Chapter Twenty-Five
TWENTY-FIVE
The golden braid piled high around the woman’s head could be a crown.
Her cat eyes remind me of chips of topaz, the same color as the gems sparkling at her ears, and she has the full, rosy cheeks of someone who’s never known real hunger.
Recognition races through me—confusion, too.
This is the noble daughter who threw the coins out to the crowds on the King’s Road, the one who wasn’t training with the rest.
Saraid.
And Wolf has his hand on her arm like he knows her.
Like any noble daughter wouldn’t turn us over to the gardai in a heartbeat. I try to warn him—this is not safe. But the nerve pain bears down on me as Wolf piles me inside, and the carriage rocks, then rolls forward.
My splitting head rests against Wolf’s shoulder as he settles next to me, the leather an aching comfort in a way that makes no sense.
Still, no position helps the pain, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
I knew the nerve damage from the High Queen’s creatlach would linger. It would be months, Cashel warned me, before it would fade. Probably fade. That’s what he said.
There’s no point lying to myself.
But the way the pain burns as fresh as that first day just from defending myself, and the way holding my knives brought pain beyond words—
I don’t want to feel like this. I want to feel strong again.
My mind whirls from the pain, making every thought splinter.
I feel Wolf shift next to me, the way he gently leans me up against the cushioned side of the carriage as he reaches for the buckles of his jacket.
My throat tightens, and all I can do is try to keep my breathing steady. Still, I crack my eyes, just a sliver, and steal a single, reckless glance.
Wolf unfastens the worn leather across his chest with knuckles covered in scrapes and bruises and rummages in a pocket against his chest. Small, sure movements—as if he cares whether one jostle might hurt me.
Dangerous, a voice inside me whispers.
He is dangerous.
The two small glass vials he pulls from inside the jacket look tiny in his large hands. Each is the size of my little finger. One with a brilliant blue powder, while the other…
Old Ones, that shimmering black liquid is magic.
I traded my life for that magic for Finn—I’d recognize it anywhere now.
Wolf tracks my stare and flinches, deftly dropping the vial with the viscous black liquid back into his palm so only the one with the brilliant blue powder is visible.
“You told Talon what the poison was.” An unreadable shadow passes over his guarded gaze.
“Leave it to you to need the rarest antidote around. Luckily, I know someone.”
Keeva?
It has to be—Keeva can find anything. But I’m not about to risk saying her name out loud, not when we aren’t alone.
My eyes flash to Saraid. What is he thinking, talking about any of this in front of her? Those catlike eyes are shrewd. She’ll turn us both in the second we get back to the castle.
Wolf’s green eyes flicker to her, then back to me. The jagged edges of him seem to soften as he weighs the grit of my jaw and there’s a skitter of… intrigue in the look he gives me.
It vanishes in a breath.
“Don’t worry about Saraid.” The hand holding the vial of blue powder flicks, and the tiny lid clicks open. “She won’t say anything, and nerve damage from creatlach doesn’t just go away on its own. Take a pinch and put it under your tongue.”
I still don’t want to trust him fully, knowing what he and the Whisperers have kept from us. But… after what I know now, maybe I’m starting to understand his secrecy.
And he did just save my life. Talon never could’ve gotten to me in time. Those assassins must’ve been watching me since the moment I got to the festival and waited until I stepped away to track me down.
Apprehension eases its iron grip around my chest. An ember of something strange and new and unnervingly warm flickers in its place. I dip two fingers into the narrow mouth of the vial and pinch out a small amount of the blue powder.
I raise them, as if in mocking cheers, then place the powder under my tongue. “Happy birthday to me.”
Surprise furrows his brow, a rare flash of emotion. “It’s your birthday?”
The powder under my tongue dissolves slowly—and it tastes foul, acrid and bitter, sticking to my tongue and my throat as I swallow it down. My stomach turns, but I fight it. I need this antidote.
“Almost,” I grit out past the vile taste. “Soon.”
“When?” Wolf asks, almost softly.
I don’t answer—because immediately, the pain lancing through my hands… softens. Relief slips from my lips in a small whimper, and even as the powder begins to dull the worst of the agony, I almost wish it weren’t working. At least, not quite so fast.
Wolf’s mouth is curving into a satisfied smirk, and I can already tell—he’s exactly the type to be insufferable about knowing just what I needed.
The carriage rolls beneath us, and the ringing echo of pain in my ears eases enough to hear the crack and crunch of gravel under the wheels.
The bumps don’t send jolts of agony shooting through me.
Pins and needles tingle in my hands and arms, but the feeling is fading enough for me to gingerly test out a bend of my tender wrists.
They hurt, but the sharpness of the nerve pain is fading.
It feels more like a week-old sprain than a fresh break.
It’s tolerable—if I had to, I think I could hold a blade and use it.
“Better?”
“Yes,” I say, rubbing at my face. The blurring edges of the pain ease the way a tide pulls back from the shore. Each throb is a little shorter than the last, putting a little more distance between me and the wave. “Talon’s going to be ripping their hair out worrying.”
“I’ll deal with them later.” Wolf scowls.
Saraid snorts.
At him.
“What?” He glowers at her, and she rolls her eyes. That familiarity between them, the way she leans back against the cushions of the carriage, reclining like he’s the least dangerous person here… it’s if she knows him well enough to call his bluff.
“Deal with them too hard, and we’ll be down another ally,” Saraid warns. “Talon’s valuable. You don’t exactly blend in with regular people.”
“I blend in fine.” Wolf bristles.
This time Saraid outright laughs at him.
I take the chance to really look at him without the green fire of his eyes on mine.
He’s dead wrong. I’ve known he was dangerous from the first moment I saw him, but it’s more than that.
More than the wordless warning that the sharp cut of his jaw and the blades up and down his body make brutally clear.
There’s a shadow of regal beauty in his chiseled cheekbones that reminds me of a statue a sculptor might carve of a long-lost king.
The contrast with the bruised vulnerability in those rare moments his shields waver makes my pulse quicken.
“Keep telling yourself that.” Saraid turns a shrewd look to me. Heat rises up my neck, like she’s caught me staring, and I wrench my gaze away from Wolf. “She knows that one word of any of this getting out is all the excuse I need to end her before the last test, right?”
I narrow my eyes at her. “I do now.”
“Good.” Tension in her topaz eyes simmers beneath her dark lashes. “Because I did this for him, not for you. He is my ally. You are a liability, and one I frankly can’t understand why he’s so insistent on keeping alive.”
“This liability is going to—”
“Prove herself useful,” Wolf cuts in with a sharp glare at Saraid.
“Hmm.” She leans back, rapping one neat, trimmed fingernail along the carriage’s windowsill, and glances between Wolf and me. “Let’s just hope she’s feeling… forgiving.”
That word—she—carries more weight than it should for just me.
An awkward tension settles over us. No one speaks, but I hear all three of our breaths freeze in our chests at the sight of gardai running in stiff units past our carriage, down the path back toward the festival and the bodies of the assassins we left in the rowan copse.
At least if the gardai are there, we might face fewer of them in the castle yards.
Getting back inside isn’t going to be easy. Every inch of me aches like I just ran from Quayside all the way here, without stopping once.
Wolf squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose. When he opens them a moment later, his darkened green eyes are… weary. As if he’s barely slept in the week since he found me in the prince’s chamber—his cousin’s chamber.
The same cousin who betrayed him and got Wolf’s entire family killed.
“Are you bleeding?” Wolf’s eyes skim over me as the carriage jolts to a stop. “Anything feel broken?”
Pain along my side still screams fiercely—I must’ve pulled a muscle, because the powder for the nerve pain isn’t touching that slicing burn.
But I’m not about to admit that out loud. He might trust Saraid, but I sure as shit do not. “I’m fine.”
He arches a brow and shifts to crack open the carriage door. Wolf glances around both sides before stepping out. “Hurry—the stable yard won’t be clear for long.” He looks at me, a challenge lighting at the edges of his eyes. “Need me to carry you, or are you fine enough to walk?”
“I do not need you to carry me.”
As soon as I say it, I stumble on the steep dip from the carriage stair to the ground and catch myself on the ledge of the door with a curse.
His eyes rake me up and down, assessing. Whatever he finds in me, he nods.
“Good. Because we’re going for a climb.” Wolf shuts the carriage door, and I hear Saraid rap on the amber side paneling from inside, her sharp eyes watching us as the horses trot off.
“A climb where?”
“Do you want me to explain or do you want to live?” Green eyes flash, quickly taking in the stable yard around us. “Because I’m betting we have about two minutes before some guard or servant comes wandering out of the kitchens, and believe me—you do not want anyone finding you like this.”
He tugs at the neck of my cloak, and I look down.
Fuck.