Chapter 41
S neaking through a castle made of stone was somehow more challenging than fumbling through a forest. Light spilled from under Thalon’s door when Alora passed it, the same as Jade’s. She didn’t have any real plan other than slipping through the foyer and finding an exit into the royal gardens to follow that tether to Garrik.
Wherever he went.
If only she could command wings. It would’ve been much easier to simply leap from her balcony and soar into the night.
Alora gripped Soulstryker inside her jacket and ran her hands along the throwing daggers strapped to her thigh. Guided by faelights, she escaped through the raven doors and ran across the bridge to Castle Karanagar. Treading lightly down the inner cloisters and high-arched architraves, past the waterfalls deep within the mountain until she rounded a corner that she knew housed endless levels of staircases, weaving higher and higher into the castle.
She expected Ladomyr’s main foyer to be empty this late. For drunken nobility to be sleeping in their beds. What she didn’t expect was Miwa, cloaked and walking through the center of the gold-laden wooden floor. Didn’t expect her eyes to be shifting around the room as if attempting to conceal a secret.
Distant voices of servants and the rustling of brooms echoed and stirred the maidservant to action. Furniture scraped along the wooden floorboards to Alora’s right. A cough somewhere up the staircase and down a hall to the left.
Alora cursed herself at the curiosity. Not abandoning but delaying the gardens, she waited until Miwa disappeared down a hallway and quickly decided to follow.
Miwa stopped under the flickering faelights.
Leaning against a hanging portrait of the late queen, a darkened figure stood. Darkness shielded their face as they spoke in whispers.
Miwa’s wings were tense, the vibrancy of white, now muddy and stressed. But not as critical as the downcast look in her amber eyes as the figure handed her…
Alora couldn’t determine exactly what it was from around that corner concealing her, but it looked to be … a bracelet, perhaps.
The encounter didn’t last for more than a few moments.
In a blink, the figure vanished. There one moment, then through the stones—the floor—existence itself—in the matter of a heartbeat, gone.
Something had the hairs on the back of Alora’s neck standing, and it wasn’t one of Garrik’s shields. It felt too predatory.
She cautiously turned, hand inches from sinking inside her leathers to draw Soulstryker, when a blood-gaze, inches away, stared through her entire being.
Like a cat who caught vermin, crimson eyes brightened, settling on her neck—her quickened pulse—as if Silas wished to find his hand around it. “White-hair,” he drawled. The very blood in her body emptied as if his words had sucked it from her veins. “If I catch you wandering again, I might think you mean to tempt me to seek out your every secret.”
The spymaster stood stiff as a statue. The only way she knew he was a living, breathing thing was by those calculating eyes that watched her retreat a step.
Dangerous. This was dangerous. The rune-covered male rumored to auction faeries stood within arm’s length. He could lunge and shackle her, steal her away, and no one would know. Garrik wouldn’t know.
Garrik. She should’ve gone to the gardens, not here. Not to meet face-to-face with one of the deadliest things in Kadamar.
Silas methodically angled his head. That touch of malice in his eyes narrowed over her shoulder before he warned with vicious intent, “Isn’t there somewhere you should be?”
Alora turned to see intimidation and reluctance in Miwa’s eyes. The female, who was fierce and bold and strong, looked utterly petrified as Alora blurted, “She has already attended to her duties. I dismissed her for the night.”
Miwa drew a long breath.
“Hmm,” Silas hummed, and it felt like death trickling down her spine. That careful attention of Ladomyr’s spymaster shifted to the grand foyer of staircases behind them. Disdain filled his features, but warmth hit her like lightning strikes.
The spymaster didn’t flinch. Didn’t move those bloodthirsty eyes. He merely cocked his tattooed head so slowly he didn’t seem real as Thalon placed his palm on Alora’s shoulder. As Aiden stood beside Miwa, draping his forearm over her, dangling a dagger from his fingers.
She suppressed that urge to gape at them, her Guardian and sea captain. Both with more life in their eyes since she’d last seen them ambushed and bruised in Garrik’s rooms. Both healed enough to be walking, talking , with Aiden still sporting a cracked lip and split cheek.
“Spymaster,” Thalon growled.
Eyes of crimson narrowed as a serpentine smile contorted Silas’s face. “Barbarian,” he returned, dryly.
“Perhaps instead of threatening our females in hallways, you should be searching for the Marked One your king allowed over the border.”
Silas dismissively brushed dirt from his lapel, giving full attention to his hand as he drawled, “The matter is handled. I’m certain the High Prince will find himself pleased soon.” And without a single care, turned, offering his back as he clasped his hands and strode into the darkness.
Not two breaths later, Thalon spun Alora to him, face full of holy wrath, simmering over blazing golden eyes. “ Unleash Michael , you were told to go nowhere alone.”
Right. The night before Aiden and Thalon were ambushed. But they couldn’t fault her for going after Garrik … who had also flown away … alone .
Miwa pushed from Aiden’s forearm, from the blade dangling in his hand, and curled her lip at him. She stepped toward Thalon. Blazen heat regarded him with one quick sweep, like she didn’t find him to be the lethal brute Silas coined him to be. Miwa met his eyes, the ones that burned into her wings, hiked her chin high, and argued, “She isn’t alone.”
In agreement, Alora crossed her arms and cocked her hip. Arching her brow, daring Thalon to speak.
Thalon regarded the female as if she were rotten fish when Miwa spoke again. “You want to have a conversation or leave me to my lady’s needs?” Alora couldn’t help herself from smiling at the way Miwa sneered the challenge.
Her Guardian only grunted, impressed by the female’s backbone, and flashed his attention to Aiden. He pointed with his head to his right shoulder, toward a hallway, before turning to Alora. “Return to the High King’s mountain,” was all he said before he and Aiden, in their battle leathers, walked away.
The tunnels , she realized. Blood . Hope budded inside her as she felt Soulstryker in her leathers.
Miwa hadn’t stopped curling her lip at Thalon’s back. At that shadow following him.
Alora smirked at the image—to see them fighting in the arena together, knowing by the muscles and sharp wit the female had that she would give Thalon a challenge.
Repeating the same words Miwa had used, Alora inquired, “Do you want to have a conversation about what you were doing?”
Miwa’s scorching gaze flickered to her and hesitated.
Maybe a new approach. “Whatever it is, you know I will help.”
“The inner dealings of the castle are no matter for a Dragon,” Miwa scolded.
Alora weathered it and began walking toward the cloisters with Miwa as her shadow when she asked, “I saw you, Miwa. I simply want to help. I can’t imagine that being a servant in this place is easy. And if you need more coin, I’m sure I can?—”
“I need nothing, my lady.”
“Alora,” she corrected and stopped where the spray of the waterfall should’ve blasted her with mist, but the land’s magic kept it from entering the architraves. “What did that cloaked faerie give you? If you’re in danger…” Alora paused, allowing the female a moment to speak.
Her maidservant sighed heavily and produced what was indeed a bracelet from her cloak and held it out, eyes shifting around the cloisters. “One of the wives lost her bracelet. I had a new one made. It meant a great deal to her. I’m only saddened we haven’t been able to locate the original.”
That would’ve been perfectly logical … had Miwa not snuck through the castle.
Alora remained expressionless.
She hadn’t expected a queen to wear something so simple. Not crafted of fine metals or gold, the bracelet resembled crude metal forged with a hammer. Dents on the surface, cracks. And etched on the core was the head of a fox.
“This wife must enjoy simple things.” Not entirely convinced, Alora spoke with an air of skepticism.
Miwa only smiled.