The things we should have said #2
An assault, after an ambush, and there was only a light shade of concern in his voice.
As if Odessa’s military forces banging on his kingdom’s door was an inconvenience more than anything.
“Why are they attacking the stone?” It was the first question that surfaced from the vicious spinning of my mind. “Why not just siege the Keep if they had a way in?”
He hesitated but finally released his side to pull me closer. “Because my ancestors were arrogant men. They had the most powerful ward stone erected just beyond our gates. The only one in the entire network not protected by a wall or city. Some monument to say, look at us and our power.”
I realized then that Maksym was transferring some of his weight to me, and that set off a brand new wave of fear.
I wrapped my arm around his waist gently as I asked a question I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to. “And what happens if the stone falls?”
“Slight catastrophe.” Maksym winced as we met Gallan near the far wall of the buzzing war room. “Grimmoria’s wards would fail, and my heart likely wouldn’t handle the blowback of stored energy. Two birds, one…stone.”
I gawked at him, even as Gallan shoved an envelope into my hands. “It would kill you?”
“Likely, yes, which is why it’s rather prudent we maintain a tight line at the gates.” He let out a pained grunt and shifted against me.
“If they were to just siege the Keep and only kill me, the wards would stand on their own for quite some time with their stored energy, even though there would be no other Blackspire blood for them to tether to. I can only assume your brother intended to disarm me and then go after the wards unobstructed, but I’ve also assumed he didn’t realize the sway I hold over them. ”
Goddess, he was still talking like this was all just run-of-the-mill news.
Like we weren’t talking about wards falling, his heart stopping, and my brother laying siege to Grimm’s Keep.
“And if you feel you need an ounce of proof—” He jerked his head to the letter, which I finally braved a glance at. “I realize you might not find much faith in signed and sealed letters anymore, but…”
I hadn’t seen Odessa’s seal stamped in wax in ages.
But there it was, cracked and lifted from a folded missive, bearing the same crest branded onto Jasper’s stomach.
I recognized my brother’s handwriting on the inside immediately, but I didn’t want or need to read whatever lies he had spewed.
Not after he spent months orchestrating what he thought was a grand plan to have me killed so he could use my death for his own deplorable benefit.
Coming to terms with how I’d never been more than a disposable pawn to him ached something fierce, but I’d be damned if the little prick knew a moment of peace or satisfaction for the rest of his fucking life.
I passed the folded letter back to Gallan and shook my head. “I don’t need proof—I believe you. What can I do?”
Gallan and Maksym both exchanged a smile that felt so out of place for the pressing chaos of the room.
“Give me an hour tops,” Gallan said to his king before he squeezed my arm. “I’ll have Apollo ready for you, love. Meet me in the stables whenever you’re ready.”
“Apollo? Ready for me?” My question went unanswered as Gallan brushed past me into the crowd. Maksym was of little help when I glanced up at him in confusion.
“I’ll explain, I promise. Just come with me first.”
As if I had any say in the matter. Even though Maksym was leaning more and more on me for support, he was still much larger. When he took a step forward, we both moved.
Right through the goddess-damned wall.
“What the fuck,” I breathed as we staggered into a narrow hall, dimly lit with nytefire, reeking of dust and mildew.
Maksym let out a pained chuckle and clutched my shoulder. “Never seen a magicked path before, have you, Miss Wynn? A route for a time of pressing need or immense laziness?”
“No, I…I mean. Yes. Sort of. I’ve never walked through a damned wall before to get to one.” Goddess, this day was just slapping me around from every fucking direction. “And where are we going?”
The corridor had no obvious exits yet, but there was a dimly lit bend a few dozen paces away.
“My study, it’s just—fuck.” A little too much of Maksym’s weight dropped against me, and I staggered, trying to hold him up. How a man so lithe in appearance was so goddess-damned heavy was beyond me. “Sorry. It’s just…through…here.”
I yelped as we lurched sideways, right through the nondescript stone wall. Maksym’s study greeted us in a blur as I struggled to keep the king upright, and we stumbled from the wall, collided with his desk, and finally made it to the chaise I’d woken up on last night.
We’d taken out a vase and chair on the way, and I nearly went down with him, but Maksym landed on the leather with a pained curse.
He was so fucking pale.
“In the third drawer of my desk…” He sighed and closed his eyes, pointing behind me. “Right side. There’s…there’s a set of vials. Grab one, and the pouch beside it.”
I followed his instructions as quickly as I could with my now-shaking hands and precarious legs. I didn’t bother shutting the drawer before I hurried back. Maksym was trying to fight off his jacket, casting me a resigned look when I helped him slide it off and draped it over the back of the chaise.
My jaw went slack when he settled against it. “Max…”
The side of his shirt was dripping, courtesy of a wound sliced clean across his waist that wept a steady trickle of blue-black blood.
“I know. I know.”
He clenched his teeth as he worked his shirt halfway up, bearing planes of taut muscle littered with bargain marks, scars, and one pissed-off wound. “Be happy you’ve never been a dark fae on the other end of bright iron. It hurts even worse than it looks.”
Bright iron. I’d seen what it did to those shifters in Embervale, and that was after decades of seeing how horrifically injured Odessan miners were in their pursuits of excavating it, oblivious to its true danger.