Threat #3
“It was the craziest thing,” Larua said. “I was on set. They were shooting. Then Aleksei shows out of nowhere with about twenty RS agents and spirits me away. He said you were threatened?”
“Kinda, sorta,” I replied.
“How can you kinda, sorta be threatened?” she asked.
I got up, went to the desk, grabbed my Palm and brought it back, showing her the text comms.
“Holy Hecate, that’s terrifying,” she breathed, staring at the display.
“I think Tanyn is overacting,” I declared.
Laura shot me big eyes.
“Definitely overreacting that he commed Aleksei and you both dragged yourselves up here for whatever reason,” I continued. “I mean, again, why are you here?”
“Because, late last night, Tanyn commed Aleksei to share what happened with you. And this morning, Cormac commed him to share that he’s, essentially, kidnapped Gayle and taken her to Land’s End.”
I gasped.
Mom gasped.
And my voice was high-pitched when I asked, “What?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I know. Kidnapped. He says she’s in Land’s End, safe. However, he did not share why he went to such dramatic lengths to get her safe, why he thought she wasn’t safe, or why he’d care at all if she wasn’t, because he made his feelings clear about her.”
I fought growling, because any time I was reminded of what Cormac did to our Gayle, it made the demon come out in me.
Laura kept on.
“But I’ve tried to get in touch with her, oh, I don’t know, approximately five hundred times since we loaded up to come up here, and she isn’t answering.”
I immediately took my Palm from Laura so I could text Gayle.
Where are you? Are you ok? I sent.
“She won’t reply,” Laura told me.
“Why did he take her?” I asked.
“Again, Prince Cormac wasn’t forthcoming,” Laura answered. “But all this tweaked Aleksei because…”
She didn’t really have to explain the because, since Aleksei’s True Bride had been targeted, multiple times, the head of her security detail had been murdered while protecting her, and all of this drama ended in a troll attack on the royal residence in Nocturn: the Celestial Palace.
“Aleksei,” she carried on, “and from how he tells it, Tanyn, Cormac and Bainon as well, believe Tatra was behind everything.”
Bainon was the prince, and future king, of Dawn’s Break.
Mom gasped.
I gasped too.
“We can all agree it makes sense, considering Arnaud wasn’t the brightest neon in the script,” she continued.
“If you think about him, his being the mastermind behind that troll attack would be a shocker. And I learned on the way up here, Arnaud demanded to be given truth serum, he was, and even under the effects of the serum, he vehemently denies he had anything to do with Tula Longshot’s murder or any plot against me, Aleksei or Night’s Fall. ”
“Oh my goodness,” Mom whispered.
“But Tatra’s exiled to Snowy Ridge,” I said.
“Exiled, but not cut off from anything,” Laura returned, then drifted a hand in front of her.
“And I’ve heard the Hectic Chateau is quite something, but it’s no Berg Castle.
Aleksei thinks…they all think, like she pulled the strings when King Riland was alive, she did the same when Arnaud was.
They think she has designs to do…something. They just don’t know what.”
“Do they have any proof of this?” Mom asked.
Laura looked to her, shaking her head. “I really don’t know. Aleksei didn’t get deep into it. But he sounds pretty convinced of it.”
“Well, he’ll probably be more convinced when he learns the preliminary findings of Riland’s autopsy showed he was not only drugged, but poisoned,” I informed her.
It was Laura’s turn to gasp (I’d told Mom this over lunch).
“Mm-hmm,” I concurred to her shock.
“Cat,” she said in a weird voice, and weirder, she reached out to take my hand, holding it like she was supporting me through something terrible.
“What?” I whispered.
“I have no clue why it didn’t occur to me, but I didn’t really think about it until Aleksei mentioned it on the way up here,” she began.
But she said no more.
So I prompted, “What?” again.
“I’m the True Bride,” she stated needlessly.
“Yes,” I agreed, equally superfluously.
“And Gayle is the fated mate to the future king of Land’s End,” she continued.
My gaze flew to my mother as what should have also occurred to me way before started to occur to me. At the look on Mom’s face, I knew she’d caught on too.
Even though we had, Laura didn’t quit.
“And you’re the next queen of Sky’s Edge.”
“Oh my gods,” I whispered.
“And we’re all best friends, and have been since we were kids,” she kept at it.
“Oh my gods,” I repeated.
“That can’t be coincidence,” she stated. “Something is up. Something is at play. Something is happening. We just don’t know what it is. But we know it’s something, and our males are losing their minds about it.”
“Oh, my girls,” Mom breathed in a horrified tone.
“It isn’t over,” Laura said. And then she went on to say something else we’d already figured out. “The troll attack was just the beginning. And with those texts, we know this is deeper, it’s been going on a long time…”
She took a deep breath, squeezed my hand, and finished.
“And the threat is real.”