“Excuse me!” Wellimton bursts out. “Is no one else concerned by the fact that Nym did nothing back there to stop that, nor will she answer a fair question? Because I think it’s time we discuss where her allegiances lie—”
His voice is grating my head. I crush my fingers into a fist to lift in his direction as that icy ache flares, craving to shut him up. I feel the sensation press out toward him, like a wave, and midsentence his face turns a strange shade of gray. The tension in my veins pulls harder, as if wanting to drink the idiotic air from his lungs.
Then he gasps and begins to gag, and the cold flare inside me dims. I drop my hand and look down as if it’s just caught fire. What in hulls?
When I peek back up, only Wellimton and Rasha seem to have noticed my action as anything more than a gesture of annoyance. The princess gives a sharp frown, and Wellimton’s face alters from gray to pale as he coughs.
I fight to steady my frightened breathing and temper. “I assure you, Lord Wellimton, that the king in that Hall is not the same man he was in Faelen. And I will do everything I can to stop this, in the right time, in the best way.” I keep my gaze averted from Rasha.
He nods once, quick, then peers away—to recover his composure, I suspect.
“Might I ask when you think that will be?” Lord Percival says hesitantly.
“I think the questions we should be asking are, why is Bron pursuing this now?” I say. “Why against Tulla?”
“You heard him—the resources.” Lady Gwen looks back and forth between the delegates, and her voice goes shrill. “Except now they’ll bypass Faelen with that treaty, and even if King Sedric finds out, we’ll be used as hostages.”
“It’s not only about the resources. And they won’t stop with Tulla,” Rasha says.
“What do you mean?” Lord Wellimton dabs his forehead with a handkerchief and eyes my hand. “What else could it possibly be?”
She glances at Myles and me. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Now look here, Your Majesty. If you know something—”
“I know a lot of things,” she says coolly.
“That doesn’t answer the question as to why he would dare chance this when we’ve got Nym.” Lord Percival peers at me.
Gwen nods. “I agree. How could they actually try it while she’s alive sitting in their Castle?”
“Maybe they’re not planning on having her alive much longer,” Myles says, smoothing over his fingernails. “Maybe that’s why the guardsss were killed. Maybe they’re whittling usss down.”
I peer back at the guards. “But who is doing the whittling?”
Two of them shrug at me just as Rasha steps over to them. She rubs her temple and beckons her soldiers. “If you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to lie down where I can think without all the noise. It’s been a long few days.”
I push off the warm wall I’m leaning against even though her expression says she’s not ready to talk. Myles joins me as her guards knock on the door, which is promptly opened by the Bron soldiers who, after a moment’s conversation, proceed to let us out to the hall. At the end of which stand three wraiths. They hiss when they see me and that vortex in my chest lurches.
Rasha pushes ahead toward her room as her guards step in front of me and Myles, slowing us down.
“Forgetting something, Princessss?” Myles snarls.
“I can’t imagine what.”
“Perhaps our fate? Maybe when you’re done being mad, the three of us could move on with discussing what’s next.”
“Our fate?” Rasha gives a sharp laugh at her open door. Then dips her tone bitterly. “You’ll be lucky if you both haven’t already single-handedly sealed it yourselves.”
“You know that high horse you’re riding is—”
I grab Myles’s arm. “Just leave it. She needs more time.”
“I hate to point it out, sssweetheart”—he juts his chin toward the wraiths—“but I’m afraid time’s something we’re running short on.”
“Just give her a couple of hours, then I’ll—”
A scream pierces the air.
Bron’s guards spin back toward the princess’s room. In an instant Myles and I are running.
The soldiers don’t stop us. They’re too busy throwing the door open, and we press through to find Rasha bent down on the floor, holding her maid-in-waiting’s head in her lap. Beside her lies one of Rasha’s Cashlin guards and one from Faelen. I recognize him from the airship. Or what’s left of him. Both of them seem to be missing a limb or two.
I choke and push toward him, but Rasha’s men force me back against Myles just as a chill enters the room. Spinning around, I see two of the Dark Army wraiths enter. Their black eyes glitter in the shadows of their dirty hoods and their stretched mouths move in that wordless, off-rhythm hissing.
“Everyone but the Cashlin guards out,” the large Bron soldier says.