When the airship steadies, I shred one of the drying cloths and bandage it around the shallow scratch. Then listen a moment as voices surge outside the room. It’s Myles from the sound of it. I disengage the lock and edge it open, then peer out into the hall where the two Faelen guards and Myles are speaking.
Myles looks ill as he turns to me. “Ah, I’ve jussst come from explaining to the Faelen delegates that I have brought you along as a guest.” He holds out a shaky hand. “Your knives, if you don’t mind.”
“Go to hulls, Myles.”
“You certainly could’ve sent me there if you so desired.” He studies my puffy eyes with a look of humored arrogance. “I’d like to think you chose not to because you couldn’t bear the thought of never ssseeing me again.”
“Maybe I thought I had killed you.” But even as the words snap harsh, my undertone betrays me. We both know I could’ve killed him at that cave. I only left him alive because I couldn’t bear the thought of adding another murder to my name.
With a click of Myles’s fingers, both guards head down to the far end of the hall. He follows them with his eyes until they’re a good distance, then he shifts his gaze back on me. “Oh my dear, you’ve a sharp wit but you’re quite the wretched liar.” He reaches a finger out to trace one of my memorial tattoos without actual touching it. “Perhaps that’s why you can see through my abilitiesss.”
I snort. “That or your abilities are more pathetic than you think.”
His hand is instantly clamped on my arm, crushing my tattoos. My vision fades and then flares and suddenly I’m outside the cave where I left him and there’s a bolcrane tearing through the forest into the clearing. The screams of the men it’s killing are loud and real and just as haunting as my dreams ever since. The image shifts and Eogan is in front of me. The real Eogan—his eyes holding my gaze a moment before dropping to my lips. And then his mouth is brushing over mine just as another picture takes its place of Eogan’s throat being slit. I gasp and push back.
“Pathetic? I think not,” Myles says. “Which leaves me pondering why you didn’t tell King Sedric of my ulterior allegiances. Fear perhapsss? Affection?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I blink away my fury as the vision fades and Myles’s face and the hall come back into focus. There’s not a bleeding chance I’m going to tell him the simple truth—that after a couple days, I really did fear the bolcranes had finished him off. And with everyone being so busy making good with Bron this past week, Rasha and I had been little more than ignored.
Tromping noises clomp from whatever room is above us.
He lifts up his fingers and flexes them into a fist. “Such a shame about your own abilitiesss. To no longer feel that power coursing through your blood—tell me, does the loss of it ache? Does it hurt to know you could’ve taken me up on my offer at the cave?” His fingers flutter over me again, this time brushing the skin on my neck and shoulders, sending an image into my head of what Myles and I could become together. Standing hand in hand over the five kingdoms. Powerful. Beautiful. Perfect. With Draewulf dead at our feet.
He leans close. “Too bad you don’t know how to get them back. Especially since they might’ve allowed you to save lover boy.”
I pull out both knives and jab for him, but suddenly the guards are there grabbing my arms.
“Ah, there we are. Now that wasssn’t so hard.” He takes one blade, then the other, and sticks them in his belt.
I hate him for it.
Next thing I know the airship pitches hard and he looks like he’s going to vomit all over the lot of us.
“Excuse me,” I say, and cross the four feet to my room and close the door. And wait for Myles’s disgusting voice to fade down the corridor until only the airship’s humming fills the air. Then pull the covers back over my head while I face the fact that, no matter how much I wish it, I am not dead.
CHAPTER 8
SCRITCH-SCRITCH.
Scritch.
Scritch.
The annoying sound overhead interrupts my space like every other whirring, clunking noise on this metal ship. Except this one is followed by a thump that’s more suggestive of rats in the walls than gears turning. Or maybe I’m just going crazy from being stuck in here for an entire blasted day.
Scritch-scritch-scritch.
I yank the covers from my head and glare through the dim at the ceiling as it tilts slightly to the left with the bobbing of the ship. They’ve got to be jesting. Where are the ferret-cats to take care of their vermin?
I’m just climbing from the bed to pound on the wall and scare the fool things off when a small utterance of, “Busted hulls,” slips through the thick, flat bars of a small metal square covering an air vent six feet up the wall in front of me.
I raise a brow and reach for my blades before remembering Lord Myles, the blasted oaf, took them. Too late—the metal square is moving, pushing out. It wobbles, then drops with a thunk to the red-carpeted floor, and a black head pops out from the resulting hole that is too tiny for a normal person to fit through. What in—?
Wide, dark eyes blink at me, then frown.