“The gap in the wall is right up here,” Lucien was saying, sounding about as thrilled as me to be in such company. Stomping over the fallen pink blossoms, Dagdan and Brannagh slid into step beside him, Jurian slithering off to survey the terrain, the sentries remaining with our mounts.
I followed Lucien and the royals, keeping a casual distance behind. I knew my elegant, fine clothes weren’t fooling the prince and princess into forgetting that a fellow daemati now walked at their backs. But I’d still carefully selected the embroidered sapphire jacket and brown pants—adorned only with the jeweled knife and belt that Lucien had once gifted me. A lifetime ago.
“Who cleaved the wall here?” Brannagh asked, surveying the hole that we could not see—no, the wall itself was utterly invisible—but rather felt, as if the air had been sucked from one spot.
“We don’t know,” Lucien replied, the dappled sunlight glinting along the gold thread adorning his fawn-brown jacket as he crossed his arms. “Some of the holes just appeared over the centuries. This one is barely wide enough for one person to get through.”
An exchanged glance between the twins. I came up behind them, studying the gap, the wall around it that made every instinct recoil at its … wrongness. “This is where I came through—that first time.”
Lucien nodded, and the other two lifted their brows. But I took a step closer to Lucien, my arm nearly brushing his, letting him be a barrier between us. They’d been more careful at breakfast this morning about pushing against my mental shields. Yet now, letting them think I was physically cowed by them … Brannagh studied how closely I stood to Lucien; how he shifted slightly to shield me, too.
A little, cold smile curled her lips. “How many holes are in the wall?”
“We’ve counted three along our entire border,” Lucien said tightly. “Plus one off the coast—about a mile away.”
I didn’t let my cool mask falter as he offered up the information.
But Brannagh shook her head, dark hair devouring the sunlight. “The sea entrances are of no use. We need to break it on the land.”
“The continent surely has spots, too.”
“Their queens have an even weaker grasp on their people than you do,” Dagdan said. I plucked up that gem of information, studied it.
“We’ll leave you to explore it, then,” I said, waving toward the hole. “When you’re done, we’ll ride to the next.”
“It’s two days from here,” Lucien countered.
“Then we’ll plan a trip for that excursion,” I said simply. Before Lucien could object, I asked, “And the third hole?”
Lucien tapped a foot against the mossy ground, but said, “Two days past that.”
I turned to the royals, arching a brow. “Can both of you winnow?”
Brannagh flushed, straightening. But it was Dagdan who admitted, “I can.” He must have carried both Brannagh and Jurian when they arrived. He added, “Only a few miles if I bear others.”
I merely nodded and headed toward a tangle of stooping dogwoods, Lucien following close behind. When there was nothing but ruffling pink blossoms and trickling sunlight through the thatch of branches, when the royals had busied themselves with the wall, out of sight and sound, I took up a perch on a smooth, bald rock.
Lucien sat against a nearby tree, folding one booted ankle over another. “Whatever you’re planning, it’ll land us knee-deep in shit.”
“I’m not planning anything.” I plucked up a fallen pink blossom and twirled it between my thumb and forefinger.
That golden eye narrowed, clicking softly.
“What do you even see with that thing?”
He didn’t answer.
I chucked the blossom onto the soft moss between us. “Don’t trust me? After all we’ve been through?”
He frowned at the discarded blossom, but still said nothing.
I busied myself by sorting through my pack until I found the canteen of water. “If you’d been alive for the War,” I asked him, taking a swig, “would you have fought on their side? Or fought for the humans?”
“I would have been a part of the human-Fae alliance.”
“Even if your father wasn’t?”
“Especially if my father wasn’t.”
But Beron had been part of that alliance, if I correctly recalled my lessons with Rhys all those months ago.
“And yet here you are, ready to march with Hybern.”
“I did it for you, too, you know.” Cold, hard words. “I went with him to get you back.”
“I never realized what a powerful motivator guilt can be.”
“That day you—went away,” he said, struggling to avoid that other word—left. “I beat Tamlin back to the manor—received the message when we were out on the border and raced here. But the only trace of you was that ring, melted between the stones of the parlor. I got rid of it a moment before Tam arrived home to see it.”
A probing, careful statement. Of the facts that pointed not toward abduction.
“They melted it off my finger,” I lied.
His throat bobbed, but he just shook his head, the sunlight leaking through the forest canopy setting the ember-red of his hair flickering.
We sat in silence for minutes. From the rustling and murmuring, the royals were finishing up, and I braced myself, calculating the words I’d need to wield without seeming suspicious.
I said quietly, “Thank you. For coming to Hybern to get me.”
He pulled at the moss beside him, jaw tight. “It was a trap. What I thought we were to do there … it did not turn out that way.”
It was an effort not to bare my teeth. But I walked to him, taking up a place at his side against the wide trunk of the tree. “This situation is terrible,” I said, and it was the truth.
A low snort.
I knocked my knee against his. “Don’t let Jurian bait you. He’s doing it to feel out any weaknesses between us.”
“I know.”
I turned my face to him, resting my knee against his in silent demand. “Why?” I asked. “Why does Hybern want to do this beyond some horrible desire for conquest? What drives him—his people? Hatred? Arrogance?”
Lucien finally looked at me, the intricate pieces and carvings on the metal eye much more dazzling up close. “Do you—”
Brannagh and Dagdan shoved through the bushes, frowning to find us sitting there.
But it was Jurian—right on their heels, as if he’d been divulging the details of his surveying—who smiled at the sight of us, knee to knee and nearly nose to nose.
“Careful, Lucien,” the warrior sneered. “You see what happens to males who touch the High Lord’s belongings.”
Lucien snarled, but I shot him a warning glare.
Point proven, I said silently.
And despite Jurian, despite the sneering royals, a corner of Lucien’s mouth tugged upward.
Ianthe was waiting at the stables when we returned.
She’d made her grand arrival at the end of breakfast hours before, breezing into the dining room when the sun was shining in shafts of pure gold through the windows.