4. Chace #3
“I used to be one of the official royal seamstresses, but those days are long gone,” she said with a grumble.
She shared a knowing glance with Aoes. “That’s where I met this one.
” She tilted her head toward the pub manager.
“I used to find him utterly irritating, but he’s grown on me… kind of like a virus.”
Aoes snorted.
“And now, I’d even go as far as to consider him a friend.”
“Wow.” Aoes clasped his hands over his heart. “Thanks for the warm, gushy words, luv.”
She smirked and rolled her eyes. “I met Winter through that job, as well.”
Her volume dropped low, and her eyes glazed over, as if in deep reflection.
The change in her tone for a few of her answers could have been simply because the subject matter directly related to the royals, the richest and most powerful family trapped in the cursed citadel.
But…and it was a “but” I was willing to bet money on…
I suspected Camilla was editing significant information from her responses.
When my turn to speak came, I severely edited the details I shared, too. I told Camilla I was part of a team sent from the “collection’s” office. I also mentioned Raven’s recent disappearance and how I’d been trying to locate her, only to learn she was now staying at the castle.
Camilla’s eyes grew wide at the mention, and I bit my tongue against asking her why. Was the mention of the palace the cause of her reaction? Or the resulting proximity between Raven to Prince Winter?
“You know what’s really crazy?” Aoes blurted in a clear attempt to redirect the conversation. “Since your team arrived and chose my little establishment as your home base, business has been slowly growing. I may need to look into hiring an extra body or two to handle the kitchen and bar.”
Camilla clapped her hands together and beamed. “That’s great news!”
Indeed. Not that we had actually chosen his establishment. More like, fell into it as the result of circumstances.
And why had the pub’s business increased?
Because, despite the request for keeping things quiet about Raven’s afflicted healing, people talked.
Now patrons wandered in for a drink and good company because they had a kernel of hope for the future.
Or they hoped to run into Raven and sway her to help an afflicted loved one of their own.
The problem was, Raven had only healed one afflicted individual…
as far as I knew…or maybe the count was now two, if what Aoes had said about Winter were true…
Either way, she professed not to know how she had done so.
I had been inclined to believe her. As angry as we had gotten with each other, I hadn’t sensed any deceit on her part.
“Raven?” one of the twins asked.
I snapped out of my inner reflection to find the child staring at me. She pointed to one of the parchments her afflicted sister had been clutching when they first entered the pub. It was a crude drawing of a female who clearly wasn’t their mother.
The young girl tapped the picture. “Raven.”
“This is Raven?” I asked, and the girl affirmed with a quick nod.
I glanced at Camilla. Her eyes were wide, like a trapped animal’s. Her delicate fingers curled into fists as she bit down on her lip.
Aoes, on the other hand, leaned forward to better see the drawing. He clearly wasn’t privy to whatever knowledge had Camilla cowering.
I pulled the picture forward, gliding it across the table surface, and picked it up to examine it more closely. A female dressed in all black, with her obsidian- and red-highlighted hair flowing around her. The image could easily depict Raven.
But where I faltered, and where my eyes continuously roamed, was the gold and crimson halo surrounding her body, and the many ruby markings cut across her figure. As if someone had taken a knife to multiple points of her body, and the blood had spread in patches.
“What is this?” I tapped my finger to one of the larger blotchy lines of red.
One colored in above Raven’s hip.
“That’s how we first saw her,” the girl said, peering over to her sister for confirmation. The twin nodded. “That’s Raven with her death glow and life-eating holes.”
For a moment, I thought my heart stopped beating. Time stopped moving.
Then the girl added, “We thought she was going to die.”
The world dropped out from underneath me, and all I could hear were the hiss and click of coming specters and the flapping wings of a sea full of crows.
The image of Winter covered in another’s blood whooshed to the forefront of my mind. I had stood face-to-face with the prick and outright asked him about Raven. And he… He had said nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even though—
Winter knew. He knew, and he didn’t say anything. Went to lengths to hide the truth, in fact.
My hands fisted. And despite the clear argument transpiring between Aoes and Camilla, all I could hear was the swoosh of blood and thump, thump of my heart.
I was going to kill Winter. I would march straight up to the palace and kill him.
Right after I smashed the prince’s face in and made him suffer in every conceivable way.