Ruby immediately lost all concern for our crisis. “The legends are true? The wolves are the ancients?” She stared at me a moment before her scarlet curls whipped around to find Rhys and Rider, both of whom donned arcane smirks for her. I would have to remember to thank them for that later.
The meeting ended with nothing at all resolved. Anvil hadn’t been able to discover anything useful in his first attempts, but he intended to try again now that we had released our captive fairy back into the wild. Grey and Steed were planning a trip to Camber under the guise of guard duties to see if they could learn anything useful. Ruby had flatly refused their offer to go along, which I attributed to the sparks that were flying between her and Grey and to the possibility of her missing Finn and Keaton’s return.
I watched her follow Rhys and Rider from the room, but they were tight-lipped. They seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves and I wondered what she’d done to them to merit the torment.
Chevelle and I were all that remained in the study. He stood staring at the pendant on the table.
I watched him. “You think Veil made the offer because he knows of my uncooperative powers.”
He let out a breath before raising his gaze. The emotion in it was crippling. “No. He has always wanted you.” His eyes fell to my lips and my throat went dry.
“You think we should trust him?” I rasped.
A sardonic smile answered my disbelief. “I think he wants you safe.” Chevelle’s templed hand slid across the table, moving closer. “For him.”
I purposefully directed my gaze to the pendant. “Then it’s a warning. But a warning against a fey campaign, or someone else?” The twisted strands of silver and ice caught the flicker of the torchlight, shimmering like the ornament of a fairy, not an elvin lord. “If it is someone else, we need to decipher it. And if it is the fey, then there is no way to stop them from coming for me.” I contemplated the devious, underhanded war tactics of the fey, thought through what would happen, and then remembered what Chevelle had said, thinking aloud. “And he wouldn’t let them have me, would he? If they come he can’t stop them. But he won’t... can’t allow them to have my power. He would take me.”
I felt the change in Chevelle beside me, but I dared not look up. There would be nothing I could do to fight Veil without risking the release of my power, but I had no doubt of Chevelle’s intent.
“I will find control,” I promised. “And we will solve the pendant.”
Regardless of who was trying to kill me, I still had a kingdom to run. So as I worked to catch up and set right all that had gone undone in my absence and awry since my return, I puzzled out the clues. I knew one thing for certain now: the attacks were Asher’s offspring. The boy’s coloring was likely due to a mixed birth. And the fact that the fey were involved made me wonder if the ice attacks were not of a half-fey child. Ruby, after all, had turned out strong and dangerous. Fortunately, she was on my side.
I had mentally crossed the rogues off the list, as the massacre in the yard would have never come to be if they had control of anyone in line for the throne. They were brutal, but they had enough sense to use a tool like that in the most effective way: they would have gathered a following. If it was the fey who had control over an heir, then they were either just playing with me until they could place him or her, or they had more than one and they were trying to thin out the stock, neither of which were highly likely. Still, I couldn’t stop the shiver that ran through me at the thought of a fey-influenced lord on the northern throne. But even if they didn’t have a child or children, then they knew who did, and at the very least were tracking the situation. I had the strands of silver and ice to prove that.
So, that just left two other options that I could think of: Asher and Junnie. Asher had not been gone long. He could have spent years training and molding his children, he could have told each they were his rightful heir, his second, and they could be coming for me because I stood in his place. The attacks had not come together. The silver boy was alone, and he had called me the pretender. But if Asher had done this, if he was the cause, then there was nothing to be done but wait for the others to decide it was time. There was no way to find them, to flush them out.