Chapter 12
Elysia was both unsurprised and unimpressed that her death voyage was beginning where the disaster that was her life had begun. She’d returned to her bedroom from the greenhouse to find a sealed envelope on her pillow. The fates had finally spoken, and she’d leave the next day.
Afraid to travel directly to Lynd, she’d taken a risk and traveled to Rollie, landing somewhere in the tunnels, and scampering away before he could see her.
Elysia crept through familiar tunnels and hidden stairs until she finally dropped into the castle kitchens, startling the daylights out of the closest kitchen worker.
The girl shrieked as if Elysia were a ghost, dropping the large copper pot she’d been transferring to the iron stove.
Broth splattered everywhere, and the girl groped for words.
“You’re, you’re her.” Speaking in a hushed tone, she looked around frantically to see if any of the other workers had noticed that the prince’s almost betrothed, now fugitive of the kingdom, had just landed right in the midst of their roast beef preparations.
“You will stop that at once,” Elysia chastised in a mimicry of her mother.
She could practically see the nonsensical words building up against the girl’s sealed lips, but not a single one was uttered, her eyes round with fear.
Pleased the girl had stopped yammering, Elysia pulled her into a corner. “Where’s Lynd?”
The worker nervously played with her apron, still looking around as if someone might do something about the rogue wanted woman holding her captive in the corner, but the kitchen was a tired, well-oiled machine and no one even bothered to glance up from their work.
“She’s not here anymore. They questioned her about you, and no one’s seen her since.”
Elysia closed her eyes. That was not what she wanted to hear. Bracing herself for the answer, she asked the next logical question. “She’s dead then?”
“No…”
Elysia didn’t need her magic to know this girl knew more than what she was saying.
“Tell me now.” She growled. If the threat wasn’t clear in her voice, then it was in the defined point of her dagger now tipping up the girl’s chin.
She pressed back against the wall, whispering, “I think she’s at the House.”
“You tell anyone I was here, and I’ll slip into your room when you’re sleeping and end this conversation.
Do you understand?” She dug the dagger into soft skin, knowing her visit would be gossip fodder within minutes.
Elysia smiled as she disappeared. She hoped it made Garrison scream when he heard she’d been in his kitchens.
Elysia traveled to the Doorman, and by the gods, did she immediately regret it.
She truly would never be able to unsee such a thing.
Her sister’s bare ass and tits. Stalking closer to the Doorman, who was sprawled like an artful goddess across her silk bedding and practically purring as she enticed Beatriz closer.
Elysia’s voice came out in a hurried squeak as she slapped her hand over her eyes. “Oh my gods, stop, stop, stop. Please, for the love of all that is good in this wretched world, stop.”
Her sister’s annoyed voice scratched at her ears. “You have the worst timing of anyone I’ve ever met, Elysia. I’ve half a mind to throw you outside and call the king’s guards.”
Elysia peeked through her fingers, only to see her sister still as naked as the day she was born, glaring forcefully. The Doorman had rolled over onto her stomach and was watching as if this were an entertaining bit of theater rather than her sex life being interrupted.
“How was I supposed to know you were here and doing this?” Elysia hissed right back.
Grabbing a pillow off the floor, she shoved it at her sister’s tits.
Gods, it was like they were staring at her.
How did someone built like a knife manage to have tits like that?
The gods were unfair. Very, very unfair.
Uninterested in modesty, Beatriz chucked the pillow straight back at her head. Elysia ducked. The pillow soared past and crashed into a fake potted plant, knocking dirt everywhere.
The Doorman emitted an aggrieved sound. “Perhaps we can jump to the part where you tell us why you’re interrupting our evening? I only have so much time before guests begin arriving, you know.”
Elysia stared at the ceiling since no one seemed to feel the need to put clothes on. “Yes, because I wanted to have to bathe my own eyeballs later. Can you just tell me where to find Lynd? Some girl in the castle kitchens said she was here.”
Both Beatriz and the Doorman’s eyes narrowed simultaneously.
“You went into the castle?”
Elysia flinched, hurrying to defend herself. “I had to! The fates sent me to find Lynd. Take it up with them!”
Beatriz took a stomping and naked step closer. “You are the most idiotic, frustrating person I’ve ever met in my life. You can’t keep coming back to Relaclave! We’ve got things handled here, okay? The market, the rebels, just leave that business to us.”
Elysia deflated. “I know, I know. I won’t come back unless it’s necessary, but what if you need something? How are you supposed to contact me?”
Triz spoke slowly. “Elysia, you need to do your job. The talisman is your only concern.”
Her heart dropped even further, and she mumbled, embarrassed.
“The fates really did tell me to find Lynd, but you know I worry about you. You’ve made it impossible not to over the years.
And now, what if you die and I don’t even know?
” Her fingers intertwined fretfully, and she avoided her sister’s gaze.
Beatriz’s face softened, but the Doorman interceded, and she spoke far more gently than her other half. “Lynd is in the kitchens, of course. We’ll be shipping her out as soon as we can. Not even I can hide her for long without consequence.”
Elysia nodded mutely and slipped out the door to find the kitchens. She’d known it was a risk coming here. But the instructions had told her to visit the safest place in the castle, and as far she was concerned the safest place in the castle was a person, and her name was Lynd.
Elysia reached the kitchens and poked her head inside, stilling at what she saw.
Lynd.
Working dough like any other day.
But with half her face bruised and a bandage wrap poked out of her shirt collar.
Elysia swallowed and walked in tentatively, her steps weighed down with a sense of responsibility and guilt. Choking on the rising panic, she flung it away. Beatriz is dying, and Garrison went after Lynd. She blinked away tears. It wasn’t Lynd’s job to make her feel better.
Clearing her throat, she spoke nervously. “Any maple cakes today?”
Lynd dropped the dough, her head jerking up as she gasped. Hurrying over with flour covered hands, she immediately admonished Elysia. “You shouldn’t be here. There’s a warrant out for you—you need to leave.”
“I know, but I think you know why I’m here.”
Lynd’s mouth tightened, stubbornness setting into the lines of her face. “I know no such thing.”
“I can’t leave until you tell me whatever it is.”
Lynd’s voice became fierce. “It’s not your job to deal with gods or fates. Let someone else handle this mess. Look at how they string you along even now, making you beg others for what to do.”
Unshed tears pricked Elysia’s eyes once more, but she swallowed the burn.
It was a funny thing to hear her own justifications validated by someone she loved.
Somehow, it almost made them easier to let go.
Because none of this was her fault, but that didn’t change the fact that she was tied up in it all now.
Elysia could see her battling over the right thing to do, so she pressed a little harder. “I need to know whatever it is, Lynd. Can’t leave until I do. Then I promise I won’t come back.”
“Not like you to make promises you can’t keep.”
“I’ll do my best not to come back,” she amended with a half smile.
Lynd watched her through hard eyes, not looking like she believed her. She continued to work the dough as if she could knead and punch through whatever it was that kept her from speaking plainly as she normally tended to do.
“Never was much a believer in the undead gods even before the Fall. Maybe they exist elsewhere. But not here. Not for us.” Dropping the dough, Lynd finally relented, knowing she had no choice. “Three people visited me.”
“And?”
Lynd stared past Elysia, clearly swimming in the memory of the visit. “They told me to tell you that your voyage begins where you last left your heart. That you must take it back to begin.”
The name she hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on since waking up in the death realm whispered through her mind. Everything in her body screamed no.
She didn’t want to see him.
If she didn’t see him, she could pretend it had all ended with a dance.
When the truth was, he had plunged the dagger into her heart the night he had left her on a beach to die.
He’d twisted it even deeper in the woods as he screamed in her face and asked for answers.
And then shattered her to nothing when she finally accepted that he would sell her out in a heartbeat if it meant achieving his goals.
Drained, Elysia leaned back against a counter. Gods help her, but she wanted to go back to the death realm and lick her wounds in peace. But she couldn’t, not until Lynd told her the last bit of information she was still refusing to hand over.
Elysia’s magic wanted to dive in, peeling back Lynd’s armor, but it banged to no avail against its own weakness in this land. “Whatever it is you’re hiding, it could get me killed. Now isn’t the time to protect me.”
Lynd glared. “You’re barely grown.”
“To you.” Elysia smiled, looking at her hands.
“Yes, to me, and I’m the only one who matters, got it?”
Laughing tiredly, her wan smile held. “Yes, ma’am.”
“They said that you need to remember your voyage, or you’ll fail before you even begin. That the talisman is yours to find and the king is his to destroy.”