted males. Not gods nor men.” She seemed offended. “From what I’ve seen from my worshippers, they are almost always disappointing.”
“I haven’t been disappointed,” I murmured under my breath.
Thorne threw me a sideways look, but didn’t comment, which I appreciated. If I’d been with either of them instead while muttering to the goddess, Dare would’ve been sarcastic and Kaelan would have been difficult.
When we entered the safehouse, the mood was grim. Kaelan rose as we entered, and I assumed that Dare’s spies had already discovered the plan to move Coril and Alys.
“Vareth agreed,” Thorne said without preamble. “East gate. Tomorrow at midnight.”
Dare leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. “How gracious of him to arrange exactly what we needed on such short notice.”
The sarcasm was heavy enough to taste.
“It’s a trap,” Kaelan said flatly.
“Obviously.” I crossed to the table where maps were spread, marked with Dare’s meticulous notations. “But Vareth’s caught either way. If he doesn’t help us, we expose him. If he does and we fail, Edric hangs him.”
“That doesn’t make him trustworthy,” Kaelan replied. “It makes him desperate. And desperate men make poor allies.”
Thorne’s jaw tightened. “We don’t have a choice.”
“We always have a choice.” Kaelan’s voice was quiet, but there was steel beneath it. “The question is whether we’re willing to accept the consequences of this one.”
Thorne’s hands curled into fists, watched the muscle jump in his jaw. He was holding himself together through sheer force of will, and I knew—we all knew—that he would walk into fire for his sisters.
But he wouldn’t sacrifice us. He wouldn’t sacrifice the kingdom. He was being torn apart, and there was nothing I could do to ease his pain except bring back his family without destroying us all.
“What did Vareth tell you?” Dare asked, cutting through the tension with pragmatic efficiency.
I repeated the conversation.
When I finished, Dare was quiet for a long moment. Then he smiled, sharp and dangerous. “Midnight extraction. That means they’ll move Alys and Coril earlier to stage them for transport.”
“You think we should hit them during the move,” I said.
“I think Edric expects us at the east gate at midnight.” Dare looked up, his expression calculating. “So we give him what he expects. A small team. Visible. Loud enough to draw attention.”
“While the real extraction happens simultaneously,” Kaelan finished.
“Exactly.”
Thorne’s tension hadn’t eased. “And what happens to that small, visible, loud team that’s walking into the trap? You’re asking me to let people die for my sisters?”
“I’m asking you to trust that the people we send to the east gate are good enough to get out alive.” Dare’s voice was steady. “And I’m telling you that a frontal assault on a fortified position when Edric knows we’re coming is suicide.”
The silence stretched.
“He’s right,” the Shadow Weaver whispered. “Though, I could make the frontal assault work. I could make it so they never see us at all.”
“It’s our best plan,” I agreed.
“Well, we’ve got another complication,” Kaelan said, and he was looking at Thorne carefully, as if he knew that Thorne, the best of us, was being pushed to the edge of his endurance. “Your stepfather is looking for you, Thorne.”
Thorne didn’t seem to have heard him. He was staring at Kaelan, his jaw hard. “My mother.”
Kaelan understood him first, but then, Kae and Thorne had been together a long time. “We don’t know she’s why your stepfather is looking for you,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “It could be that he’s a tool for Edric.”
Thorne shook his head. “Not Corvis. That’s not like him. He believes in you.”
“I’m sure he believes in seeing Alys and Coril safe and well far more,” Dare said.
Not everyone shared Thorne’s unbreakable loyalty. He knew that, but perhaps he had forgotten when it came to his stepfather.
“What’s the message that came to us?” Thorne asked.
“That he needs to see you.”
Thorne shook his head.
“Not in person. He knows you would never agree, but it’s still a trap,” Dare warned. “He’s asking for you to contact him through mirrors.”
“Can you mirror-scry?” Kaelan demanded. “I don’t know how we share our minds and you’re still a close-mouthed bastard.”
“It’s something Alys and I used to practice when we were little.
Mostly so we could play pranks. Open the connection between mirrors in two different rooms, hide near one together, then wait for my poor mother to sit down on the sofa until we popped up making faces in the mirror.
” He toyed with a ring on his hand absently, then drew it off.
“I’ve got the enchantment with me. But it only works if he’s close. ”
“Unfortunately, he is. He’s here in the city, so we need to move as soon as we have Alys and Coril. Edric’s too close for comfort.”
“You can’t.” Kaelan reached for Thorne as if to stop him from hurtling the ring at the nearest mirror. “There must be a way for Edric to track the mirror magic. To find—”
“There will be,” Dare interrupted. “That’s the entire point. Get Thorne to use his magic, trace it back to our location, and flood this place with guards.”
Thorne’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t pull away from Kaelan’s grip. “My stepfather wouldn’t.”
“Your stepfather wouldn’t have a choice,” Dare said quietly. “Edric has leverage. Your mother, maybe. Maybe worse.”
Thorne’s face was always stoic, but his eyes were a study in pain, and all I wanted to do was ease it.
I remembered Coril on his shoulders as he fought his way out of his now-ruined city with me, the way she had believed in him so utterly that she’d been fearless, her legs dangling down his chest as he slayed enemies left and right. Gods.
She would be waiting for Thorne to rescue her. Coril’s faith in Thorne was absolute. I’d seen it.
Finnias jumped onto the table, his tail lashing as he stared at Thorne with unnerving focus.
“I remain unconvinced that cat is actually a cat,” the goddess said helpfully, almost scaring me out of my skin. I’d been so focused on Thorne. “I believe that cat is actually a shifter. Or what about your strange prince’s ghost-mother? Could she inhabit the cat?”
She couldn’t, because she inhabited my wedding ring, but I was hardly about to explain that odd detail at the moment.
“He might be a traitor, and he might have information,” Thorne said finally. “Something we need. If Alys and Coril are being moved tomorrow—”
“Then we can’t afford to give away our position tonight,” Kaelan finished.
“Unless we’re careful.” Thorne studied our four reflections in the nearest mirror, the glass catching lamplight. “Mirrors can be tracked because they belong to places. They’re fixed points. But water doesn’t belong to any one place.”
Dare gave him a skeptical look. “You’ve done this before?”
“Alys and I practiced it.” Thorne slid his ring back on, but kept worrying it between his fingers.
“Water scrying. It’s harder to maintain, the images aren’t as clear, but it can’t be tracked the same way.
My stepfather knows that. Edric may be trying to use him, but he’s being used to get a message to us. ”
Dare moved to the table, studying Thorne with that particular intensity he reserved for puzzles worth solving. “We need to enchant the room you’re in for silence. I don’t want any sound giving away our location.”
“I know.”
“And if you sense anything—any trace of tracking magic, any hint that you’ve been compromised—”
“I’ll break the connection immediately,” Thorne said.
They looked to Kaelan, whose jaw worked once in the way that usually preceded some stubborn, unyielding decision, and my heart sank.
“If you believe this will work,” Kaelan gritted, “then let’s give it a try.”
The words seemed as if they were being forced from his soul, but they made me want to smile despite everything.
“And if it is a trap, and you need me, I’m here,” the Shadow Weaver whispered.
“Not yet,” I breathed.
But even as I said it, I felt her smile in the darkness behind my eyes.
“Not yet,” she agreed. “But soon.”
Thorne
As Dare enchanted the room for silence I hung the sheet over the window, blocking any view of the street beyond. No reflections. No way for anyone watching through the water to catch a glimpse of where we were.
The basin sat on the table, filled with clean water that caught the candle light in fractured patterns. I dropped the ring Alys had enchanted when we were just children into the water, and it rippled as the ring settled to the bottom.
Slowly, the water stilled.
And as it did, I tried to prepare myself to meet Corvis.
The man who had been like a father to me in what time I spent in his house, though I always knew it wasn’t quite the same as the way he loved my sisters.
I wasn’t home much after all, given Edric had forced my mother to give me up to be Kaelan’s companion.
Still, I’d always felt…
Well, it didn’t do well to dwell on how much I’d wanted to belong. I’d made a new family with Dare and Kaelan and now, Hanna. I belonged, and so what if once, I hadn’t?
I placed my fingertips against the water’s surface and pushed.
The connection formed slowly, like frost spreading across glass. The water went still—perfectly, impossibly still—and then the surface began to shift. Colors bled into the reflection, shapes that resolved into features I recognized.
My stepfather’s face appeared in the water, dark and wavering. Not clear. Never clear with water scrying. But visible enough.
“Thorne.” His voice came through distorted, like he was speaking from the bottom of a well. “You’re safe.”
His voice was full of relief, and something in me shifted.
“Where’s Mother?”
A pause. His face shifted, expression difficult to read through the water’s distortion.
“She’s safe. She’d be so angry with me for contacting you.” He leaned closer to whatever surface he was using on his end, and candlelight glowed somewhere behind him. “But that can change. Thorne, you need to listen to me—”
“No.” My voice was harder than I’d intended. “You listen. Where are Coril and Alys?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” His hands appeared in the reflection, palms up in supplication. “This is madness. It’s pointless. End this war. Edric promises to forgive you all if you just end it.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
“You want me to betray Kaelan? You aren’t stupid enough to believe Edric means that?”
“He has Coril and Alys!” he exploded. “I have to believe him!”
I shook my head. I had to lie, and it hurt to pretend that I would let my sisters rot in jail. “We’ll get Coril and Alys back when this war is won. When the tyrant who would hurt them isn’t on the throne anymore.”
“You’re a fool,” he gutted out. Even in the dark reflection, desperation was alive in his eyes. His gaze flickered up to something I couldn’t see, and his face twisted as if he were begging. “Please. Thorne. If you don’t help them, there will be consequences—”
“What consequences?” I demanded.
“You’d really put Kaelan over your sisters’ lives?” His eyes were wide, begging. “They’re your sisters. And Coril is so young—”
Someone else interrupted him. “You told him there are consequences.”
The voice was so quiet that I could barely hear the words.
My heart spiked. I leaned forward, but I couldn’t see any better through the water. My hands were trembling, shaking the table, and I pulled them away so I wouldn’t shake it and break the connection. “What’s going on? Who’s there with you?”
But he wasn’t looking at me anymore. “Please, no.”
And then, so distant, a small voice. “No, no, please…”
Coril.
“What’s happening?” I demanded again.
My stepfather raised shaking hands to his temples, rocking forward as if he were in agony, but he couldn’t look away from whatever was happening beyond the mirror.
And neither could I.
“Thorne, please. You could stop this.” His voice was a desperate rasp.
There was a sound—a desperate human sound, almost inaudible—and I strained to catch it.
My stepfather’s teeth were bared in pain.
Not his. I tried to listen, to piece together what was happening.
I couldn’t see the reflection in my stepfather’s desperate eyes to see the scene, but I could imagine what he was seeing.
“Thorne.” Hanna’s voice was soft, coming from further away than anything through the reflection. Maybe she’d said my name more than once.
I didn’t respond, and then suddenly, her hand darted toward the water.
I reached to grasp her wrist, but I was too focused on the reflection. I was too late. Her fingertips brushed the water, dissolving the reflection, the stillness, the magic. There was a ripple and my fragile connection to my sister was gone.
I whirled on her. “What did you do?”
Most people cowered away when I was angry. Hanna looked at me with a gaze full of compassion and rested her gentle hand on my chest. “What could you do from here? Were you going to betray Kaelan?”
“Of course not.” But the words were curt, as if I hated Kaelan at the moment.
Perhaps I did.
“We don’t even know what was truly happening.”
“But what if it is? What if she’s being tortured? My little—” I cut myself off, biting the words in two. The other half of that sentence was a vivid image in my mind and I didn’t want to give it voice. “At least I should know.”
My voice sounded desperate, broken, and she gathered me into her arms tenderly. She was so much smaller than I was, but somehow, I found my head on her shoulder. I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her to me as if I were clinging to her for life.
She stroked her hand through my hair, her touch gentle. “Let’s go get your sister.”