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“What did she say?” he said, reading her frustration. “Will Isibel fight?”
Corayne pursed her lips. “Remember Dom’s pride?”
“I try not to,” he replied.
“Isibel is a thousand times worse.”
Charlie’s shoulders dropped, his face mirroring her own disappointment.
“Will they send out scouts at least?” he said, brow furrowed.
She could only shrug. “They have Elders who patrol the perimeter of the enclave.”
Charlie’s round cheeks went pink and he pulled at his braid in frustration. “But do they hear anything of the realm? Is anyone even paying attention to the rest of the world?”
At the windowsill, Garion laughed into the open air.
“I knew the Elders were isolated but I didn’t think they would be so stupid,” he muttered, incredulous.
“I thought if we made it here...” Charlie’s voice broke with weariness. “I thought—I knew we wouldn’t be safe. I knew Taristan would come. But I didn’t think the immortals would be so blind as to simply wait for him to knock on the city gates.”
He poked at the coals again, sending up a spray of sparks.
To Corayne, they looked like a constellation of red stars, winking out one by one.
“We could be anywhere,” she hissed, turning away from the coals. “We could have fled to the ends of the earth, we could have gone to mymother—why did my heart lead me here?”
Instead of giving space, Charlie closed the distance, coming around the brazier to take her arm. Corayne expected some judgment from the fugitive priest, but found only compassion in his dark eyes.
“Perhaps your heart knows something the rest of us don’t,” he said softly.
Corayne’s mouth opened to turn him aside with a smart remark, but something caught. Again, she wondered, and listened for a sound no one else could hear. The distant hum, the echoes of power. For a moment, she forgot to breathe.
Something only my heart knows, she thought, turning Charlie’s words over in her head.
Like a panther, Garion stepped down from the window. He did not know Corayne well, but he read her as Sorasa would, eyes flitting over her face.
“What is it?” he asked sternly.
Her teeth clenched shut, the words heavy on the tip of her tongue. She eyed the open door, then the window. Then the walls themselves. The castle filled with immortal Elders, with too many eyes and ears to count.
Instead, she went to Charlie’s saddlebags piled in the corner. In a few seconds, she plucked out a scrap of paper, a quill, and a stoppered pot of ink.
Garion and Charlie leaned over each of her shoulders, watching with narrowed eyes as she scratched a message.
The quill shook in her hand, her careful lettering crooked. As she wrote, the hum deepened, until she felt it tuning in her bones. It was obvious now, unmistakable.
Both assassin and priest drew in a shocked gasp.
Quickly, Corayne tossed the parchment into the brazier, letting the paper curl and burn. The ink stared up at her, the letters consumed. She watched, wide-eyed, reading them one last time before they fell to ashes.
I think there is a Spindle here.
Her voice quivered, her whisper barely louder than the crackling coals.
“Not open. Not yet,” she breathed. “But waiting.”
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