“You’re king,” she said. “You can do as you wish.”
His gaze traced her in the sunlight coming through the windows, considering her words. Roa let her own gaze run over the planes of his face, studying those long black lashes, his once dark and stubbled jaw, the crooked bridge of his nose.
“Safire has good instincts,” he said. “I trust her implicitly.”
And me not at all,thought Roa. But of course, she couldn’t blame him.
There was only one thing to do: find the way out and use it to warn Theo.
Before tonight.
Alone
This was what losing her sister felt like...
It was reaching out her hand in the night, only to find the blankets flat and cold and empty.
It was the story she would never tell and the secret she would never whisper under the covers.
It was the laugh she no longer heard.
And the ache that never ceased.
And the void that could never be filled.
It was seeing what she’d lost in the eyes of everyone who looked at her.
It was pretending not to hear her father weeping in the night when he thought no one could hear.
It was going to the cliffs to see if she could find a trace of her... and finding only the chill of the wind and the silence of the still water.
It was waking from a nightmare and turning to the one who always sang her back to sleep, only to find she was alone in the dark.
Alone, forever, in the dark.
That’s what losing her sister felt like.
Twenty-Eight
Roa told her guards not to disturb her for the rest of the day.
And then, lighting a candle, she took it into the passage with her.
If therewasa secret escape route in the palace, it seemed only logical it would be connected to the king and queen’s rooms.
“It has to be this one,” she murmured, holding her candle flame close to the walls, looking for latches.
It got cold. And then damp. When her candle nearly burned down to the base, Roa still hadn’t come across any doors other than the ones leading to her and Dax’s rooms.
And then, just like that, the passageway ended.
Roa set down her candle and ran her hands across the wall, searching for a thin crack like the one in her room. The plaster was cold and damp against Roa’s palms, but there was no trace of any door.
No,she thought, wanting to kick it. Why go to the trouble of making a tunnel go this far, and no farther?
Unless it went somewhere once,thought Roa.And they closed it off.
But why?
